I was talking to someone the other day who is a giver. They said they feel like they are being selfish in recovery. Because going to a meeting for an hour a couple of times a week is taking her from her family.
LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING
If you want to get sober, you have to learn to be sober selfish. Which is totally different from being a selfish addict. Do you think your addiction wasn’t selfish as shit? Ya. Super selfish. You only cared about you, and your fix. So why, now, do you think it is selfish to care about you and sobriety?
Honestly, I prefer sober selfish. I am finding time for what I want to find time for, instead of blowing everyone and everything off for the bar.
I am making time for me. For my mental , and physical health. For my relationships to heal, I had to heal. But I had to do it for me. My sobriety journey has nothing to do with anyone else. It is all about me, so I need to be selfish.
Go be selfish, because you already were selfish. This time it’s just for a good reason.
I love this! Initially, I felt just as the woman you referenced. I felt selfish for taking an hour away from my husband and boys in the evenings and asking my husband to get them to bed by himself. As my mind cleared a little, I realized that it was exponentially more important to take that hour rather than to constantly be the broken, empty shell of a person I was. I was absolutely no good to them hungover, depressed and irritable. Now they get the very best of me for 161 hours a week. Seven hours can selfishly be mine.
Self-improvement is not selfish. Taking care of one’s own health, is not selfish. Taking time to settle the soul, is not selfish. Why? Because it can make you better. A better parent, spouse, friend, employee, boss, citizen. The better you are, the better you give.
Even scripture encourages believers to treat their bodies as “temples”, to eat well, avoid excess, rest, and take time to be alone with the Lord.
If I thought as this woman thought, I am being selfish for practicing martial arts, because classes take 4-6 hours a week away from my family in the evenings, the money spent on classes and equipment diverted from some other “need” My wife and daughter would disagree. They like me sober, not red-lining out on stress, and in good health. I can’t be the husband and father that they need, if I am drunk, stressed out, or dead.
I am also a giver… so it is hard. But I learned the lesson from a student of mine, when I was at my peak of work stress, a student told me “you have to take care of yourself if you want to be able to take care of others… that’s why on a flight they tell you to put the mask on yourself first.” In that moment she was the teacher and I was the student.
Spot on. We need to take care of ourselves first by any means. Its like when you are on an airplane, and they say to put on your own oxygen mask first before assisting others. If you don’t help yourself, how can you help anyone else?
I’m going to a wedding in 2 weeks in Scotland. My best friend and his soon-to-be-wife. Open bar. My first real challenge, this go around. I feel confident enough in my choice to not drink that I will still be going. My gf will be there to support me too, she knows my choice and how serious i am about it. I’m also driving us there, so thats another deterrent…no way am i risking a DUI, especially in a foreign country. However, I’ve made it clear that if I say we’ve gotta leave – then i mean it, we gotta leave. Doesn’t matter if we are 2 hours into the reception or 10 minutes.
That may seem selfish to others from the outside looking in, but I am protecting this for me, not for them.
I had a few weddings over the last year and a half, and many of them understood why I would bow out once the drinking really started up. They were just glad I came in the first place.
I was just going to say…1 hour a week for a meeting is nothing compared to the many hours every day that we were emotionally unavailable to anyone because of our drinking/using/whatever.
You are sooooooo sooooooo right!! Now it is GOOD to be selfish. Everyone will benefit from our sober selfishness.
Oh no! That is NOT ok! You keep doing you, buddy. I know it’s hard. My husband still drinks, too. He’s ok with me not drinking, but I think he misses his drinking buddy sometimes.
