Episode 172 -- December 6, 2021

Sometimes doing the right thing can feel wrong. Early in our recovery, we are still so used to being the screw-up, the undependable person, the person who should not be trusted—we're not sure we can even trust ourselves. And many of us aren't sure what to do with the feelings that come with an accomplishment or a success.

In his book First Year Sobriety: When All That Changes Is Everything, Guy Kettelhack discusses the victories and obstacles that are common during our first year of recovery.

This excerpt explores the anxiety and unfamiliar feelings we may have around celebrations and special occasions while sober, and offers a vision of what success can begin to look and feel like in a life of recovery. Listen in as one newcomer to recovery, a man named Hal, shares how he approached his first three months of recovery. For those of us attending Twelve Step meetings, we might hear a lot about the "first ninety days." It's a milestone to hit, as are other days, such as the first day, the second day, the third day, and the ninety-third day.

Kettelhack invites us to imagine that we're capable of accepting more from life than we ever thought possible. Whatever it takes to get us there, let's do it...and then let's keep going.

This excerpt has been edited for brevity.

Celebration Anxiety
The first ninety days of sobriety can be an Alice-in-Wonderland explosion: Suddenly, the world may somehow appear simultaneously starkly real and fantastic, a new place with new rules.

But even if your first days and weeks of sobriety do not strike you with that kind of dramatic force, there is almost always some sort of awakening: a kind of dipping-your-toe-into-the water, an acquaintance with some surprising new ways of living and feeling. Anxiety can alternate with feelings of well-being, boredom, rage, sadness, and hilarity (Twelve Step meetings can be very funny, even if you may not always know what everyone's laughing at).

A good deal of anxiety, however, often relates to completing that magical-sounding "ninety days." Twelve Step programs sometimes do, wittingly or not, put a good deal of pressure on completing "ninety and ninety" (ninety meetings in ninety days), the period of abstinence traditionally suggested to newcomers to see if sobriety is what they want. It's the rare recovering addict or alcoholic who doesn't feel some trepidation about facing what comes after this period; you might call it the "Now what?" syndrome. Let's take a closer look at this common anxiety, not least because it will prepare you for the future "Now what's?"—like when you complete your first six months, year, two years, and so on of sobriety. One day at a time.

"I was not what you'd call your average, willing, recovering drunk," states Hal, a thirty-three-year-old Minneapolis man. "I remember going to a couple of AA meetings when I still drank; in fact, I went drunk, although not so drunk that anyone could tell right off. In fact, they used to call on me when I raised my hand. No doubt with profound regret afterward. I'd tell them what a bunch of tight-ass schoolmarms they all were. I don't think I was everybody's favorite speaker."

But after hitting bottom, landing in jail and detox, Hal became sober and found a sponsor in AA. Still, he didn't know what the "program" wanted him to do, what the Twelve Steps were all about, or what the deal was with all the sober people in the meetings he attended. The deal, Hal's sponsor told him, was simply to give it ninety days. Don't drink for ninety days, and go to a meeting every day for ninety days. The only AA slogan that Hal could make any sense of was "One day at a time." "I could figure that out," Hal says. "That's how I used to drink. Every day, one day at a time." As his ninety days began to go by, one by one, a week, two weeks, a month, two months, two and a half months, Hal experienced something strange and new. "My sponsor said it was self-esteem. I suddenly had some. I guess he was right." But as the ninetieth day drew near, Hal began to feel uncomfortable, really uncomfortable. Scared. Even, he admits, terrified. "How could I keep this up? It was like somebody hoodwinked me into staying off booze for ninety days, but now, hell, I couldn't continue this. Not drink for the rest of my life? Who was I kidding? I couldn't keep this up, that's what I kept telling myself, I couldn't keep it up...."

Hal says that on the morning of the ninetieth day he came very close to picking up a drink—right after he'd picked up his welfare check. "I felt wacko," he says. "On one hand I felt proud: I'd done it, I'd stayed off booze for nearly three months. Never managed to do that in my whole adult life before. On the other hand, I felt, hey, I must be cured. If I managed to stay off booze for three months, it must be that I'm not an alcoholic! On the other hand—whoops, that makes three hands. Anyway, I also felt like it was time to show everybody what a mess I really was. Yeah, I guess that was the strongest feeling. It was like I'd been pretending to be this good guy, this model nondrinking good guy, for a whole ninety days. But nobody realized what a jerk I still was. I'd show them. I'd let the whole goddamn world see who I really was. I'd get blitzed...."

After picking up his check and walking by a liquor store, he got an idea. "I figured I'd call up my sponsor and let him know what a screw-up I was. You know, really let him have it. I'd show him I had him fooled." Hal dialed his sponsor at work and delivered the news that he was a "screw-up" and was about to get blitzed on his ninetieth day. His sponsor calmly told him that he'd never met an alcoholic, drinking or nondrinking, who didn't at one point or another think he was a "screw-up," and that Hal could do whatever he wanted to, but he might want to consider going to a noon meeting two blocks away before he made any final decisions.

For some reason, Hal did so. And the meeting spoke to him in a different way than a meeting ever had before. For one thing, the secretary asked if anyone was celebrating ninety days or a "birthday" of a year or more. Hal found himself raising his hand and confessing that this was his ninetieth day. Much applause. Hal felt himself going red. And feeling pleased. Later, during the sharing, people talked about how uncomfortable they always were when they faced an upcoming "birthday."

"I wasn't the only one who felt the way I did—scared of doing something good for myself," Hal says. "Amazing stuff. I could—more to the point, I wanted to—see what day ninety-one might be like, without picking up."

I've given you Hal's story because so many recovering people have difficulty with "birthdays" or "anniversaries," whether of ninety days, one year, five years, or twenty years. "I'm so used to thinking bad stuff about me," Hal says, "that the hardest thing I face in sobriety is accepting that there might be something good in me." Even people who rejoice in reaching milestones like ninety days—and they constitute a large group too—generally understand the struggle Hal talks about. The struggle is complicated. Even when you think you're celebrating, sometimes old negative feelings can be gnawing away underneath.

What Does "Success" Mean Now?
There's an endless range of experience in recovery.

You've succeeded if you've managed to keep from picking up a drink or drug today. But that definition is infinitely expandable. "Success," for so many recovering people, even in the earliest weeks and months of recovery, grows to include a sense of connection. Not only that you're connected to other people but that you're a part of a whole world and universe—a spiritual sense of being important and worthy simply because you are who you are. Out of this realization, we begin to feel worthy in a way that can't be injured by ego, what job we have, how much money we make, the car we drive, or the home we live in. We come to feel in some indefinable sense that we deserve to be loved. Even more, that we are loved by other people and, perhaps, even by that strange Higher Power that Twelve Step programs keep going on about.

Success happens to us in other ways, as well. We discover we're capable of accepting more from life than we ever thought we could. Recovery shows us that we can face even our worst fears, our most hateful assumptions about ourselves, without being capsized or "punished." We slowly discover a new capacity for conscious living: a humble, sometimes even awestruck state in which we begin to sift our fears and prejudices from a new, unthreatening sense of reality. We discover we don't need our old props either of mind or of behavior. We discover the amazing fact that there is a self waiting to appear after drinking and drugging.

Nearly all the people I've listened to who've completed their first year of sobriety have discovered something along these lines: There are wonderfully unanticipated rewards to living consciously—that is, living without losing ourselves in alcohol or drugs. Not that everything always (or even usually) gets rosy. Our pain and numbness and confusion don't always stop. We're still in uncharted territory as we finish our first sober year: day by day, moment by moment, there's the rest of our conscious lives to come. And none of us knows what's in store.

After day 365 comes day 366. You can choose to meet that new day consciously, in an attitude of sobriety. One thing we can guarantee: You don't have to face that day without help. Twelve Step programs, from the evidence of the many recovering people who follow them, can help you to deal with all the abundance of life soberly. The only advice we need to follow to prove all this to ourselves seems to come in the simple phrase, Don't drink or drug, and go to meetings. That, anyway, seems to be enough to open the door to the adventure of sobriety—to the discovery of just how wide your own capacity is to receive the fullest, richest measure of life.

About the Author:
Guy Kettelhack is an analyst-in-training at the Boston and New York Centers for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies. He has written seven books on recovery. He lives in New York City.

© 1992 by Guy Kettelhack
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