I spend a lot of time taking my compact economy car to places where it would be better to be driving a four wheel drive SUV. I am a biologist and I do a lot of fieldwork, with my preference being to work in remote places. For the last few weeks I have needed to take my car somewhere to have some tire problems taken care of. I discovered one of my tires was low on air, which lead to finding it had a slow leak and that another tire had a bubble on its sidewall. Yesterday, when I was about 20 miles in on a gravel forest road, I noticed the leaker was almost flat. Today I finally was able to run some errands around town and I took the car to a tire shop. I was surprised to learn I needed two new tires but I paid the bill and happily drove away.
What does this have to do with sobriety? For me, a lot. I am sober today and can be responsible (except for driving around with two slightly wonky tires for a few weeks!), I can be proactive about things like making sure my car is safely maintained and I even have money to pay for things like car tires. Taking the type of action I did today was way out of my league of possibilities when I was drinking. I had tires blowout on me because I would ride them as long as they held air. Little or no tread, some radial wires sticking out of the sidewall – that was fine with me. When I would finally have no choice but to buy a new tire I was always resentful that I had to spend that money. Sure I needed to get around but how come tires didn’t last longer? How come new tires are so expensive? And on and on.
The fact of the matter was I simply hated to part with any money to pay for things like tires, insurance, or anything to do with my car. I wanted to spend more money on getting what I wanted – booze, drugs, and cigarettes. You see drinking a lot on a regular basis wasn’t leading to my having great success in life. I would try to save for things but I never seemed to have any money left before the next time I got paid. I couldn’t even plan well enough for my regular monthly expenses. Buying new tires meant I would be short of money. This would literally cut into what I had available for obtaining my trinity of necessities. Consequently I would get angry even when I paid my regular bills. The rent, the phone, even the price of food irked me when I was short of cash.
Being sober, responsible, and having what I really need is so much different. I take care of my part, like showing up at the tire store when I notice there is a problem, and the rest seems to take care of itself.
Now I am less likely to get stuck in some out of the way place. I am also not mad that some money I had in the bank went towards allowing me to keep doing my fieldwork. Life is just a much better bargain being sober.
All the best in sobriety,
AABlogger