Moving Through Fear
Fear is something that you will hear a lot of people in recovery talking about. When I got sober, I was consumed by fear. While I knew that I couldn’t continue on the path that I was on, I was terrified to get sober. I knew that giving up drugs and alcohol would mean a completely new way of life. I would have to learn to stand on my own two feet without using substances as a crutch. I would have to let go of old ideas about myself and my life. I would have to figure out a new way of living and that was scary.
But I pushed through the fear. As I continued on in sobriety, I met those fears head on. I learned that there WAS a different way of living and that I could survive, even thrive, without the use of drugs and alcohol. Slowly but surely, I moved through the fear and started to grow.
But that doesn’t mean that my fears disappeared. For every fear that I tackled, a new one emerged. Would I be able to support myself? Could I maintain long-term sobriety? Would I ever have a social life again? Would people judge me based on my past behaviors? All of these thoughts and many more played constantly inside of my head. Sometimes, the fear was so overwhelming that it was hard to get out of bed in the morning and face the day.
But again, as time went on, my recovery gave me the opportunity to face these fears and move forward. And for every fear that I tackled and moved past, I grew a little stronger, a little more confident and a little braver. I realized that the only reason that these fears held power over me was because I allowed them to. I reached a point when that was no longer acceptable, and my life transformed.
Don’t get me wrong; I still have a lot of fears. I think it is part of the human condition. But what recovery has given me is the experience and the understanding to know that there is no fear that I can’t take on. I have learned that while something may be scary and uncomfortable at first, if I push through it, the benefits at the end are completely worth it. For example, I used to be very afraid of letting people get close to me because I thought I had the potential to get hurt. But instead of allowing that fear to isolate me and keep me from forming meaningful relationships, I pushed through it. While it was uncomfortable and scary to let people in, the benefits of having amazing people in my life who truly know and care about me is completely worth the initial fear I felt.
There is a quote I love that says, “Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow.” That is truly what recovery has given me: the courage to keep moving forward even when I am in fear.