Today, December 16, 2020, for the 6575th consecutive day, I have decided not to take a drink of alcohol. For normal people, that is 18 years. But I’m not a normal person. I am an addict. At least for the purpose of staying sober, we recovering addicts know better than to count time in any units longer than a day. Today I choose not to drink. Tomorrow I will worry about tomorrow. And so forth.
For the first 5479 consecutive days that I decided not to take a drink, only some relatives and close friends knew that I have to make a deliberate decision each day not to drink alcohol. But for reasons about which I remain ambivalent, after 15 years I decided to make my condition public. I knew that I was risking some things, not the least of which is the possibility of public humiliation if there comes a day that I fail to decide not to take a drink. And to my strict Alcoholics Anonymous colleagues and friends, I realize that it is heresy to be so public about my addiction.
I have no grand philosophies about drinking—or rather not drinking. I can’t imagine writing a book about it, as some people have. I just don’t have that much to say. I do not believe that drinking is immoral. Indeed, I believe that the proper use of alcohol can be ordered to Christian virtues, not the least of which are the practice of hospitality and friendship. Many members of my family moderately and temperately consume alcohol, some as a daily routine. I have never counseled them to abstain. Nor do I have any weighty insights or game-changing strategies to share with people who struggle with alcohol addiction.
What I can provide—what I am—is a witness to those who struggle with addiction, that it can be treated: not cured, but treated.
My treatment is necessarily related to my faith in Christ, and the suffering to which he subjected himself, and in which I am called to participate. I don’t know how I would have gotten sober without this faith. On the other hand, I was drunk for many years as a feckless practitioner of the same faith. So, my sobriety requires an intentionality that I was unwilling to practice for the many years that I knew (but denied) I was a practicing addict.
Perhaps that’s my motivation for being public about it.
Since I have been open about my addiction, I have had many opportunities either to steer people toward others who can help them, or to try to help them myself. Not, again, through profound wisdom or sage advice. But just by muddling along. A guy with more than enough residual faults, but who discovered—and can be a witness—that one can get through a day without alcohol; and that those who don’t think they can are the ones who must. I am grateful that I have been that man for others, and I welcome the opportunities to be so again if they should happen to arise.
In this context, is very important for me to say—without equivocation or qualification—that I do not gainsay a philosophy of anonymity, nor judge those who remain anonymous about their recovering addictions. This is a legitimate and praiseworthy approach. Indeed, orthodox AA members have chastised me for not remaining anonymous. I do not judge that strategy. And the purpose of this and my other public statements should not be interpreted as encouraging others to make their struggles public. On the contrary, as an agnostic pragmatist about addiction, I commend whatever course that keeps you sober. Those many people who remain anonymous are probably wiser than I am. Certainly they are humbler, which is a high Christian virtue.
Oh, and one last thing. If I had not stopped drinking 6575 days ago, I surely would have lived many fewer. And the probability that I would have been responsible for shortening someone else’s life is frightenedly—indeed, soberingly—high. So today, I choose not to drink. And I thank God for the life that he has given me. It’s very far from perfect; and it’s not always happy. But it’s a good life. And today is a sober day.
Kenneth Craycraft is an attorney and the James J. Gardner Family Chair of Moral Theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary and School of Theology, in Cincinnati.
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