And for a moment, the old voice appeared.

Not loudly.

Just quietly suggesting relief.

“Just have a drink.”

“You deserve it.”

“It will take the edge off.”

But another pressure appeared at the same time.

The pressure of the commitment I made to myself.

The pressure of 1583 days.

That’s the strange thing about long-term sobriety.

Sometimes the hardest part is not resisting alcohol.

It’s accepting that you have chosen a life where numbing out is no longer available.

And in those moments you have to sit with the emotion.

Often I would drink alcohol to escape energy. Negative energy that I had cultivated inside my body. I was not aware that it was energy, I was just aware that I hated what I was feeling and wanted it to change.

It is not to be chased or clutched at with desperation, but the lesson of reverence is to simply allow it, to be reverent in that divine moment when peace, patience and power converge into presence… allowing simple thoughts and desires to melt away, to be in union with the divine creator itself, to oscillate in the frequency of life without substance, stimulants or chemicals, this is the path. To vibrate at a resonance which is the true essence of experience THAT IS REVERENCE.

Before I fastened myself the above values of Strength, sobriety and security, I realized I already had some “values” they were:

WEAK WASTED WORRIED

My body was soft, I didn’t train. I made excuses everyday. It was everyone else’s fault. I was continually coerced into drugs by my own drunken mind and the drunken arrogance of others. I was worried about what others thought of me - I tried to act how I thought people wanted me to be, instead of standing in my truth. My self-worth caved from the words of others and their opinions. I had no foundation to support myself.

My attempt at 75 hard.

Have I ever relapsed?
Don’t make your problems worse!