Stage 1 Recovery: Sobriety First - Arresting the Addiction

Excerpted from
Destination Joy; Moving Beyond Fear, Loss and Trauma in Recovery
By Earnie Larsen

Achieving sobriety is always the first step for any recovering addict. This is Stage I Recovery. For an addict, it is always sobriety first. For an addict, every good thing in life begins with sobriety.

I struggled with how to write this chapter. The difficulty was not having too little to say, but rather too much. The subject of this chapter, as with all the others, is so rich, so deep, and so mysterious that its reality played out in the real world overwhelms any words used to express or describe it. Simply put, Stage I Recovery is arresting the addiction. The miracle of arresting an addiction is obvious to anyone who looks into the face of a person suffering an active addiction. Stage I Recovery is not an enemy of Stage II Recovery, but rather its foundation.

The Mystery and the Miracle

How could we who have experienced separation from our addiction be anything but overwhelmed by the mystery and magnitude of the power of addiction and the equal miracle of recovery? The longer we are around recovery, if we keep our heads in the game, the more astounding it becomes. What words could adequately express the miracle of watching someone poisoned by lethal addiction turn his or her life around and begin a new life based on gratitude and service? What words are powerful enough to illuminate the miracle of a life eaten by guilt, shame, and hopeless addiction that then reverses itself and begins, step-by-step, to build a cathedral where once only devastation existed? What words are bright enough to paint the picture of a woman so lost to alcoholism that she lost her children and scarcely knew they were gone? But then, the miracle happened. That miracle was Stage I Recovery. Now, thirty-seven years later, all seven of her children show up for her medallion night with nothing but love and admiration in their hearts.

Sobriety First

I simply have no words to express the importance and wonder of "sobriety first." The importance of Stage II Recovery, dealing with life after sobriety, in no way diminishes the crucial necessity of achieving sobriety-Stage I Recovery. The critical importance and miracle of first arresting the addiction is obvious to anyone who understands how powerful, cunning, and baffling alcoholism truly is. Consider Sue's story. Sue is a recovering alcoholic but claims her deeper addiction is gambling. She also is addicted to new, hot relationships. Even though she is currently in a satisfying long-term relationship, the lure to stray, to find "the hot sauce," as she names it, is always a pull. She got up at her meeting saying our tried-and-true line: "We are only as sick as our secrets." She had a secret she needed to share no matter how much guilt and shame she felt.

About a month ago, she heard about a contest on the radio. It was a game of chance, a drawing. Her engines began to fire. Sue had tried every kind of drug there was, but what tasted the sweetest to her was a full-blown adrenaline rush. Sue loved the buzz. She loved the jolt. She loved the rockets going off in her head when she was on the edge.

Sue knew she had what she called her "crazy uncle chained up in her basement." He could be quiet for a while, but sooner or later he always went kind of psycho and tried to break out. She knew she could not be around any activity that required chance or skill to win. There was no winning for her in these events. There was only loss. There was only the crazy part of her trying to break free and jump off some cliff. She knew all that, but she went ahead anyway. She failed to do the next right thing. Her engines were on a low rumble.

Sue told us she didn't call her sponsor, she didn't get to a meeting, and she didn't do the prayer and meditation of an Eleventh Step. She willingly let her addiction lead her into the terrible darkness. Besides the seductive lure of winning a contest, she said the voice of the announcer sounded "yummy." That sensation also was a red flag screaming at her to do the next right thing-which, again, she didn't.

Sure enough, she justified why she was going to call the radio station: "Not that I was going to get involved, of course, but just to see who the announcer was and how the contest was going to be run." Now on the other side of this dangerous near miss, Sue hung her head as she talked to us. The announcer "just happened to be available," and wouldn't you know, he seemed to like her voice as much as she liked his. Her engine was open full throttle now. They established a place to meet where they could "discuss the contest." She then explained, "It wasn't the contest we were going after. We both knew it. He didn't care. But somehow I did."

And so, with all the adrenaline and pizzazz of her dual addiction stoking the fire, Sue said she had one last moment of sanity before she slipped down the well and lost all that she had worked so hard to build. Her engines were redlining at this point, but she said that something even more powerful, for whatever reason, was also pounding the path of her soul. In her last sane moment, something of grace came to her, and she reached out to it. Whether it was God or not, she wasn't sure. She explained that "something almighty, good, and bright was keeping me afloat. I ran like a crazy person to my sponsor, who met me before the meeting I had been skipping, and it saved my ass." Sue dodged a bullet. There are only so many times a person can successfully do that. She recognized that "my addiction is as sneaky as it is patient. It is perverse and lives an inch beneath my skin. I need to always keep an eye on it or I'm gone."

Can you relate to Sue's "sneaky, patient, and perverse" addiction, which is living "an inch beneath the skin"? You know the stories. If you are now in recovery, you know the ugliness, tragedy, and sadness of an active addiction. Therefore, you also know the supreme necessity and glory of sobriety won. It simply is not possible to overestimate the importance of sobriety.