Two years ago, at the two-year mark...


It's been almost two years since I have been two years sober. An excerpt from Chapter 5, "Five Minutes Before the Miracle," details what I was thinking in a meeting, just before receiving my chip:


“My sober network, my sponsors, and God could now assist me in life’s decisions for this day because I was letting them in. I was no longer sacrificing my here moments to panicky, egoic future thinking, frantically chasing after decisions that did not yet need to be made because they were the product of some imagined future. I finally began to allow God and people to inspire me to calmly make only the decisions that needed my attention in the moment. This was an epic shift in thinking for me. I was now strolling and breathing instead of sprinting and gasping through life. It was an imperfect miracle, if such things exist.

I had not yet completely rid myself of the self-pity or ego character defects. Hannah, Robert, and Toby’s estrangement from me continued to weigh heavily, to pull me away from total inner peace. Until I could finally “let go, let God” with them, I could never be completely happy, joyous, and free. Even so, I had made real inroads toward serenity, and I was able to count my blessings. At the two-year mark, sitting there in the club, I mentally conjured the all-important gratitude list as espoused by the treatment center’s counselor Nathaniel.

I am alive.

I am physically healthy.

I am sober.

I am gainfully employed in a profession I love.

I have a nice house and a sweet dog.

I love people.

People love me.

My children are healthy and secure.”


And that, my friends, was that day's Serenity Now.

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