Recently, due to work, a renovation project and the fact that I am a part of a family, who enjoys seeing us, Nina and I have not made it to many Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. For both of us, A. A. has been a centerpiece to our recovery. We both found A.A. when we needed it most, and have stayed involved with the program as a part of our long-term recovery. Making meetings at least three times a week is something that I just do. It is like breathing. I don’t think about it. It is a part of my weekly schedule. However, prior to the renovation project, the meetings, and my recovery in general, had gotten stale. YES. For a meeting addict like me, it is difficult to admit, but stale is the best word to describe it.
I have been in recovery for more than eight and a half years. While it took me a while to get from chemical free to sober, I have never taken a tour through active addiction again for sh*ts and giggles. Once I sought treatment and found A.A., I found the resources I needed to stay sober and live life fully. True, as Nina wrote, sometimes sobriety is boring. However, I have never thought of taking a break from meetings to shake things up. For me, deciding to quit meetings is the same as hopping on the expressway to Relapse Town. Still, sobriety and life can be a little boring.
Not Feeling the Fresh
Just think of all the things we were taught as kids that made being an adult seem exciting. So far, I have never had to stop, drop and roll (even for a TikTok video). Along that line of thought, I have never needed the skills I learned to escape quicksand or survive a bear attack. I have never had a person try to give me free drugs. (I have no idea why I was warned that might happen, but I was assured it would.) All the cool things that I thought might be a part of adulthood just weren’t. Similarly, there are some seriously uncool things.
The fact that a person can work really hard and never make enough money to take a year to travel the world is the top on my list of adult disappointments. That even beats out having no bedtime. I found out that staying up late sucks as an adult. Normally, I’m up late because of work, and then I still have to get up early to go to work. Also, why do all the things that tasted good as a kid make you fat as an adult? I couldn’t gain weight in my teens when I wanted to play sports. Now, if I look a doughnut too long, I add four pounds. Obviously, drinking my way through the first half of my adult life certainly did not help anything, but occasionally I see why normies might want to drown their sorrows. Life gets routine and the routine gets stale.
Normally, when things get stale, it’s time to throw open the windows and let some breeze come in. When that happens with my everyday life, it is time to go to the beach, a concert, or visit a destination on my bucket list. I need something completely different for a few days. Then, I’m ready to get back to the day-to-day. In most ways, the same is true for my recovery.
When I stop feeling joy and excitement about the miracle of being sober, I need to make a few changes. Don’t misunderstand, life can’t be all Las Vegas casino lights and sounds. That will drive me mad. But, I don’t need to colorless life of the main character at the beginning of Joe Versus the Volcano, either. I need balance. The way I find that balance varies, but I do seem to follow certain trends.
Catch the Warning Signs Before Recovery Gets Stale
When my recovery starts getting stale, I point the first finger directly at me. Often, it’s my attitude that is dampening an otherwise bright, sunny day. The first thing I do is take stock of what I have been doing BEFORE things got stale. If I have learned nothing else, my actions and emotions led to cravings in early and lead to a feeling of restlessness in long-term recovery. The feeling that things are stale didn’t just arrive out of the blue. There were little, seemingly minor, events that brought on the feeling that something has to change.
Since I have been in recovery, I have certain rituals I incorporate daily. First thing in the morning with my cup of coffee in hand, I read something recovery related and think about how I can apply it to the day ahead. I remind myself that today will be a great day to be sober. Then, I think of three things I am grateful to have in my life, and I get ready for my day. Normally, I chat through text with a couple of other people in recovery throughout the day. I remember to take a breath before I respond to any situation so that I don’t burst out with raw emotion. I also look for ways I can be helpful to others. At the end of the day, I take stock of how my day went and look for areas I made mistakes or ways I can improve.
This routine may seem like a lot to think about and do in a day, but after years of practice, it is almost second nature. ALMOST is the most important word in the previous sentence. Generally, when my recovery starts to get stale, I have stopped following my routine. There are a million excuses, but the truth is that I get lazy. I think that I am doing well enough so what is the big deal. I thought the same thing about my yard.
Forgetting to Maintain What Got Me Here
I was basically keeping the grass mowed, and I would get to the hedges, eventually. After 8 years of “eventually,” the hedges are trees and I have turned a weeklong project into what will be months of hard labor. In a similar sense, when I get lazy with my daily routine, my tolerance dies back and my selfishness grows. I begin to see a world that should operate exactly to fit my needs instead of remembering that I am just a part of a larger world. Once those thoughts creep in, meetings, my morning routine, my daily life are mundane, boring, and a waste of time. If I have let my routine slip, it is time to get back on track.
The cure is simpler than what it will take for the hedges. I just return to the habits that make living life easier for me. If a return to the normal is not enough, I need to spend a little extra time talking things over with another alcoholic. This is never a bad thing. Expressing what bothers me helps me get it out of my head. Keeping things bottled up could lead me to open a different bottle. Occasionally, I force my attention to only things that occur today. I don’t worry about the week ahead or any problem that needs to be fixed tomorrow. I go back to the basics, and like magic, the stale feeling has disappeared.
About 85 percent of the time, I can guarantee, that I am the problem. I am the person who forgot to close the Cheetos bag of recovery properly, and I have turned my recovery into cheese coated packing material. Still, I’m not always the reason my recovery is stale.
Stale Recovery is Not Always an Inside Problem
In the small town where I live, there are not a lot of people making meetings. Prior to Covid shutdowns, going to local meetings kept things fresh. There were always new faces, funny stories and new perspectives on old recovery topics. Meetings became a place to renew and rejuvenate my recovery. Most of my friends were at meetings, and they are the one place where I can talk to people who understand me.
When Covid coursed through our area, people stopped coming to meetings for fear of getting sick. I was a part of a core group who kept the socially distanced doors open in the hopes that fewer alcoholics and addicts would die in isolation. While the shutdowns ended, the lack of attendance at meetings has not. I would like to say that four or five meeting diehards could find creative ways to talk about recovery, but at some point, we were all reciting the same stories. As anyone knows that equals stale.
Have you ever talked to someone you knew it high school and ALL they want to talk about was your time together in high school? I am always like, “Dude, that was 30 years ago. Move on.” That’s the kind of stale meetings can become with only a small number of members and no visitors or prospective members.
The Cure for Meeting Blahs
In the past, when I felt like I needed to brighten up meetings, I have searched the internet and drove to neighboring towns to visit other meetings. More than once, I have made a weekend out of driving from meeting-to-meeting. I just pick a direction and see how many meetings I can make before I have to turn back toward home. It has always been a blast and I have met some awesome people that way. Most of all, like a vacation, I felt refreshed and ready to return to the routine. Since the Covid shutdowns, I have a harder time finding out of town meetings.
When Nina and I have traveled, we have found that some meetings have gone virtual. Others changed meeting sites without updating the web. Then, there are some that we assume have evaporated into thin air. We show up and the meeting doesn’t. That has made a weekend meeting-trip run seem like a waste of time and gas.
I do realize that there are more meetings online than ever before. I have friends who attend virtual meetings in other countries. Perhaps that may be the refreshment my recovery needs, but I can’t pull the trigger, yet. Every non-A.A. virtual meeting I have ever attended has been a glitch-filled affair. These meetings include several people interrupting to say, “I can’t hear anything,” only to seconds later notify everyone that they found their volume button and can now hear. With the stale feeling already hanging over me, adding frustration would be like upping the humidity on a South Georgia summer day. Unappreciated.
With those things in mind, I kept a fairly normal meeting schedule and kept watching my sobriety grow staler each week. I could feel my enthusiasm slipping away. Work kept me from attempting an out of town trip, and our normally stable internet as become as spotty as a Dalmatian so zooming into a meeting seemed a lost cause. All signs were pointing to a point that something would have to give. In this case, our bedroom floor gave and a home renovation took over.
A Refreshing Break From Stale Recovery?
It was not an instant cure from my restlessness—not at all. What started as a simple project became a large necessary blessing. The project turned our world upside down. My meeting schedule went out the window because the crew working on our house often had questions that needed timely answers well after meetings started. When I wasn’t needed, I was busily working in the yard to get the hedges cut down or dug out of the ground. Most of the work was necessary to make room for a growing project, but I’m an alcoholic so I do get carried away. I decided to take on 8 years of “eventually” hedges. The end result is that I began missing even more meetings. My three days a week turned to one and then none. I went to meetings when I could but there was nothing regular about my attendance.
The occasional attendance meant that each meeting had to count. I had to stay focused on the topic and listen intently to each share so I could find something that could keep me going for another week. The stale crowd at the meetings became a refreshing reprieve from a world that doesn’t understand alcoholism. I thought that the solution this time was to take a break from meetings. Make no mistake; I didn’t chuck the whole thing. I still talked to people in recovery, daily. (I know what you are thinking; I was talking only to my wife. While Nina does keep me straight, there is only so much she can do. It takes a village for this alcoholic.) In a way, curing my stale recovery with a break made perfect sense. It reminded me of my early sobriety.
During my first five months of recovery, I generally made two meetings a day five days a week. When I found a job, I began to make meetings less often, but I made more out of the time I was there. I didn’t skip meetings because I got lazy. I needed to be at work, and I kept my recovery at the front of my priorities. In this case, I needed to take care of things at home. I wasn’t “resting on my laurels.” Instead, I continued to build my life in sobriety and that took me away from meetings for a bit.
A Refreshing New Perspective
On Monday, fully assured I had found the way to refresh my sobriety in the future, Nina and I went to a meeting. Instead of three or four diehards, three times that amount showed up at the meeting. People who had been missing have begun to return and newcomers filtered back in. Monday night seemed like the nights I remembered pre-covid. I waited to “be filled” with the joys of sobriety. Unfortunately, no one told the chair that the meeting wasn’t about me. The topic was not something I would have chosen, and I didn’t feel like I could “drop any knowledge” to anyone.
Kind of bummed, I hit the porch as soon as the meeting closed. Then, I spent an extra hour talking to a newcomer who is struggling to stay sober. Whether I helped him or not, it reminded me of where I was 8 years ago. Seeing the same faces every week and getting to know people who had long-term recovery meant the world to me then. I realized that the stale smell hanging over my recovery was once again my stinking thinking.
At this point in sobriety, meetings don’t have to be about me or what I get from them. If I ever was that important, the last month and a half proved that I am not now. Meetings kept going without me. (Yeah, I was surprised, too!) Meetings should be about people who are struggling, and how I can help them. That is exactly why others kept showing up when I was struggling.
It may be nice to go to meetings out of town and meet new people. However, making sure that the doors are open to help a lost person find a safe place to talk about their alcoholism has to be my priority. And, if it costs me a few nights of hearing (and saying) the same stories, so be it. Those stories need to be retold so the people who haven’t heard them can find what I found. At one time, those same stories provided the hope that saved my life.
