Redefining Sobriety: Staying Steady & Ready for the Next Right Thing

How to get back on track after a relapse or slip

For Beth

Recently, at the bakery, change has been afoot. New employees. New equipment. New business trends. These changes have paralleled my lived experience, especially in my journey towards sobriety, leading me to redefine what it means to be sober.

One change in the bakery that really threw me for a loop has been the arrival of a new mixer, a change I dreaded for a long time.

When I first got to the bakery, I was warned that our mixer wasn’t top quality. In fact, it was one of the lowest quality mixers one could buy, especially for the volume of product we were mixing.

The old mixer was smaller and would shake when at work, steadily thumping so loud I could hear it across the building, from outside, even. It leaked oil and had issues starting and stopping, sometimes leading me to have to mix gallons of dough by hand, which cost time and money.

So, why would I, a baker, prefer the failing old mixer to a shiny new, top-of-the-line model? It was the fear of change—having to relearn the recipes, adjust to new volumes and sizes, and worst of all, leaving room for error...a lot of room.

And this failure was realized. Baking with the owner, I failed to replace the 60-quart mixing bowl onto the mixer—I just couldn’t get the right angle. Naturally, I was embarrassed, turning different shades of red.

While I wish it had been a one-time thing, I failed again and again to lift the mixing bowl off the mixer and place it onto the counter or cutting board with ease. I felt like I was fumbling a football as it clunked around, banging on every surface along the way.

What’s more, the pizza dough we hand-shape into pizzas on the weekends has been inconsistent at best and really difficult to work with at worst. The mixing speeds and required times have all been different, taking a toll on my sanity and that of the other pizza makers.

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Simultaneously, outside of the bakery, life has been tumultuous.

Amidst my partner’s job search, my crazy work schedule, and full-time PhD coursework, my partner and I have had to address car repairs, solidify a venue for our wedding, and orchestrate holiday plans and gift giving, to name but a few things.

I have also been working through many gender-dysphoric questions, as this process is ever-growing and constantly changing shape—a journey that has led me to seek some gender-affirming care, which hasn’t been easy.

Another difficulty has been having less and less time to devote to my program, time with my Higher Power, and my spiritual progress. Rather than having time to write, journal, go to meetings, and spend time in the rooms doing service, I’ve had to worry about earning enough and getting by, even with a money program.

I’ve had to learn to process these life and work changes without the help of a solid and steady program.

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As you might imagine, this has led to some slipping and sliding, which I’ve had to discuss with my sponsor and work through with more frequent meetings. So far, I’ve had several slips in my sobriety and many temptations.

One night, exhausted from work and buzzed with endorphins, it was easy to take a glass of cider from a co-worker and down it without a second thought.

While alcohol isn’t necessarily my qualifying substance, I know it still affects my posture towards food, money, and work—all of which are very much my addictions. It’s no surprise that this slip led to a few others with alcohol (just isolated moments, I told myself).

However, over Thanksgiving, the sugary, floury, processed foods abound, and staring at a dessert table piled high with sweet goods—everything against my program—I caved.

One pastry led to a bite of french toast at breakfast the next day, which led to a bite of a brownie the day after, and before long, I had eaten a whole bag of sweetened chews from the co-op in a stress-induced frenzy to finish a paper I had put off due to overwork, while still overworking.

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When addressing it with my sponsor, we talked for a while and finally landed on a culprit: change. She noted, like any wise sponsor, all the ways my life has been changing lately and how difficult it has been on my body.

I wanted to feel bad for myself, for her to shame me, for me to hear I was fired as a sponsee. But none of those things happened. Instead, she said something very simple yet profound: Just get back to it, Jo.

The “it” being my sobriety, the “it” being my meetings, my self-care, my spiritual practices, etc. We talked for an hour, and I wanted to focus on the problem for much of the time, but she kept turning me towards the solution.

“What do I tell the voices of temptation when they tell me this isn’t necessarily my vice?” I asked.

“Sobriety isn’t about vices. It is about staying mentally steady and spiritually ready for what’s to come,” she replied.

I said nothing in response. The words rattled around in my heavy heart. Sobriety. Steady. Ready.

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In our conversation, there was no shame. We even ended it on a positive note, but I still felt off, like I hadn’t been punished when I needed to be. Then, I realized what was wrong: my definition of sobriety was too narrow.

It wasn’t just about abstaining from a substance for the sake of abstaining from the substance and not ruining my life. Rather, I had to ask myself: why was my life ruined?

Because of fear of change, because of brain chemistry hijacked by boo, because of inability to be steady or ready in a tumultuous time when Higher Power would have us be.

It clicked.

Sobriety is staying mentally ready and spiritually steady for what is to come, which we cannot control.

This expansive definition doesn’t erase my mistake but makes it less about morality and abstinence and more about the lived reality following such relapses and slips. And in the reality of relapses and slips, we don’t lose our humanity, but we do lose our ability to connect with Higher Power and maintain ourselves spiritually and mentally.

While I wish slipping and sliding on no one, I am reminded why one of the 12 Steps’ mantras is: Practice, not perfection.

If we give up because we aren’t perfect, because we have a slip and dive headfirst into relapse, we miss opportunities for growth and for our sobriety to mean so much more than just abstinence (a very all-or-nothing way of thinking).

Instead, the program will grow as we grow, solidify as we solidify, to the point of unshakeability.

I needed my slip. And now, I’m getting back to it. How about you?

Now you.

We’d love for you to share in the comments:

• What’s helped you get back on track when you’ve slipped or faced temptation?

• What does “sobriety” mean for you personally?

And if you found this article helpful, please tap the little heart. It lets others know there’s something useful here and will help us grow this community.

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Jo Christian (they/them)

is a non-binary baker, writer/poet, and recovering addict in Southern Illinois. They are the author of

Recovering Trans Mystic

, a Substack newsletter, and Post-Eclipse: A Queer Home (2024), a chapbook of poems published and available at Bottlecap Press.

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