+++
UNCENSORED VERSION
[Rumble][Transcript Below]
I might get some hate mail about this, but look, if you’re someone that got sobriety right out the gate with no slips, I’m telling you, that happened with luck and grace. And clearly, I have some energy about this because I’m one of these people. I’m one of those people for whom it took a while to get sober. I had a long stretch of sober time, and then I had to reset it. Yeah, I just get going on this. Forgive the…
I was brought up in AA for most of my recovery. If you’re familiar with AA, and if you were one of the lucky ones who only has one sober date, you basically got sober right off the bat and didn’t have to experience slipping and relapsing. I say congratulations to you. However, this particular video you’re going to have a disconnect with because for the rest of us, which is most of us, we’ve had a slip or two or years of slips before we finally got the hang of this thing. So, this video is for those people. And I’m one of them. This video is for those people, and I’m one of them.
It took me three and a half years. Actually, I was trying to get sober at the age of 25. I didn’t find AA for a couple of years after that. And it took me three and a half years in AA, throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, at it: therapy, meditation, acupuncture, AA, everything I could find—good sponsorship, the whole thing. It took me three and a half years of falling on my face every two weeks, every month, and getting a couple of months before I finally got a long stretch of sobriety. And if you’re like me, especially if you were in the rooms of AA, you had to re-raise your hand: “I’m a newcomer. I have 30 days again.” And you’re actually treated like an infant. It’s degrading. There’s this shame and guilt that the culture of AA doesn’t talk about much.
The point of this isn’t to say that sobriety dates don’t matter. They do. They’re important. What’s also important is if you’ve had some time—one year, nine months, nine years—and you have a slip, I don’t believe (this is my personal opinion) you should be treated like you don’t know anything. And I don’t think you should carry yourself like that. It’s that very treatment people receive that keeps them out. They’re afraid to come back in because it’s super embarrassing the way we get treated. Not all communities are the same. I’ve been in AA communities where it wasn’t… I’ve been in AA communities where it was fire and brimstone, sit down and shut up, and if you had a slip, they just berated you and treated you like… It’s just not a good feeling.
I’ve been in AA communities where you slip and there’s compassion, where you’re taken care of. You’re not treated like you’re an idiot. So, I believe in beginner’s mind and being humble. If you have a slip and need to recalibrate, it’s always beneficial to come into any experience with beginner’s mind, slip or not. Instead of diminishing someone’s progress after a relapse, I believe that sobriety should be seen as any long-term effort, whether it’s education, career, or personal growth. The bottom line is that setbacks don’t erase the progress you’ve made. Relapsing isn’t starting from scratch; it’s starting from experience.
But the sobriety date, the focus on continuous, uninterrupted sobriety without any slips, that’s perfection. So what I’m saying here is, if you believe in progress, not perfection, then you would favor the idea that accumulated sobriety should also be a thing we focus on. What would this look like in a real day-to-day conversation?
Let’s say someone comes up to me—this is hypothetical—and they ask me, “How long have you been sober?” If you’re in recovery, that’s the number one question you’ll hear throughout the years. “How long have you been sober? When’s your sobriety date?” That’s why this is important for me to talk about because it’s a single point of focus in a conversation when meeting someone and talking about recovery. This always comes up. If someone asks me about my sober time, I confidently share with them my accumulated sobriety and give them my last sober date. Here’s an example of what this might sound like: “I’ve been in recovery for 20 years. I have about 16 years of sobriety built up, and my last sobriety date was two years ago.” That’s actually a more accurate reflection.
I think people should be proud of their accumulated—this is my main point—you should be proud of your accumulated sobriety, to the point where you should have no problem sharing that piece of information along with your last sober date. Wear them both like a well-tailored suit. You should be proud of both. If you’re someone who had to reset your sobriety date recently or a couple of years ago after 20 years of sober time, there’s no reason to carry guilt and shame. It’s just my personal belief that bringing accumulated sobriety into the conversation, along with your sobriety date, can save lives. I’ve experienced it myself.
The guilt and shame of coming back in and being treated a certain way prolonged my return. I know people who never come back in. I’ve talked to people who just say, “I don’t want to face that.” How sad is that? Someone wants to recover and they know where to go, but they don’t do it because they don’t want to face the guilt and shame from the community. There’s just something fundamentally wrong there, and I believe we can correct this.
Look, clearly I have some energy about this because I’m one of these people. It took me a while to get sober. I had a long stretch of sober time, and I had to reset it. I had to go through what it feels like to come back into the rooms and have everyone treat you like an idiot, like an infant, as if you don’t know anything. That’s the other thing—I want to talk about luck.
I want to talk about how luck plays into this whole thing. No one should take credit for luck and grace, by the way. I might get some hate mail about this, but look, if you’re someone who got sobriety right out of the gate with no slips, I’m telling you, that happened with luck and grace. Take credit for all the hard work—anyone in recovery should take credit for all the hard work they put into this—but if you don’t think luck and grace are involved in recovery, I would suggest doing some inventory on your humility. And maybe you do have humility about it.
So, yeah, on this topic of luck and grace—it acknowledges the effort we put into the work, but it doesn’t claim ownership over the outcome. Relapsing isn’t starting from scratch; it’s starting from experience.
