Emergencies in recovery happen. Imagine that it is the coldest night of the year thus far. You just got your car out of the shop, everything is looking good, and in top order. You spend some time with friends late into the evening. It’s about 3 a.m. and you’re driving in a bad cell area. Suddenly, your car stalls—everything goes out—and you can’t start it again. Now what?
Emergencies in Recovery: Then and Now
Before we get clean and sober, life itself is an emergency. Everything we know is a matter of immediate survival and demands our attention RFN. A broken shoelace is an excuse to give up on hopes, dreams, and life itself—as ridiculous as it sounds.
When we get clean and sober, though, that isn’t the case. We have less drama almost immediately after we put the drink and drugs down. There are no big deals when we get sober. There are no big deals because we remember what it was like, and it is something that we do not wish to return to.
We choose not to return to it because we now know the meaning of serenity; it is the calm amidst the storm.
The car situation described above happened last night. Despite being tired, despite being cold, despite having to wait over an hour in the dead of night; it was actually was not bad. In some strange way, it was actually enjoyable to have the peace and quiet on a lonely unlit road.
Sure, I’d rather not have dealt with it. However, the peace and quite was almost relaxing—if it wasn’t for the fact that I had a broken car that was supposedly working in fine order up until a couple of days earlier. It wasn’t a total disaster and moment of panic. Just hunker down, be safe, and zip up the sweatshirt.
That’s what emergencies in addiction recovery and recovery itself like. We have bad stuff happen when we get sober, but it isn’t the end of the world. We don’t have to get overwhelmed about how chaotic and unmanageable our lives are because we have done our inventories—we aren’t freaking out over something that does not warrant freaking out. The big stuff isn’t big stuff anymore because we have taken the power out of it and kept the wound from festering. Instead, we can enjoy the moment—any moment—for what it truly is: a blessing in disguise.