sobriety vs. recovery

I have been thinking lately about the differences between sobriety and recovery. What is the difference? Well first, I don’t believe those terms only apply to abstaining from alcohol. They can apply to anything we are trying to get a handle on in our lives: drugs, pills, sex, food, etc.

That being said. It seems to me that "sobriety" is sort of like using the brute force of one’s will and willpower to refrain from doing whatever we are "not supposed to" be doing anymore. We still wish we could do or have whatever that is, and daily resent that it is a hassle or a sacrifice to have to refrain from whatever our personal thing is that we are avoiding (and hope that someday we can have it or do it again).

By contrast, "recovery" seems more like a journey where one has changed their mind about whatever substance, item, activity or behavior they are attempting to remove from their life. Gratitude replaces the resentment… accountability replaces  "willpower." It is more a life long journey toward recovery and less of a period of time that we can’t wait until it is over before we can have a chance at enjoying what we had to abstain from. Those are just my thoughts on it.

It seems to be that a crucial part of that difference between sobriety and recovery is the accountability piece. For all of us who falter on our journey – we may not believe that we need support or accountability. We may have weeks, months or years of success and think we have finally it conquered (Don’t we all?). But, relapse is a part of the change cycle. And relapse doesn’t necessarily have to mean failure… it can hopefully be a signal that adjustments need to be made in the plan (hence my continued attempts to reinvent my own resurrection). I once heard that failure is not falling down, but staying down.

I have learned the hard way that it isn’t wise to think we ever completely "have it licked" on our own. I think the hope is that we can get better at the recovery and have longer periods in between lapses and put safeguards in place to help us if we believe we are about to slip. No one is "bullet proof." No one can really say  "I’ll never do THAT (again)."  All we can do is walk our walk and do our own work and set in place some safe guards to help us when we feel we are about to go somewhere or do something that will set us (way) back.

So, why is it that so many of us have to learn the hard way? I don’t know. I know that it is certainly been true of me! I would like to believe that occasionally we (I) can learn from what we (I) see… without all the scars of having to do it the hard way.

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Dying to fit (break) the mold

Recently I was watching an episode of Drop Dead Diva and it reminded me of some situations I faced during my first round of reinventing myself. On that particular episode the lawyer was hired to sue the lady who created a diet program with foods and drug supplements guaranteed to help people lose weight.
The plaintiff was a young teen girl who wanted to be as thin and popular as her friends. Well, actually it was the young girl's Mom who was suing the diet program creator. Things were going the way of the defendant -- until near the end -- when the lawyer for the plaintiff uncovered the truth. The woman who created her diet program had not lost weight and maintained her thinness by using her own diet products, she had done so by having gastric bypass surgery. The young lady was disenchanted! (And thankfully not so mad at her Mom anymore.)
This reminded me of something I had gone through as a teenage girl. I was realizing that my size 12 was just not making the grade when all my friends were a size 8. I was a very active teen. P.E. every day, varsity sports, swimming, bike riding -- definitely not the average sedentary social-networking teens of this generation.
Someone recommended a book to me. I read it, digested it and swallowed it... hook -- line -- and sinker. I worked so hard to become that magical "size 8" (that I was not naturally designed to maintain). I didn't know how to diet, let alone eat. So I didn't eat (more than 300 calories a day for over a year). I achieved my goal of being a size 8. Maintained it for about 18 months. Then, unplanned life events took over my life plans and I ended up a fair amount larger than the size 12 that I started at. I felt so bad about myself. I felt I had failed. Failed myself, and failed the program that I had learned from that book. So I boxed up and packed away that book as well as all my size 8 clothes.
About 15 years later I was reinventing my resurrecting for the 3rd time around (as far as weight loss and fitness) when I ran across a book by the same author of that original weight loss program I adhered so strictly to as an impressionable teen. Guess what? She came clean in this 2nd book that the only way she lost that much weight and maintained it for years was she had gastric bypass surgery. I felt cheated! I also felt a little vindicated relieved that it wasn't lack of strength on my part not being able to maintain her program, it was lack of surgery.
Oddly enough, after more than a decade that author had to have the gastric bypass reversed because her body was slowly dying of malnutrition. She was naturally much bigger than the 1st book pictured and paraded her to be, but stated she was exercising and was as fit and the size she was "meant to be."
I so wish that I knew at 17 that her "program" and strict discipline prescriptions were pretty much all a fraud. I would not have castigated myself so harshly and loathed myself so completely... if I had known the truth. Not everyone is born to be a size 8. Not everyone is meant to be super thin and late-night-infomercial uber fit.
Oh, and long after high school I also discovered that one of the teachers I knew and admired when I was a teen (she had somehow lost a large amount of weight), yup... you guessed it -- also had gastric bypass surgery. 
What I am proposing is sort of like the truth in lending disclosures that are required in the business world. I wish every young woman (or young man) had someone to be truthful with them at those crucial points in life when they are reaching desperately for some lifeline to help them in their urgency to reinvent themselves. Or maybe, just maybe, some caring honest person might just be able to share with them that they are more than okay just the way they are... without reinvention.
And still, from where I sit today, I am trying to figure out an authentic, adaptable, and maintainable way to reinvent my own resurrection... the 4th time around.

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