I Didn’t Get Sober Just to Write about Recovery

Our lives—and all the beauty in them—demand that we get and stay sober.

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Wanna know why I got sober?

Because I was arrested and I had to. I stood to lose everything. I had already lost a lot of my what my life used to be. In late 2010, as soon as my wife had left our home in Williston, N.D. to visit my parents in Florida with our two boys, I was drunk, non-stop, from within an hour when she left the house to catch a plane in Minot all the way to when she returned.

I was supposed to have led worship on Christmas Eve. I couldn’t. Too drunk and doped up on benzos.

Soon after that, I was arrested for felony trespass while in a blackout. I had a DUI two from a month earlier.

I got sober, because I HAD to.

I had a judge and a probation officer in Williston who cared about me (and demanded justice and reparations for the harm I had done.) I had a wife and two young boys who loved me, but needed a husband, and a father. I had peers and counselors and doctors and professionals who knew the fuck what they were talking about—that addiction is an illness that can kill you. It’s real. But it’s also manageable if you work to rewire your brain. That’s what the Twelve Steps do, from a medical standpoint.

I’m thankful that I got better. There are many who don’t. I continue to work a program of recovery and I cherish my friendships I’ve made with fellow travelers along the path.

But y’know what?

As much as recovery has done for me as a person, I didn’t only get into recovery to live, eat, breathe, and poop recovery, every day, all day.

I didn’t get sober to be a professional sober person who sells treatment. I see a lot of it out there, and I won’t judge anyone for doing it; it’s just not me.

It’s the REAL reason for recovery.

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Photo courtesy of Daniel Maurer

This originally appeared on Daniel’s site, Transformation is Real.