I have been reading Being and Nothingness by Sartre. In one passage he suggests that its not the misery that motivates us to want to change—it’s the realization that things can be better. I have really been thinking a lot about this…towards the end of my drinking I was so incredibly miserable and yet I continued to drink. I had the sweats, shakes and vomited every morning and into the afternoon. My depression was so severe that many nights I sat drinking scotch with my loaded shot gun—suicide seemed to be the only option I had left. Somewhere deep inside there was this little grain of hope that things could change…I knew if I drank one more day I was going to kill myself, so I called a detox center and they got me in the following morning. I spent 10 days going through some pretty nasty withdrawal.

In my case I think Sartre might have been right—it was not the misery of drinking that made me want to stop—it was the desperate hope that things could get better—I had to believe that being sober was better than drinking before I could get sober. I had been sober before and I was just as miserable sober as I was drinking. This time when I got sober, I created a recovery plan and actively tried to change my life instead of just not drinking.

So, for me, the most influential thing that got me sober was the realization that things could get better—that there had to be something worth living for—that dying was not all that was left for me.