The biggest thing I remember feeling during my first week sober was desperate. I wasn’t hopeful or excited about my new life, and I definitely wasn’t sitting there thinking about how great sobriety was going to be. I was desperate.
For the last several months of my drinking, I had been trying to quit almost every day. I would tell myself I wasn’t going to drink, and then I would drink. The next day I would tell myself the same thing, and I would fail again. I knew I needed to stop, and I wanted to stop, but wanting to stop and actually being able to stay stopped were two completely different things.
My thinking had gotten really dark during those months. I regularly thought about ending it all. I couldn’t figure out how to keep living the way I was living, but I also couldn’t figure out how to stop drinking. By the time I finally got sober on February 8, 1999, I had run out of answers. I was done.
Looking back, I call that the Gift of Desperation. The gift wasn’t the months of misery. The gift was what that desperation finally made me willing to do. It gave me the ability to Act Differently Than I Felt.
Before I Got Sober, I Was Out of Answers
I was 20 years old. The day before I got sober, I came home from college after basically failing out of the same school for the second time. I came home with my tail tucked between my legs. On Monday morning, February 8, 1999, I woke up in my childhood bedroom at my parents’ house feeling like an utter failure.
Physically, I felt terrible. I was shaking, a little sweaty, and had trouble focusing. I also remember seeing this strange blue outline around everything. I had done a lot of acid toward the end of my drinking, and I’ve always wondered whether that had something to do with it. I don’t know.
But there was also some relief. The lies were finally out. I didn’t have to remember what I had told one person versus somebody else or keep trying to convince everyone that things weren’t as bad as they really were. Everybody knew I had screwed up.
My surrender had really happened before I woke up that Monday morning. I had gotten to the point where I couldn’t envision my life with alcohol or without it. I had tried quitting. I had tried controlling it. I had been to rehab and around AA. I had convinced myself that drugs were really my problem and that someday I’d be able to drink like everybody else.
None of it worked. I never really had a problem stopping drinking. I had a problem staying stopped. I’ve written more about that cycle in I Drank Until I Had To Stop. I Stopped Until I Had To Drink.
Eventually I had to admit that I couldn’t figure out how to stay sober on my own. I was done fighting, done deciding what I needed to do, and done trying to run everything myself.
I knew February 8 was Day 1, but I had no idea it would become the sobriety date I still have today. That came later. As I stayed sober, February 8 became the date of my last drink. Even today, I don’t say I’ll never drink again. Yesterday is a fact. Tomorrow is something I still have to experience, and I have to take the actions that protect my sobriety when tomorrow gets here.
That First Week, I Did Things I Didn’t Feel Like Doing
Being done didn’t mean I suddenly felt comfortable getting sober. I didn’t stop feeling ashamed, walk into AA feeling like I belonged there, or suddenly know everything was going to work out. I just became willing to do things even when I didn’t feel like doing them.
AA wasn’t new to me. I had been to meetings before and knew some of the people. The difference was that this time I was actually there to get sober. I was 20, and most of the people in those rooms were much older than I was. I felt ashamed, different, and out of place, but I also knew I had tried everything else.
One of the most humbling things I had to do was pick up another white chip. These people knew me, and I thought they were going to judge me. They didn’t. They welcomed me back and told me to keep coming back. I don’t remember giving some big speech or having some profound conversation afterward. A lot of those first few weeks are fuzzy. What I remember is being ashamed and scared and doing it anyway.
I also remember thinking that getting sober meant I’d never have fun again. That was a big one for me. I was 20 years old, and I thought life was all about having fun. My idea of fun was wrapped up in drinking, drugs, college, my friends, and that whole lifestyle.
Now I’m sitting in AA meetings with people much older than me, admitting I’m an alcoholic and hearing that I need to stay away from the people I’ve been drinking with. In my mind, getting sober sounded like the end of having fun. That fear of missing out followed me into sobriety, and I talk more about it in FOMO in Sobriety: What Am I Really Missing Out On?
During that first week, I completely stayed away from all of my old friends who drank the way I did. I didn’t do that because it felt good. I did it because I was desperate enough to do something different.
That’s what I mean by Act Differently Than I Felt.
I had spent most of my time trying not to feel uncomfortable, and that almost killed me. Getting sober meant I was going to feel uncomfortable. I was going to have to do things I didn’t want to do. The difference this time was that I was desperate enough to do them anyway.
I Finally Let Somebody Else Show Me What to Do
I had been around AA before, but I still thought I could do it my way. I thought I was a drug addict and that if I could just stop doing drugs, eventually I could drink like everybody else. What I eventually figured out was that I was an alcoholic who used a lot of drugs to manage my drinking.
Before this, I had gone to some meetings, but I didn’t get a sponsor, work the Steps, or separate myself from the people and places connected to my drinking. This time was different. I jumped in to everything. My life depended on it.
Meetings gave me good general information about staying sober, but I needed somebody to show me what to actually do. I got a sponsor during my first week. He was around 30, had about 10 years sober, and had gotten sober around my age. He was married, he worked, he seemed happy, and most importantly, he talked the way I felt.
That was comforting to me. Here was somebody who seemed to understand how my head worked because his head had worked that way too. I asked him to be my sponsor, and he said yes. That’s it. It’s that simple.
We started working the Steps, and I called him several times a week. I clung to him. Basically, Please help me. Looking back, he may have been the first person I really trusted, including my parents. That wasn’t because my parents hadn’t tried to help me. Nobody really knew what I was thinking because I didn’t tell them. With my sponsor, I started telling somebody.
Having someone else drive that boat was a relief. I was out of answers, and for once I didn’t have to be the one deciding what I needed to do next. That relationship became an important part of my recovery, and I explain more about what sponsorship has meant to me in The Role of a Sponsor: From Newcomer Survival to Lifelong Growth.
My parents were there too. They didn’t trust me, and they had every reason not to. They wanted to know where I was. My dad even got me a cell phone, back when everybody didn’t carry one, so I could keep in touch. They watched me closely, but they didn’t beat me up about what had happened every day. Looking back, I know they were doing it because they cared.
My world was pretty small that week. I went to an AA meeting every day. I had an appointment with a psychiatrist, who recommended a licensed substance-abuse counselor. A couple of nights I went to dinner after a meeting. People from AA called me. Other than that, I was mostly at home, and I stayed completely away from my old drinking crowd.
I didn’t need to rebuild my entire life that week. I needed to stay sober.
Looking Back at My First Week Sober
Some of the physical stuff lasted longer than the first week. I shook for weeks and remember sitting in meetings unable to hold a coffee cup with one hand. I think it was about a month before I remember feeling physically good again. The mental fog is harder for me to put a timeline on.
That’s why I wouldn’t tell somebody they’ll feel normal in exactly seven days or 30 days. My experience was my experience. It could be a week or it could be a month before you start feeling physically better. There’s no telling how long it’ll take for the fog to lift.
What I can tell you is what I did. I kept going to meetings, listened and took direction from my sponsor, and worked the Steps. I kept doing the things that had been suggested to me.
When I first got sober, I thought drinking was my problem. What I found out is that drinking was my solution to the pain of living life. And that pain was all of my own making. I didn’t understand that during my first week, and I didn’t need to. I needed to stay sober long enough to start finding out.
My first week sober didn’t feel good, and I had no idea what my sober life was going to look like. What changed was that I finally became willing to act differently before I felt differently.
That was the Gift of Desperation for me.
If you’re a few days sober and you’re ashamed, uncomfortable, scared, or sitting in a meeting wondering what the hell you’re doing there, I can only tell you what worked for me. No matter what you feel like, get your ass up and go to a meeting.
You’ve spent most of your time trying not to feel uncomfortable, and that almost killed you. You’re going to feel uncomfortable. You’re going to have to do things you don’t want to do. Do them anyway.
I didn’t know where any of this was going when I woke up in my childhood bedroom on February 8, 1999. I just knew where doing it my way had gotten me.
I was done.
Related Video
In this video, I share more of my story about getting sober at 20, including what finally brought me to the point of surrender, coming home after failing out of college, and what I did during those first weeks of sobriety.
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