How Being in Recovery Helps Me Deal and Cope with Stress

1. Sh!t happens 

“Our great men have written words of Wisdom to be used, When hardship must be faced; Life obliges us with hardship, So the words of wisdom shouldn’t go to waste.” -Fiddler on the Roof

In the last of my drinking years stress increased more and more. I felt my options for dealing with stress were becoming more and more limited. I was filled with shame, guilt and pain. The only option I could see was to drink the pain away. So I became a daily blackout drinker. To drink myself to death was the final option I saw for coping with the stresses of life. 

2. Ask for help

In recovery, I have a choice of options now. I can ask for help-medical, physical and spiritual. I can take the suggestions of people brought into my life, both inside and outside the program. Just learning that I had a choice each day was huge. I did not have to drink. In recovery, I have learned that, good or bad, “this, too, shall pass.” While I still must deal with life on life’s terms, I was surprised to find that many of the stressors had diminished seemingly on their own. I no longer felt like a worthless alcoholic. 

3. Own my mistakes. 

Stop blaming others and turn the light on me. Where had I been at fault? When I quit trying to control the world and its occupants my serenity level increases. 

4. Get out of my own head. 

Get off my pity pot. Help someone else. Amazing how this works to make my problems lessen. 

I want to be the first to admit that getting out these simple tools in the depths of life’s stresses is not my first thought. But neither is taking a drink. And for that, I’m grateful.

Dennis L., Grateful Recovering Alcoholic