A friend asked today if I was going to buy a lottery ticket. After all, he told me, it's now up to over a billion and a half dollars.
"No," I answered.
He looked at me as if he didn't understand why I was missing such a great opportunity. After all, he explained, this is probably the biggest lottery jackpot there's ever been.
The reality is, I told him, that I won the lottery over 27 years ago when I became sober. After all, only a small percentage of heroin addicts stay clean for nearly 28 years, as I have. To me, that's like winning the lottery. Because if I hadn't gotten clean I wouldn't be here today to talk about it.
For most addicts and alcoholics with long-term sobriety living a clean and sober life is the best thing that could ever happen. After all, many of us had some success in our life before we became addicts. Many of us had businesses, careers, homes, and more. Yet we traded it all to live in the insane world of addiction. The fact that we're alive today is a miracle in itself.
Then there's the flip side of winning the lottery. I read the other day that a person is more likely to be struck by lightning while bobsledding backward down Mount Everest than he is to win the lottery. And those who are mathematically inclined have calculated the odds of winning are millions to one. Whatever the odds, I've read many horror stories about lottery winners and how their lives got screwed up by the sudden influx of cash.
While a few are prudent and invested wisely, there's an abundance of stories of those who did otherwise. I read of one man who won $27 million and blew through half of it within a year. One woman who won the lottery twice in one year is now living in a trailer park on Social Security. Another man who won $5 million was almost killed by a hit man hired by his brother and sister-in-law, who planned to inherit the windfall. The horror stories go on and on about greed, poor investments, suicides, and reports from many winners that they wish they had never won because their lives were totally messed up from then on.
It takes more self-discipline than many of us have to live a balanced life when we have millions of dollars. It might be something nice to fantasize about but that kind of winnings would be simply exchanging one set of problems for another.
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