The Lou Gehrig of Recovery

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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”.

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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.

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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.

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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

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