My day starts around 5:30 when my 3-year old wakes up, runs downstairs and jumps on my head, asking me if it’s TV day in a loud, whiny, tired, hungry voice. After that it’s non-stop until about 10:30pm when I’m finally allowed to be unconscious for a few hours. The point is that I completely spaced it was 10 years last week. Guess what I did to celebrate 10 years?
Nothing.
I didn’t dress up and go to a meeting to collect a chip, eagerly anticipating my moment of glory as everybody clapped for me while I proudly walked up the isle. I didn’t have a party with all of my friends and family to recognize the occasion.
Why?
Because it’s not an occasion. It’s not anything. Sobriety isn’t an accomplishment. We don’t need trophies because we finally grew up, took some responsibility, did some work and stopped acting like a garbage disposal. We don’t need to announce anything.
We need less announcing. More doing.
The idea is to forget all about our sobriety date because we are busy living life, as opposed to sitting around, holding on by a thread, waiting to collect a sobriety chip. If we simply put one foot in front of the other and continuously take right, productive action, sooner or later we forget we were ever an addict to begin with and simply rejoin normal life where people get up, go to work, have a family, pursue some dream, whatever.
P.S. By the way, I know so many people on psychotropics who were not mentally ill and let me tell you, now they are mentally ill! Psychotropics are poisonous. The effect on both brain and body is toxic, not to mention the fact that you are rewiring something that shouldn’t be rewired. You can only play God so much before the shit hits the fan and some poor guinea pig goes apoplectic, has a psychotic break and brings on some death just to relieve himself.
Hey, if you want to experiment on your brain, fine, knock yourself out, but what do you say we leave the kids out of it? Is it really necessary to medicate our children to the point of catatonia because they don’t want to stare at a chalkboard and be dumbed down and de-individualized all day long by some overpaid, robotic collectivist at his or her local government school.
Give the kid a fucking paintbrush, a guitar, or a soccer ball instead, Jeez. ADD is a social disease (like so many others). Most of the R&D is funded by pharmaceutical companies and/or government grants, which should tell you all you need to know. They get the results they need. They get the results they are looking for.
Well maybe you don't deserve a chip, but I'm still going to say good job, Charlie. Sounds to me like you're being a parent, which is a lot more than a lot of addicts could say. Reading your first paragraph gave me a real pang, since my addict partner is not a parent to his own children and would cuss a blue streak a mile long if any of them woke him up at 5:30 in the morning. Your kids are lucky to have a dad who is a decent human being. I'm glad for them.
I wish I found you before my husband died of his addictions to alcohol and crack and all the other crap. He died alone and I lost my best friend because of his love of drugs over me and our kids. He was a good man once. Thank you for what you do.
Well thank you, I so appreciate that. I used to be a monster in the morning, especially if woken prematurely, and to this day I am appalled by my lack of control and overall condition of depravity. Thank you for reading.
So sorry to hear. It is entirely my pleasure to do this and I'm grateful to you for reading and sharing here so honestly. God bless you and the kids.