Joel Santos

       To make a long story short, I drank I fell and I am now slowly standing up on my own two feet. I believe that I am actually being held up by something greater than myself, because there is no way that on my free will alone could I have crawled out of the hole I had willingly jumped into. I smoked my last joint on the Fourth of July 2014 and had my last drink a couple of days later. I do not remember my actual sobriety date because I never believed I would stay sober when I started going to meetings again. I chose July 4th as my sobriety date because that was the day I remember thinking I cannot live the way I was living anymore. I was on a bus from NYC to Florida to move back in with my dad after hitting a bottom from my last drug of choice, seeing as I was the proverbial trash can with all the waste I threw into my body, when I realized I was now 31 years old and I had wasted my 20’s looking for that next high. I had been arrested multiple times, I had hurt myself physically emotionally and spiritually, and I had isolated to the point where I didn’t even like spending time alone. Getting high was no longer fun, it was a necessity to not feel how empty I was inside. I could not date anyone because I was too much of a self-loathing egomaniac, and life had lost its mystique. July 4th, 2014 was the day I allowed myself to become brutally honest with myself. I also chose that date, to be brutally honest, because if I was going to get sober it had better be a national freggin holiday!

       Now I am sober, not just dry and miserable, but sober and alive. I feel emotions, I deal with my character defects every day, I have friends but most importantly I have hope. Today I have a voice and something to say that is worthwhile and hopefully all the struggles I have endured were placed in front of me so that my experience can help someone else. I have a conscious contact with my Higher Power, whom I do not choose to call God, I call Her Alanis Morsette from the movie, “Dogma,” because she’s gorgeous and because that depiction embodies what I want in a higher power; one who cannot be fully understood and who is silly and innocent like a child who chooses to smell the flowers. One concept I didn’t hear my first few times around the rooms was that I am allowed to find my own idea of a Higher Power (not that it wasn’t said, I just didn’t hear it). I liked that, it made more sense than the Judeo-Christian God I had been exposed to my whole life. I heard in a meeting once that a conscious contact with a Higher Power is not something you can reach out and touch, you cannot grab it and put it into your pocket, but you can and must bring it with you everywhere you go. My Higher Power is an essential part of my sobriety. The complete abandonment of my will and my life to Her allows me to have faith that these steps, working with others and prayer will keep me sober. So long as I don’t take that first drink the sky is the limit for me and any other alcoholic, no matter how hopeless we may seem. There is a little book I read from time to time, one I refer to as big, and it says that the average alcoholic is of an above average intelligence, so I can only imagine what we are capable of when we are on a path toward the light.

       The promises that this program offers will come true if I am willing to do the work, and go to any lengths to achieve long term sobriety. I know that I need an equal commitment to getting sober as I had for getting drunk and high. If I was told to tap dance naked and sing Mary Had a Little Lamb in order to get my dope or that last drink in me I would have done so with a smile on my face. So when I am now asked to do the work it takes, outlined by the steps, do service work and to seek a conscious contact with my higher power to stay sober I do so, with an even bigger smile on my face; a smile that cannot be wiped off once the high runs its course. I am forever grateful for this new way of living a life I once thought was doomed and I show my gratitude by spreading the message and making myself available to the still sick and suffering. Thank you for letting me share my experience, strenth and hope with you through the medium of my poetry.

                   Truly Yours,

                         Joel Santos Esposito