Words are the Voice of the Heart

[Topsy-Turvy-Tracy]

After twenty-some years around recovery, I have never learned to like the word ?sober? to describe what I want in life. At best it means ?not drunk,? but I never was drunk 24/7. The cycle of drinking and recovering from hangovers went 24/7 sometimes, but the state of being ?hungover? pretty accurately reflects the various meanings of ?sober.?

I never could relate to that word to describe an appealing way of life. The conotations of ?sober? - serious, dispassionate, dreary, solemn, restrained, inhibited, drab, grave ? seem to me to express a state-of-being which is the opposite of ?happy, full-of-life, content, up-beat.? So, why would I ever want to be ?sober?? I never did.

One of the things I really love about this place is the term we use instead, ?alcohol free.? It is concise and beautifully describes what I really do want ? to be unfettered, unencumbered, liberated from alcohol ? to be free. Someone told me once that addiction is a form of slavery, and those words resonated with me. I could never get behind the idea of busting off the shackles and struggling for self-determination, only to live a ?sober? life. I plan to be solemn aplenty in death, so I don?t need to live that way!

It?s nice to be able to clarify in my own mind and openly express what I want in terms of freedom, instead of gray-shades of restraint.

[rubywillow]

Words are the Voice of the Heart

Well said, Top. I prefer to just live, accepting the good, able to combat the bad. When I was growing up, my grandmother had 2 big portraits of her father and step-mother hanging in her hall. Not even a HINT of a smile (of course, it was 1900!). They scared the crap outta me, and their eyes followed where ever you moved. Only years later did I learn the popular theme of the time was a serious expression. How much more of their personality could we have learned if the photos were candid, natural? I can look at those pictures now and see in their eyes their real personality. So, sober is a matter of semantics, maybe. 'Alcohol free' is good. You know, wording trips up a lot of people. First there were boneyards, then graveyards. That became cemetaries. Now they're 'memory gardens'. I prefer not to think of my garden fertilized with dead people, but I personally have a reference to that particular aspect. :H Good post, anyway. You're really thinking about things, and that is good.