Sober Firsts

Sobriety brings a renewed sense of life. During the first year of recovery, each day presents unfamiliar situations and experiences—many faced sober for the first time.  There are a lot of “sober first times.”

Some first sober experiences are awkward or uncomfortable; others are joyful and exciting. Still others stir up fear, anxiety, or emotions we once managed by drinking. Although these experiences vary with each person’s age, background, family, work, and life history, they can be unsettling. Over time, I came to see them as opportunities to grow and to learn how to live life on life’s terms.

I had one advantage when I came into AA at a young age. I had no broken marriages, no divorces, and very limited employment history. But that same naivety was also a double-edged sword. I hadn’t yet experienced many of life’s ups and downs, and I had no clue how to deal with what life would eventually put in front of me. My lack of experience was a handicap.

When I drank, alcohol helped me deal with many of those uncomfortable feelings. Fear and anxiety were muted or diminished. Alcohol had literally become my higher power for dealing with life. But drinking was no longer an option. So I had to learn another way.

Learning to Face Life Sober

For most alcoholics, there are situations that can foster fear and anxiety. For me, some involved social anxiety, dating, speaking in public, shyness, employment, and everyday interactions with other people—things I had once used alcohol to soften.

Then there were the ordinary difficulties of everyday living.

There were differences of opinion on the job. There were raw nerves that had once been covered up by alcohol. Resentments and fears could surface, and sometimes my emotions would explode, leaving those around me unable to figure out what the issue was.

I had to learn that not everything was going to be my way—and that was okay. I also had to learn that it was okay to make mistakes. It was okay to be wrong. In fact, being wrong could teach me something if I was willing to learn from it. One of the things I began to understand was that the events of one day did not have to become cumulative. A bad day didn’t have to ruin tomorrow.

With the AA program of recovery, I was learning to deal with life as it occurred. One day at a time.

Meetings Were Only Part of the Answer

In my early recovery, I immersed myself in AA meetings. AA was a safe place for me, and meetings were perfect for helping me stay away from that first drink. But eventually I realized that meetings weren’t where most of my problems were occurring. Life was happening outside the meeting rooms.

Many situations that made me uncomfortable arose at work, at home, in relationships, and in everyday interactions. They could set me off, and I once believed I needed a few drinks to face them. Sobriety meant learning to handle them without alcohol—an entirely new experience.

My First Sober Holidays

Holidays were a particularly big collection of sober firsts.  For me, the Christmas season seemed to begin with Thanksgiving and slowly creep its way toward Christmas Eve and New Year’s. The holidays were tough times. They were heavy with sentimentality, estrangement from family and loved ones, loneliness, isolation, and pain.

But something happened after I lived through that first set of holidays sober. They weren’t quite as frightening anymore. I discovered that they were just days. They had been boogeymen in my mind, but I had faced them sober and lived through them. In early sobriety, however, they were the real deal.

This was where meetings and fellowship became especially important. In AA, I soon realized I wasn’t the only person dealing with uncomfortable feelings and emotions during the holidays. Other people understood. They reached out. They shared their experience. They offered mutual aid and comfort.

At the time, many AA groups held round-the-clock holiday marathon meetings with food, refreshments, speakers, and discussions. As a newcomer, they were exactly what I needed. I also remember attending my first AA New Year’s party, complete with a band, music, and dancing. I learned that I could celebrate New Year’s without drinking—and that was another sober first.

A Year of Sober Firsts

Learning to live one day at a time during that first year of recovery was a game changer for me. We don’t have to figure out how we’re going to stay sober for the rest of our lives. We only have to deal with today. And today can bring almost anything.

We deal with situations on the job and interactions with other people. We experience the joy of births and weddings. We experience sickness and the loss of loved ones. There are celebrations, disappointments, gains, and losses.

In my first year of sobriety, I lived a day at a time; there were four seasons. There were birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and ordinary Tuesdays. There were days when everything seemed to be going our way, and days when nothing seemed to go our way.

Living sober doesn’t allow us to avoid the full array of emotional highs and lows that come with being alive. Instead, we learn to go through them. And every time we do, something happens: we have another sober experience.

We learn that we can face hardship without drinking, that discomfort eventually passes, that disagreement need not become a crisis, and that disappointment does not have to send us to a bar.

Little by little, these experiences become the bedrock of recovery. At the end of each new sober day, there can be a profound gratitude to AA and to our Higher Power for the grace to muddle through it without a drink. Then tomorrow comes. And tomorrow brings another first.

Fifty Years Later

I came into AA more than fifty years ago, and I am still learning. The situations have changed. Life has changed. I have changed. But the principle hasn’t changed.

There is still a fresh newness to recovery because life itself is constantly changing. Even after more than 50 years of sobriety, I still encounter situations I have never faced before. At 72, there are things I am dealing with today that I had never dealt with at 21—or at 50 or 60.

In recovery, we adapt to new circumstances and face new situations. We experience new joys and new disappointments. We continue to learn how to live life on life’s terms.

Looking back, I can see that those early sober firsts were much more important than I realized at the time. I thought I was simply trying to get through another day without a drink. But I was actually learning how to live.

And that hasn’t stopped. Each day brings something to learn. Some lessons are worth remembering; others are worth remembering so we don’t have to learn them twice.

AA didn’t give me a perfect life. It gave me a way to live the life I have without needing alcohol to deal with it.  I thought someday I’d have this all figured out. I don’t. Life keeps changing. I’m still having sober firsts. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. We don’t have to. We can face it when it gets here. It may be another sober first. And that’s okay.

I’ve been doing that for more than fifty years now—one day at a time.