On July 4, 1939, Lou Gehrig stood in front of a full Yankee Stadium at his retirement ceremony, and said “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth”.
Remarkable words for a man who had been given a death-sentence diagnosis days before (Amylotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also now known as Lou Gehrig’s disease).
He later acknowledged that diagnosis by stating “so I close by saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for”.
I think of myself as the Lou Gehrig of recovery. I am the luckiest person I know on the face of the earth. On the one hand, I am an alcoholic and a drug addict. Those are two diagnoses that have grim prognoses. Everyone that I went to rehab with is dead. Many of the fellows I got sober with in my profession are dead. The same with members of my home group.
On the other hand, I have been sober all day today (ever since I woke up at 5 am, walked my dog, and went to a 6:30 a.m. meeting). I’ve been fortunate enough to be sober for about 10,385 days before that, too.
I am incredibly lucky. Maybe it is blessed, maybe it is grace, I don’t know what to call it. But I haven’t had a drink or a drug all day, I am a free man, my dog is asleep next to me, and I don’t have any problems in the world compared to the problems I had in the last 18 months of my active alcoholism.
There is a thought that I’ve heard shared in meetings near me. The thought is “if everyone in the meeting threw their problems onto the table, and had a choice of which set of problems to take back, I would take my own problems back”. That is absolutely true for me.
Do I have problems? Sure I do. Everyone does. But the problems that I have today are living problems. The problems I had in the last 18 months of my active alcoholism were drunk and junkie problems.
So again I say, Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth-the Lou Gehrig of Recovery.
With Love,
The Recovering Urchin
