Recovery Story - M

It was a few days before Christmas, and I was driving somewhere with my wife when a disagreement arose. I can’t even remember what it was about. A few minutes later, all was forgotten, and we moved on. Nothing special about that, just an ordinary domestic squabble, except….

Except, in the not-so-distant past, this tiff over nothing could well have spiralled out of control. It could have ended with me taking solace in drink and damaging the holiday for a whole lot of people, including myself.

What made this Christmas different was that I was able to handle the inevitable ups and downs, especially the day-to-day anxieties, the loneliness, anger and hurt feelings, that for me so often seemed to be ingrained in the season itself. I was better able to co-exist with my feelings, to accept them, face them directly, manage them, and move on. For the first time in a long time, I found I could even consider other people’s point of view, to listen and not become automatically angry at anyone who dared disagree with me.

Simple? Not when I was drinking.

Only by not drinking was I able to show control, and at the same time admit to myself that, in the past, this had not typically been the case. I was able to admit that when I drank I messed things up and became a right royal bastard. Not drinking, I’d like to think, made be a better person, or at least to act like one. And all in all, despite even COVID, it led to a much better Christmas than too many previous ones.

For this gift, I owe a lot to SMART Ireland. A while ago, my drinking had reached the stage where I knew I had lost all control of everything, my thoughts, behavior, relationships. It was not sustainable. The end, as they say, was in sight. I sought help and was pointed in several directions, including SMART.

And so I attended a few online meetings and got to know people who were going through exactly what I was. God, did I talk a lot at those early meetings, still do. The rubbish that came out of me was pure gold medal stuff. But I was listened to, not made to feel like a nobody, not judged. Before too long I found myself able to actually listen to other people, even on occasion to give advice.

SMART meetings, I have learned, lead lives of their own. They are sometimes slow, sometimes fast; participants contribute as much or as little as they want, depending on the humour they are in that day. The facilitator lets us go at it, providing only the occasional nudge or prompt.

At SMART meetings, you seldom here long monologues about past drinking sprees; we tend to talk in the present tense, about where we are now. The meetings are not immune to sad stories from the past or descriptions of ongoing, painful personal dilemmas. There can be crying, but it’s not always bleak.

There also can be the joy of personal discovery, and laughter for its own sake. To be honest, if you joined a meeting late, you might think it was just a bunch of friends gathered together, working things out, as friends do. And I suppose that's what we are.

Mostly now I attend meetings once a week. Each one is like opening a lucky bag; you never know what you're going to find until you open it. I have heard people describe the SMART approach as an important tool in their tool box to recovery. Me, I feel it’s more like the front window in a house. SMART helps me see outside, to where there is a better world.