“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.” --Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius is the only ancient philosopher who was also an emperor of Rome. That is a once in a civilization combination of thought and power. His Meditations was a personal diary he kept. It wasn’t meant for publication, yet it’s been preserved, providing centuries of wisdom and insight that would have been lost to time otherwise.

I really like this sentiment of his because it conveys the fierce urgency of self-improvement that I think is entirely applicable to addiction from recovery. I tried to bargain with my alcoholism for years before finally quitting entirely. I always thought there might be some set of rules or guidelines I could follow that would satisfy the twin objectives of keeping people off my ass and letting me drink the way I wanted to drink. Needless to say, I never found that balance because for an alcoholic, that balance does not exist. The time I spent delaying my recovery was lost forever and if I have one regret about my sobriety it would be that I didn’t start it sooner.

Do you ever think about black holes? I do. As a kid, I’d hear the term “black hole” and think, “ooooh, scary.” I had no idea. A black hole is understood to be a concentration of super-dense mass with such extreme gravity that nothing that comes within its gravitational field can escape. Not even light, which has almost no mass at all. The boundary separating the black hole and the observable universe is called the “event horizon.” Anything closer to the black hole than the event horizon is sucked in and would then add to the black hole’s mass and consequently make it more powerful. This is about the limit of my comprehension of astrophysics, but that’s fine. It’s all I need to know to complete this analogy.

Addiction is a black hole. It will consume everything you are willing to feed it. To delay your recovery from addiction is to sacrifice more of yourself, your time, and your joy to the black hole of addiction. It is critical not to delay your recovery. The more you lose to it, the less you have left to fight it.

Some people, and I was one of them, would arbitrarily pick some date or event after which we would endeavor to stop drinking or stop drugging. For me, the idea of getting sober right before New Year’s Day was crazy. The impulse to drink to ring in a new year would be too strong. No, sobriety would have to wait. But, you know, the NFL playoff and Super Bowl are a helluva time to try and get sober. So, mid-February looks good. But heck, March Madness wouldn’t be the same without booze. April it is. But, with warmer weather comes baseball and cookouts and swimming pools. Who wants to do those things sober. Fall it is. The thing is, though, they release a lot of great seasonal beers in the Fall and a nip in the air requires a nice glass of bourbon to enjoy, right? Thanksgiving and Christmas are no good sober. The New Year it is!

That seems so insane to me now, but that was my thinking. There were always excuses to put off the sobriety I knew in my heart I needed. I broke a lot of promises to myself and to others. I was supposed to stop drinking after I bought my first house, but moving is a real chore and so I got loaded once the boxes were unpacked. I thought I’d get better after I got married, but my drinking just went more underground. It went further underground after my kids were born. All of this delay and bargaining was me trying to convince myself I was close to some nebulous solution to my alcohol problem without acknowledging the solution to my alcohol problem was the one I didn’t want: abstinence from alcohol.

So, holidays and birthdays and get-togethers just went into the black hole. Vacations and dinners and parties went in too. A bunch of stuff I could definitely have enjoyed sober became the sideshow to my drinking.

What I could have used a lot earlier in my life was someone putting Marcus Aurelius’ words in my heart. If I could have compelled myself to just start being better, I’d have started sobriety with fewer regrets and resentments. The insidious thing about alcoholism is that alcoholics will deny to no end their alcoholism. I was the first person to know I had a problem and the last to acknowledge it. If I had to do over, I’d have started sooner. Dear Reader, don’t put off the joy that is waiting for you in beginning and continuing your sobriety.