Recovery Is A Means To Sobriety, Not Fun

When I first got sober, the task itself was a challenge and a source of excitement and discovery. After a good few years, when I had regular employment and some degree of emotional sobriety, the thrill of physical sobriety was gone. I have to remember that it’s something I do every day, and can lose any day. That’s why I still go to meetings.

The same has happened with the self-development stuff. Early nights needed for the early mornings prevent the parties and even the opera and the theatre; the careful diet discourages blow-outs and gimmick food; sobriety cuts out booze and drugs, and that has serious consequences for anyone’s sex life, let alone mine. Life has turned into a stream of comforting and bland white-food experiences.

At which point, you said all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Which is one of those things people say without really understanding it.

What is work? One answer is that it’s something we would only do if we were being paid to do it. I like that one, but that misses the essential bit. Work is anything we do that is goal-directed, rather than for the fun of the thing itself. Employment is work, because the aim is to get paid by doing whatever the boss need me to do. Shopping for food is work. The gym is work, and so is making the bed, ironing the sheets, reading a non-fiction book, tidying a room, cleaning the car, making a painting, taking photographs, networking in the pub after work, chasing girls… a lot more things are goal-directed than you might believe. Sleeping is goal-directed activity, and so work, which is why I wake up exhausted every morning.

Being dull is about being poor company, withdrawn, shy, not being funny, amusing, pleasant, not knowing how to take part in the chatter, the teasing, and the all-round bonhomie. It’s about Jack not being fun for other people rather than having fun for himself.

Being a dull boy may not be such a bad thing, if the only company you have to keep is forever getting into fights, debt, unplanned pregnancies, and going in and out of jail, or if the people you know are gossipy, back-biting, empty-headed, and don’t do much more than eat, drink, shop and get high.

What is it about work that makes Jack a dull boy? Trick question: it only makes Jack dull if it’s that kind of work. Drudgery for someone else’s benefit.

A lot of the self-improvement stuff can be habit, but habit does not mean drudgery, and it is all for oneself.

The trick is to remember that there was a time I didn’t do it, and how I felt then. I could consider that I could stop, and what the consequences of doing that would be. And sometimes, instead of saying “this is just this again”, to say “this is what I do”.