Ha! I couldn’t have made a sillier or more massive mistake! I only purposely rerouted my lifepath based on complete falsity! This weekend will mark 5 long years since I last felt the sting of hangover or the snazzy exhileration of a red-wine buzzzzzzz…. But truly, I screwed up with this sobriety thing!

I think I have mentioned here on this blog, the events that led me to cease habitually drinking alcohol way back when I was only 32. Although I do share extensively my inner feelings and probably too personal information, I have already typed about it enough… right?

I don’t want to waste more of your precious time going over the same ol’ stuff, but there is a Big, and I mean BIG misstep that I’ve made with regards to giving up drinking, and I might as well post it here for the world to laugh and mock at! I mean there are around 20 of you die-hard blog readers here who might get a kick out of it, who knows 🙂

Anyway, I remember that loooong Saturday morning and excruciating afternoon of October 1st 2011. It was my last hangover,  and it seemed like just yesterday.

Waking up late in the morning, maybe like 11:00, I was physically and emotionally drained. I had a few too many drinks, several laughs and  one real good conversation the night before,  but something was wrongly different with me that day. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had just sadly repeated myself again for the umpteenth time. I once again, set out to just have fun with friends and ended up blackout drunk.

It didnt’ help that I was in between jobs at that time. I was claiming to be starting a couple different businesses. I clung to day-dreams while I sat and waited for some magic to happen. I wasn’t moving forward in nearly the ways I wanted to be, and ultimately wasn’t willing to really work for. I felt like a failure as a person, and that Saturday afternoon, wadded up on the couch in a heap, I probably looked like one too…

My twisted and recovering mind was stuck on a looped repeat of how awful of a human being I was. Everything about that day was dark and sick and bloodshot…

Until…

Until a fresh thought surprisingly cut through the thick puke-green fog in my mind.

“God can only use me if I’m Sober”

That sentence threw open the blinds, blasting away the darkness of  my mind, body and soul, washing me in 4 o clock afternoon sunlight. The tone was vibrant and unapologetic. The delivery came without a finger shaking loosely pointed right betwixt my eyes. In fact, there was no judgement toward me at all.  It came across, simply, boldly and matter of fact. It was just perfect wording and a perfect message to make me question if this might be my moment to drop away this crutch I’d used so long…

And…

It must’ve worked.

And…

It had to be divine intervention.

And…

IT WAS A COMPLETE CROCK!! ABSOLUTE RUBBISH!! NOT TRUE AT ALL!!!!!!!!

REALLY!!!

This is the big mistake that I’ve been leading you along to hear. This major flashing signpost in my life, that I used to make a complete U-Turn and quit drinking over, was FICTION!!!

I may have written that sentence here before. You may have seen the silly-ness in it before I did. You may already know what I’m about to explain next, but anyway!

‘God can only use me… If I’m Sober?’

What a joke!

• God needs me to get sober, in order to be somehow allowed to use me? Heck NO!
• Since I hadn’t been sober in a long time, then God had never used me? Heck NO!
• If I got sober, then automatically that would require God to enlist me on some Godly mission? Heck NO!

Ha!

I think the sentiment that God did provide me that day, was that I would be more comfortable and self confident and relaxed with myself, (eventually) if I let go of this drinking habit that had become an ugly Halloween mask, I called my persona. God knew that I would insinuate within this message, that God would use me more for Good, than for Bad, if I was sober instead of inebriated. God sent the message I really needed, just as I needed to hear it, at the exact right moment, just for me…

But it really doesn’t hold water now…

God is always using us. There is no way that we aren’t always part of the bigger choreography of creation. Everything we are doing, or not doing or pretending and procrastinating upon is part of God’s plan. I am sure that every drunken night I ever spent in my life, God was using me for something.

There is no limit on God, and we’ll never see all the extended ripples and effects of our lives, but they do occur. I was an absolute poster-boy perfect example of  the tragedies that alcohol can create, for so many people to see. Back then I was constantly on display, being used by God, to show why they call it being wasted and trashed.

God didn’t need me to be sober. I needed me to be sober. I was the one using God, as my excuse to try it. I’m lucky so far that God doesn’t seem to mind that too much.

It’s pretty clear that specific things have improved for me since I decided to give this sobriety thing a shot. Although the struggles never seem to cease, I don’t have to wake up hungover wondering what I did last night to compound or extend them out further into my future. I am no saint, and never will be, but releasing the regular and repetitive action of drinking to fix my problems, is a start.

I have been asked if it will last forever. I truly don’t know, or even try to think about that. Like waaay back when I first started, I just try to do today, without it.

It’s possible that I’m becoming more comfortable with myself as a sober being. I didn’t always see the falsities in this one sentence that changed my life. It’s good though, to keep learning new ways to look at things. It’s reassuring that the longer I stay on this path the better it gets. I like feeling that upward spiral circling back around to the places we already have been, but on a slightly different trajectory, a better one. 🙂

Until next week, be well my friends, Do for you, what You need You do to, in love.

And if you would like any reassurance, God and I do, Love You.

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols

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