A few weeks ago when I joined this community I did so with the sole intent to get and stay sober… sober being almost as open to interpretation as AA’s ’a God of your understanding.’ 24 hours after joining and committing to the forum I relapsed because of social pressures. After one of the worst 2 day hangovers of my life I fully immersed myself within the cleansing waters of your company figuratively baptizing myself and becoming born again with determination to stay sober and help as many as I can along the way.
While sharing my thoughts on sobriety so many of you have filled my heart with some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard and continue to encourage me to keep writing… I honestly can’t even put into words how much this means to me and keeps me going as I have more working against me than I openly share.
A lot of you also know by now that I’m a bit on the eccentric side and skip to the rhythm of my own babbling brook. And because of all of the above and the deep impact you’ve all had on me, I’ve given my personal definition of ‘sober’ a lot of thought and decided to tweak it a bit and by exstention my sobriety date.
For me to succeed in sobriety I need to completely change my approach. Abstaining from something that has become such a huge part of me has to be replaced with me changing myself completely. Sobriety is like a long distance marathon so I’ve decided to compare my sober journey with the annual local Ironman race . This race consists of a 2.4 mile swim in the ocean, 112 mile bike ride, and a 26.2 mile run in the hot Hawaiian heat. Although the average Ironman winner can complete this race is a little over 8 hours, they train all year around. This training is way more intense than just going to the gym and completely overtakes their lifestyle and everything that they do. To see the hundreds of ironman that come from all over the world to train here before the race, they all look more like well sculpted machines than actual people. So that’s what I’m going to do, mentally train and run the long distance race of sobriety like an ironman athlete and refrain from every mind altering substance (verdicts still out on the Kava) so that in 7 years when my cells have completely renewed themselves and I’m literally a NEW person, I will no longer have any trace of drugs in the new me.
Today when I logged onto here I got the “respected” badge. Although this doesn’t seem like much, to me it is a symbol of how seriously I’ve taken this journey with all of you. I am what you would call an “empath” in ever sense of the term and as such it bothers me to encourage people to stay off narcos and the island herb while still partaking because its not my “DOC”. Sorry guys. Moving forward, I’ve picked today as my new ‘soberly minded’ start date for many reasons. Mostly based on the number pattern and the waxing of the moon… but I won’t get into that.
This forum has given me a renewed purpose and acceptance from many, now it’s time that I accept myself and a higher standard of ‘sobriety’ so as add even more credibility to what I’m training for. I guess I’ll just consider the past 18 days a good ‘warmup’.
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