According to the Jackson Five

I think that as I have gotten sober I have experienced three distinct phases of recovery. Alcohol gives us a lashing -- and I'm talking a big, heavy lash, well-constructed, with metal spikes dipped in hot sauce. So, initially, life gets much, much better very quickly. We call this The Pink Cloud phase. Surprising as it may be to the active alcoholic, when we quit drinking and using our lives improve. Duh. Active alcoholics take a lot of punishment. We feel terrible physically and we keep getting beat up and fired and kicked out and left. I think sometimes we confuse the absence of so much pain with happiness. In any case, it's a hell of an improvement.

The second phase of my recovery was mostly grunt work. Let's call this the Slog Phase. I went to a meeting every day and was pretty active in The Program, but I was still bedeviled by a lot of fear and anxiety and remorse. Not as much -- things were improving -- but there was still a significant amount. I got scared at the drop of a hat. Like a metal hat -- not a felt hat, floating gently to the ground. A iron helmet thrown toward the ground by a Biblical giant. Wear the world like a loose blanket? I was wearing the world like a spandex unitard three sizes too small that had been shrunk in the dryer for a couple of weeks. Personally, I found this frequently frustrating. The easy improvements were accomplished.

The final phase, I hope, is Long Term Sobriety. I think the phrase "long term" is fluid. I know people with many years of abstinence who behave like horse's asses and I know deeply grounded individuals who have only been with us for a short while. Anyway, we've been through a lot of things a couple of times. We stay active and engaged. We begin to understand what it means to practice these principles in all of our affairs. It's no great feat to get sober but still act like a jerk. We roll with the punches. We sit in our canoe and paddle, content to go wherever the river takes us.

One, two, three. As simple as A-B-C.