When I was first getting sober 17 months ago, I read every book about sobriety I could get my hands on. Drinking memoirs, scientific studies of alcoholism starting back in the 1930’s all the way through to today (the understanding of addiction is evolving greatly). I read The Big Book. Listened to every sobriety-themed podcast, followed every sober person on Instagram. Because I wanted to normalize the messages of sobriety over the messages that drinking was normal and necessary.
That helped me stay sober. I understood the science. I did one day at a time. I recorded everything in my journal. How it felt on day 1. Day 2. Day 13. Day 22. Day 60. (Something happens at 60 days.) 90. 100. 200. 1 year. 16 months. 17 months and counting.
But the book that aligned me from the start, and I believe keeps me sober to this day, is not a book about sobriety. Not even, in the traditional sense of the word, about recovery. Not specifically about alcohol addiction recovery. Or recovery from addiction to drugs, gambling, sex, love, or social media. It’s a book about integrity called The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck.
In the book, Beck describes what integrity is by explaining what it means for an airplane to have structural integrity. All the parts working individually the way they should, and working in harmony with all the other parts. When the aircraft is structurally sound, when it is in integrity, when the system is integrated, the aircraft takes off, flies, and lands smoothly. All is well.
But if even just one part is out of integrity, if it is malfunctioning, this puts the entire aircraft at risk. Ironically enough, and for further proof that nothing in our lives is ever wasted (except when we were, but sick former-drinking jokes aside…), I know this well because in my previous career I worked in aviation. Aircraft are marvels of engineering. They are also meticulously maintained, inspected, and stored properly on the ground to ensure no damage. Before an aircraft can fly, very detailed flight checks take place. Meticulous logs are kept about every single part on the aircraft. People’s entire jobs are focused on maintenance. Protection. Integrity.
Lives are at stake. We can never forget that.
That’s aviation, though.
In our own lives, we are not quite so meticulous, right? It’s a safe bet that most of us think we can ignore what we know is “off” inside. But the bet we make after that–after knowing something feels out of alignment within us, out of integrity–is that we can ignore the problem, the indicators, the signals, the alarm bells, the parts clearly falling off onto the floor, and we can still fly.
The world tells us we have to suck it up and still fly.
Still get there, wherever the world says it is we should go. And get there on time and get there for less money. But where is there? Where are we thinking we will get if we push past what we know is wrong inside and take off into the sky anyway? What are we risking it for, and why? Because the thing is, eventually, we will crash and burn. There’s no way around it. We cannot fly smoothly and safely without being in integrity with ourselves.
It isn’t a moral thing. It isn’t a moral judgment that the aircraft malfunctions when it’s out of alignment. It’s just physics. It’s just how things work. And how, sometimes, they don’t.
And the reason this concept, this focus on the necessity of integrity, means so much to my recovery is because to stay sober is to stay true and present. To get sober is to have a shot at maintaining integrity. Because when we are sober we become experts at noticing what is out of alignment inside of ourselves. It’s all the stuff we drank to pretend wasn’t warning us.
It wasn’t the ‘easy button’ we were pressing when we drank, it was the IGNORE button. Right? This thing is calling us from inside the house. To tell us we are in danger. And we hear it and we see it but we believe we cannot handle dealing with it so we hit IGNORE.
IGNORE. IGNORE. IGNORE.
You can see the problem there, right? We haven’t fixed anything. What is out of alignment inside is still fucked up. It’s never going to stop being out of alignment until we fix it. But to fix it, we have to look at it. To fix it, we have to be sober. We have to be paying attention. We can’t hit IGNORE anymore.
Every time we drink–EVEN ONE DRINK–we begin dismantling ourselves from the inside out. I hate that when people say “It’s just one drink.” Not for me. Not for me, it’s not. For me the first drink is how I get drunk. The first drink is how everything comes off the rails. How everything inside is given permission to become entirely unhinged. To fall apart. To fall out of integrity. And I fall out of the sky. I crash and I burn. And it’s the same ending every time.
In recovery, and this is the groundwork I do with clients at the very beginning, we have to come to terms with the reality that we have been trying to make ourselves fly when we are out of integrity and it was never going to work. We were never going to be able to live the lives we wanted–lives of purpose, joy, compassion, creativity, and love–if we keep throwing gasoline onto what’s already on fire.
Nobody drinks with the intention of becoming addicted. And nobody recovers without the intention to stay sober in order to remain in integrity with herself. But sobriety is not the ultimate goal in the same way that only having a fully functioning engine in an airplane isn’t the ultimate goal. It’s necessary. But the only way to recover is to be in full integrity. The only way for the aircraft to pass a flight test is to pass it entirely. To be fully functioning in each of its individual parts. Sobriety is necessary for recovery. Recovery is the ultimate goal.
There’s a catch, of course, because there is always a catch. The catch is: you are never fully recovered. You go out into the world. You are flying around doing your thing. Parts start to wear out, deteriorate, things are always shaking around in there, right. Not our fault, there’s just turbulence, there’s the jostling of controls and landing gears and switches. Life keeps knocking us around as it does, and things come loose.
In aviation speak, we would do FOD inspections. Foreign Object Debris, or: any object, live or not, located in an inappropriate location in the airport environment that has the capacity to injure airport or air carrier personnel and damage aircraft, (Source: faa.gov) . Something as small as a loose screw that fell out of a mechanic’s pocket during routine maintenance gets lodged in a flight control. Something as small as one errant, innocent, unaccounted for, screw. And the whole aircraft, and everyone in it, could come crashing down.
Lives are at stake. We can never forget that.
So when someone wants to learn more about my coaching practice and they ask me, What is it you actually DO in recovery coaching? I tell them all of this first. In a nutshell, I mean coaches aren’t really supposed to talk much, it’s the client who buys the time and gets to talk, but I say to them: Look, you are here with me, a sober coach. Nobody works with me for fun (even though I’m actually fun! I promise, we do have fun because life’s too short and difficult and laughter is medicine, but I digress). Something is out of alignment inside. No one quits alcohol for kicks. No one tries to get sober ‘just to see what it’s like’ as if it’s gonna be like trying on overalls in a poorly lit Target dressing room. They seem like a silly idea but we’ve heard some people can really pull them off and look cute even in middle age. No they can’t. It isn’t cute. Sobriety isn’t cute. It’s hard as fuck.
Because without the drinking, you feel every bump, every rattle, and you hear every loose screw that’s clanking around in the flight controls. The warnings are real. The danger is clear and present. Always has been. This thing is going to crash and burn if you keep pushing it. It’s time to bring her in for a landing, as safe as you can. Climb out of the cockpit and get this beautiful, complicated thing, this aircraft, your life, inspected.
Recovery coaching is an inspection. I like to call it an ‘exploration.’ Sounds less intrusive and more like there’s scenic stuff to look at along the way. And there is! There totally is. Recovery is getting to notice all of it, the breath-taking and the deteriorating (I’m sorry that rhymes). And what you are doing is you are integrating it into a way of life that is aligned with who you truly are instead of a life where you ignore the alarm bells going off when they inevitably do. Instead of a life where you pretend there’s nothing wrong, you expect things to get wonky once in a while and you plan for it. You know that’s just how things go. But you are plenty equipped to handle it.
Whatever you are addicted to is just the thing that’s your IGNORE button. When you finally take the call, you begin the process of returning to integrity. You begin the intentional process of coming home to yourself. Aligning who you are on the inside with how you behave on the outside.
Every choice is made from a place of integrity. Every decision is made from a place of integrity. You see how taking on too much baggage will set off weight limit alarms. Because you are sober, you hear the alarms. You remove what simply cannot come along for the ride. Integrity. Alignment. Now you can fly. Now you can reach the great heights you never knew you could reach. And even if you had reached them, while you were drinking, you got the promotion, you got the man or woman to love you, you had the baby, you made the million dollars, great heights, but all you could hear in your head was the rattling around of the all the broken parts. You couldn’t enjoy the view from up there high in the sky. Because something inside you knew you were headed for a crash.
You could sense it, beneath all the attempts at ignoring and numbing and hoping it would all fix itself, somehow. You were falling out of the sky.
Not your fault. Alcohol addiction is a mutherfucker. But here you are with a sober coach talking about how you know living a life free of alcohol would ‘be a good idea’ but you just can’t seem to make it stick. You have tried everything. You are up against a lot.
Here you are talking about what’s not working. What’s out of alignment. Here you are telling me your insides are busted up, and it hurts, and you’re scared, but you can still fly. And what I am saying is: Why on earth would you try to live that way? When you have a chance to work together to make sure your flight is a safe and enjoyable one? Why would you keep trying to fly with old rusty malfunctioning parts when instead you could upgrade and replace what’s not working with shiny new stuff that does?
Sometimes what we are addicted to is not alcohol but the story we tell ourselves about our struggle with it. We need the ‘off and on’ sober thing the way people can sometimes get caught inside the yo-yo dieting thing. We keep putting our trust in things outside of ourselves so that we can blame that thing when it ‘doesn’t work’ instead of taking on the full responsibility ourselves. Why didn’t all that other stuff work? Why didn’t that other stuff make your sobriety stick? Maybe, there’s comfort in it not working so you can escape into it not working.
Maybe the addiction is to the back and forth. The trying. The story of “It just doesn’t/won’t/can’t work for me.” The need for it to not work because what if it does work? What if we do get sober and realize it’s better? Then we have to acknowledge that new story. And to stay in it is to have to do the work of full recovery. The maintenance. The inspection, the monitoring, the responding to alarms and alerts and ‘maintenance required’ signals.
But here’s my pitch for why you want recovery. You want recovery because you want integrity. You want integrity because it’s the only way to live the life you desire without it being drowned out by all the alarm bells, and terrible clunky rattly malfunctioning noises. Maybe you’ll get some stuff that you want while you are still drinking. But you won’t be there to enjoy it. Because something in you knows you are coming apart. Your internal instruments can feel you falling out of the sky.
Getting sober will land you safely on the ground.
Slow, steady, methodical inspection of what this thing is really made of will allow for proper care and maintenance. So we can get back to flying and actually appreciate reaching our great, great heights. We can and do recover.
So the real question is:
Do you want to continue risking it all, ignoring the signals and signs that you are operating in great distress, ignoring the sound of the stray screw wrenched in the flight controls, just to keep alcohol in your life?
Or do you want to ditch the alcohol, dislodge the screw, and get down to the business of doing the real work?
You are the aircraft, the pilot, and the head of maintenance. Nobody is going to tell you what to do. Only you can decide what you want, what you don’t want, and when.
Thank you for flying with us. We hope you’ve enjoyed your flight.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
A note from me :) Would you like to learn more about sober coaching and how I can help you stay committed to your own recovery story? Send me an email at allisonmarieconway@gmail.com and tell me where you are on your journey with alcohol (don’t you hate when people say it like that). Let’s see what we can do to get you the life you so very much deserve.
Allison Marie Conway, Alcohol Addiction Recovery Coach, CPC/CAC