At a 12 step meeting today the chairperson brought up the topic of "hope."
And, for me, the idea of hope shows me that recovery is all in our mind. After all, very few of us are what we could call hopeless. The problem though with those who don't think they have a chance to get sober is that they don't believe they can.
For sake of example, those who don't believe they can get sober are those who have a lot of reasons why that's not possible. They may bring up the idea that they are alcoholics because their parents were alcoholics. They may have the idea that being an alcoholic is something that's in their genes. Something that they can't control. They are alcoholics because their father was an alcoholic, their grandfather, their great-grandfather was an alcoholic, and so forth. They have some idea that their genetics are their destiny. But believe me, Alcoholics Anonymous has proved over and over that this is a myth.
The rooms of AA are full of people who have a family history of addiction and alcoholism. Yet many of them have decades of sobriety.
Other excuses that are used for being unable to stay sober is that we were brought up in a certain environment. Maybe it was an abusive family life. Maybe it was a bad neighborhood. Perhaps all of our friends were alcoholics and addicts and that's why we are also. But, once again if we look around the room at a 12 step meeting we'll see a lot of people who were brought up in terrible circumstances: yet they are sober today and have been for many years.
The formula for staying sober is observing what those do who are staying sober on a long-term basis. Do they go to meetings? Are they employed? Do they hang out with other people who are sober? Are they reading the literature and attending meetings on a steady basis? Do they have a sponsor? In other words, it's not complicated. If we want to learn how to do anything in life we observe those who are doing the same thing that we want to do and just copy them.
It takes nothing more than willingness and having the hope and belief that we can do the same thing. After all, getting and staying sober is not rocket science. But many of us, because are not done or we can't stand the pain of doing a little bit of real work default to our drug of choice and keep relapsing over and over.
Then we show back up at meetings because we realize that our life hasn't been working. We sit there depressed, head down, one more time wondering where we went wrong. We complicate our lives by overthinking, rather than looking around us and seeing what the successful people in recovery are doing.
But if we do what they do then there is hope for us.
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