“Nothing can come into being without time.” --Seneca

Perhaps you, Dear Reader, have felt how I felt early in sobriety.  When the question would be posed about how long I was sober, it was intimidating to provide an answer that was a handful of days, weeks, or even months.  I felt the stigma of addiction deeply.  I was 36 years old when I last drank.  Certainly old enough to have known better and stopped sooner, but there I was.  

My biggest fear was with co-workers and clients finding out about my sobriety.  While three months of sobriety was a huge accomplishment to me, worthy of a coin and a standing ovation at my home group, I feared that outside the rooms, I would be seen as an infant in sobriety.  Unreliable.  Someone to be double-checked.  The fear of that kept me very particular about with whom I shared the journey I was on and how long I had been on it.

And I’d go to meetings and see people with years and years of sobriety and I wanted that.  I wanted it right then and there.  I wanted to transport myself years into the future so I too could regard my addiction as something of the distant past.  A part of my story, to be sure but a chapter preceding many others of sobriety and success.  I wanted all that years of sobriety could offer and I wanted it then and there.

It didn’t happen.

“Time takes time.”  That’s what I was told and that’s what I know to be true now.  I didn’t put down the bottle and immediately learn to love myself.  I didn’t quit lying about my drinking and immediately have the trust of my family and friends back.  I didn’t quit obsessing about drinking and immediately turn my thought to the future, or productive things, or to service.

Early on, I was a scared, emotional infant.  I was dealing with big challenges and big emotions and the coping device I’d relied on for almost 20 years to make big, scary things less big and scary wasn’t there anymore.  You ever watch an action movie where the hero runs out of ammo and looks at his weapon and casts it off, useless to fight the enemy?  That’s how I felt dealing with the mountain of problems I’d created for myself without alcohol.

They had to be tackled.  I had to earn back the trust of my wife.  I had to re-establish kinship with my family and friends.  I had to develop a sense of gratitude and perspective.  I had to re-connect with my spirituality and discover, as much as might be revealed to me, why I am on this spinning planet and what my place is in it.  I had to make amends.  I had to learn to love myself.  I’m still doing these things.  I’m still learning these things.  I’ve come a long way, but it’s taken every bit of the time that it’s taken to develop them.  

I certainly don’t mean to discourage people in early sobriety.  I was there once and I was made to feel important when I was.  That said, there is wisdom to be gained from people who have kept their sobriety going for years upon years.  Through good times and bad.  Those people have lived big chunks of their lives sober.  They have wisdom and without fail, they are willing to share everything they know to help the newcomer.

That is the beauty of our fellowship.  We strengthen one another continuously.  It’s the most accepted and free I’ve ever felt around people I don’t know to connect with them as a recovering addict.  That ease around others was also earned.  It was earned by trusting those who came before me and learning from their experience strength and hope.  It was also earned by trusting the newcomer to tell my story to them in the hope they might see a bit of themselves in me and realize that recovery is real.  These things are remarkable.  They are a gift of recovery and they take time.

If you haven’t yet accomplished all of your goals in sobriety, that’s OK.  It’s easy to become impatient.  It’s easy to want people to see the progress we already feel.  We know we’ve changed, but sometimes it takes others longer to see that, to trust it.  Live your program anyway.  It’s worth it.