Grieving the Life That Was Killing Me

Reading today’s Reflection got me thinking about how completely unprepared I was for grief in sobriety.

I had learned how to avoid the first drink. I knew how to attend meetings, call people, and ask for help. What I didn’t understand was how badly losing someone I loved could hurt—or how long that pain could last.

When my mom died, I was devastated.

I ugly cried for days, weeks, and months. Honestly, it took me years to work through her death. Twenty-five years later, the pain has subsided, but I still carry her memory with me.

AA didn’t take away that grief. The Steps didn’t provide some magical shortcut around it, and God didn’t suddenly turn me into a spiritual giant who could smile peacefully while my heart was breaking.

I had to talk about it.

I had to attend meetings, lean on friends and sponsors, keep going to work, and continue taking care of my family. I’m sure some people became tired of hearing about it, but I needed to keep talking until I could carry it without falling apart.

Sobriety didn’t protect me from losing my mom.

It allowed me to be her son while she was sick, and it gave me a way to survive after she was gone without losing myself to alcohol and drugs.

There are also other forms of grief that we don’t discuss enough in recovery.

This may sound completely insane to a normie, but alcoholics and drug addicts can grieve and mourn the loss of our old lives.

Alcohol and drugs were part of our lives for a long time. In many cases, they became the most important things in our lives.

They were our best friends, our lovers, our medicine, and our escape from reality.

Then we get sober, and suddenly all of that is taken away.

Yes, technically, we are making the decision every day not to drink or use drugs. But for this alcoholic, it didn’t always feel like a decision.

It felt like something I had to do.

I could either stop drinking and drugging or continue until they killed me. That is certainly a choice, but it didn’t feel like a particularly generous selection of options.

Because of that, I was angry and frustrated on many days.

I was sad.

I was confused.

I had no idea what to do with myself.

My sponsor used to say we were like fish on concrete.

That I understood.

Take a fish out of the water and throw it onto the concrete. It flops around because everything it knows has disappeared. It doesn’t know how to function in its new environment.

That was me without alcohol and drugs.

There are five commonly discussed stages of grief:

Denial.

Anger.

Bargaining.

Depression.

Acceptance.

They aren’t a checklist, and they don’t necessarily happen in that order. We may bounce between them, experience several at once, or return to one we thought we had finished.

I can see every one of them in early sobriety.

Denial told me I wasn’t really that bad.

Anger made me resent everyone who could still drink and use without ending up with their head in a garbage can.

Bargaining told me that perhaps I could control it next time if I changed what I drank, where I drank, or who I drank with.

Depression arrived when I began realizing that my old life was actually over.

Acceptance came slowly.

Very fucking slowly. 🤣

We are trying to get sober, we aren’t drinking or using drugs, and yet we are absolutely miserable.

Then we begin wondering what the hell is wrong with us.

Maybe nothing unusual is wrong.

Maybe we are mourning.

The thing that seemed most important in our lives is gone, and we haven’t learned how to live without it yet.

That doesn’t mean getting sober was a mistake. It means losing something—even something that was killing us—can still hurt.

It took a lot of time before I began feeling better.

I won’t say I started feeling normal, because seriously, what the hell is normal?

One of the things I’ve discovered through staying sober in AA is that we can become some of the healthiest human beings around.

Normal isn’t something I strive for today.

Peaceful interests me.

Peaceful and content excites me.

Although contentment can create an entirely different collection of issues for alcoholics, and we can discuss that another day. 🤣

My father died more than fifteen years after my mom. He was also sick because of the work he had done for a living.

My grief over Pop was different.

I was there when he died, holding his hand.

The last thing I said to him was, “Go, Pop. Let go. Go play golf and kick Tiger’s ass.”

Thinking about that now, it makes absolutely no sense because Tiger Woods is still alive. 🤣

But those were the words that came out of my mouth.

I had a different relationship with my father than I did with my mom. I felt guilty because I wasn’t crying or reacting the same way I had when Mom died.

I guess I was a bit of a momma’s boy.

That didn’t mean I loved my father any less.

It meant I grieved him differently.

There is no correct amount of crying required to prove that we loved someone. There isn’t a timetable, and we don’t have to mourn two people in exactly the same way.

I loved my father, and I grieved him for quite a while.

I still miss both of my parents terribly.

Getting drunk or doing drugs would not have made any of that easier.

If I think it through, drinking would have made everything considerably worse.

Because I was sober and in AA, I was able to be there for my parents when they needed me most.

I was able to be a loving and caring son to the two people who brought me into this world.

I had moments with my father that I never would have experienced if I hadn’t been sober.

He told me how proud he was of me.

He told me he thought I was a great father.

If you knew my pop, you knew those words were not spoken lightly—or often.

He was a great guy. I am honored and proud to tell anyone that he was my father.

Sobriety didn’t prevent me from grieving my parents.

It gave me the opportunity to have a relationship worth grieving.

It allowed me to show up while they were alive, hold my father’s hand when he died, and remain present for my family after they were gone.

I wish my mom had been here long enough to meet Kristina and the girls.

That always brings tears to my eyes when I think about it.

I know she would have loved them. She would have absolutely adored them and showered them with the same love she always showered me with.

They would have loved her too.

That is another part of grief people don’t always talk about. We don’t only mourn the moments we lost. We also mourn the moments that never had the opportunity to happen.

I hope there is an afterlife.

I hope Mom and Pop can see the life I’ve built and the people their grandchildren have become.

I believe they would be proud of all of us.

Hopefully, someday, we’ll all get back together.

Until then, I will continue carrying them with me.

I’ll stay sober, talk about the pain when I need to, and allow grief to be whatever it is that day.

Sometimes it will be sadness.

Sometimes it will be laughter.

Sometimes it will be remembering that I told my dying father to go beat a perfectly healthy professional golfer. 🤣

Grief doesn’t follow our schedule.

Neither does recovery.

We keep showing up for both.