Pete: Spiritual Progress, Not Perfection

In the spring of 2019 one town over from here, I slid my family’s car in between a tree and a telephone pole with less than an inch on either side of the car, crashing into a stone wall, and totaling the car. I was not conscious for this. I was drunk within 48 hours of this event. This did not get me sober.

Let’s go back a few more years…In high school, I first experienced the effects produced by drugs and alcohol. They solved a problem I had been struggling with for as long as I could remember. The first time I got high, it took me to a peaceful and serene place of neutrality I had never been to before. Drugs and alcohol solved an internal malady that had existed my whole life, and I wanted that solution forever. The problem was, as time went on, my “solution” began to manifest itself in things getting worse, not better. As high school went on, I began to cut classes to get high – even the classes I really loved. This did not get me sober.

Mid-tenth grade, I was sent to a wilderness therapy program and a therapeutic boarding school to finish my high school education. That put a pause on my progressive illness, helped me finish high school and taught me that my parents were capable of setting and holding boundaries (which I did not like but could not ignore). Learning this did not keep me sober.

In college, I began to use again, recreationally at first, and did well in school for a little while. Again, I found myself prioritizing my “solution” over everything I went to college for in the first place. I hurt and lost good friends and relationships, dropped out, and fell down hard. That hard fall did not get me sober.

A month after my DUI in 2019, I was at home after a failed drug deal and I found myself in panic. I knew my solution had not been a solution for some time, and I was at a loss for what to do. I could not imagine my life with or without this failed solution, and I was desperate to find more of this thing outside myself I could not control in order to be okay. Then I heard a voice, a voice I did not know, or had at least not heard clearly in a very long time, say to me “this should not mean this much to you.” From there, I asked for help, and I asked for it because I wanted it, and I began to take action. With support from my parents, some of the most wonderful human beings this world has ever been blessed to receive, I went to treatment.

I’ve been in therapy since I was eight years old, and my therapeutic process has blossomed into one of my most respected and cherished experiences that I still utilize to the fullest extent today, and that has helped me grow in many aspects of my life. I am a major supporter of regular therapy. However. Therapy did not get or keep me sober.

I found my way to a sustainable spiritual solution to this internal malady, and when I share that solution with fellows of mine like me, I say something like this:

My name is Pete, and I am a recovered alcoholic. I say “recovered”, not because I am cured of my physical allergy to drugs and alcohol, but because I have been restored to sanity and saved from a perpetual state of defenseless mind and spirit. I say “recovered”, not because my work is done, but because I regularly work toward spiritual growth and that’s what keeps me safe. My favorite book reads, “we claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.” To me, spiritual progress means acting with integrity and trying my hardest, knowing I will always fail at perfection, but I will always land in progress.

That is the one-day-at-a-time element of this work for me. I don’t worry about a relapse every day, because I have been given a daily reprieve that keeps me “recovered,” AKA safely neutral, so long as I remain in fit spiritual condition on a regular basis. I am not the reason I have stayed sober or recovered. Something bigger is the reason, and that higher power has spoken through my true friends and my parents, who are committed to their own growth. The only thing I can take credit for is the action of showing up and putting one foot in front of the other in that spiritual progress; the results of that action are determined by something that does a better job of running my life than I do. That is a blessing I will cherish forever. It is my honor to practice what I preach, to keep myself in check through prayer and support from others, and to carry a message of hope to those who have yet to find it. I am profoundly humbled and eternally grateful for the hope and the love in which I live today. I know that without a connection to a higher power, I am nothing, but with that connection, I can do anything. Thank you.