It took me nine months to complete the twelve steps—a full pregnancy.
And as with all new life, mine didn’t come suddenly or fully formed. I didn’t turn my will and my life over to the care of Bill Wilson overnight. The transformation came in small stages. Baby steps. Sobriety was a gift that I had to tend to.
There was, of course, an inflection point—a moment in time when I could say, “I’m definitely not the same person I was before.”
Near the end of 2016, I was walking up Route 80 in New Haven, CT (uphill both ways, and let’s say it was snowing.) At this point in time, I had eight months sober, eight steps under my belt, and zero job prospects. Starbucks, McDonalds, Aldi, Walmart, Walgreens, Taco Bell, Chipotle. None of these companies wanted to hire me, which was frankly kind of embarrassing since everyone else at my sober house had landed jobs pretty quickly.
But I kept walking up that road, going into building after building, until I finally walked into the one at 500 Foxon Road. A concrete temple to one of the Northeast staples itself. A Dunkin’ Donuts.
Lucky for me, the manager was right there, sitting at a table and looking through resumes. So when I asked for a job, she hired me on the spot.
Now for someone who had come to the east coast from Seattle—from the Starbucks capital of the world to the Dunkin’ capital of the world—this was quite the metaphor. Seattle, Starbucks, the west coast, that was where I had become an addict. This was where I succumbed to heroin and meth and let it take away everything I didn’t even know I valued. But New Haven, Dunkin’ Donuts, the east coast? This was where I got sober. This was where I learned to value those things I never could before.
Like landing a minimum wage job where I served mediocre coffee in a silly hat.
New-me was proud of something that old-me could never understand.
It still sucked of course, the job. I had to wake up at five in the morning and walk (uphill both ways) to the store where they didn’t even let me eat the donuts, and after my shift I’d have to take the bus straight downtown to go pee in a cup and talk with my therapist. Then, another bus back to the sober house where I could finally change before heading right back out to catch a meeting.
Fortunately, this wasn’t pointless suffering. This wasn’t withdrawing outside a homeless shelter in the freezing rain waiting for the doors to open. This was the kind of suffering that brought new life.
After about another month of labor, I didn’t even have to work at Dunkin’ anymore. My sponsor had gotten me a job at an actual coffee shop. In fact, people were even suggesting that I apply to become the manager of a sober house. But perhaps more important, I had finished the twelve steps. My life had somehow taken on that new meaning everyone kept talking about.
I had arrived.
I had arrived, and I found myself saying, “Okay…now what?”
Just a few weeks ago—after those eight months of sobriety had turned into eight years—I posted the final chapter of my novel “Still Life of Desert Animals.”
It had taken the majority of my sobriety to write, with multiple revisions and weekly workshops. I had started small, writing a horrible short story about some idiot kid buying drugs in a parking lot. But the thing just kept growing. Each night, I’d pull out my phone, turn down the brightness and write a few more paragraphs. Eventually, those paragraphs turned into chapters, which turned into a first draft.
Baby steps.
During this time, I was also recommended1 a book by Lewis Hyde called “The Gift.”2 In it, Hyde talks about works of art. Paintings. Poems. Novels. He talks about how these things are gifts from the artist—how they’re offerings that need tending. Specifically, what he says is that “between the time a gift comes to us and the time we pass it along we suffer gratitude.”3
I was inspired to write “Still Life” after reading Bret Easton Ellis and Albert Camus. Their novels drove me to create my own, and I had to work for it because, believe it or not, I knew jack-shit about writing (still don’t. In fact, it’s been five years and I feel like I know even less.)
I read grammar lessons, went to workshops, sweet-talked beta readers, and spent my lunch breaks writing and rewriting and writing again. And at some point along the way—after some infection point—I “became” a writer. I became a writer the same way I became sober after getting that job at Dunkin’ Donuts.
Cool, but here I am again telling myself, “Okay…now what?”
What Hyde suggests, what AA suggests, is that we pass the gift along.
For AA, this is the twelve step—to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers. For Hyde, this is giving away the gift—not for money but to inspire. A final “act of gratitude that finishes the labor.”4
And that’s my goal (whether or not I meet it is, of course, another thing.) There are as many perspectives in the world—as many opportunities for new life—as there are people. I hope to create the kind of gifts that inspire others to create their own.
So until that point, and especially after that point, I’ll keep writing.
https://lewishyde.com/the-gift/
“The Gift,” page 60
“The Gift,” page 60
My first year of sobriety found me writing a novel as well, The Ruining Heaven. The subject matter was grim, aerial combat in world War II as seen from the nose of a B17 bomber. It was first person so I found myself almost becoming the character. at the same time I was attending a lot of meetings and going through the big book with a guy who'd gone through it himself with someone else many years before . I was able to cobble together a rudimentary understanding of how to live a spiritual life, live any life at all that wasn't propelled by my ego or anger. now I'm 13 years into sobriety and working on one of four novels in progress, working at a tech job that pays really well and only cost me 8 hours a day, taking three different men through the big book and trying to live in the moment at all times. I found your story inspiring. unless we can help other people our lives are meaningless regardless of how much we write, and I believe that the duty of any writer is to try to tell the truth as well as they can. bravo to you and your journey.
"I'm not crying..."