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I went to Disney with my family last week, and I made sure to get to meetings every day for five straight days before we left. I really wanted to top off the sobriety tank.

And if I am being rigorously honest, I had very mixed feelings about the trip.

On one hand, I was overjoyed to be able to take my wife and kids there. The hype leading up to the trip was incredible. Everybody was so amped up, and I just kept thinking about how there is no way this is happening if I am still drinking and drugging. So that part of it was awesome.

But I also felt some dread about the trip. We hadn’t gotten on an airplane and gone on a big trip in five years, and I have three kids at such different ages that they usually end up screaming at each other on the way to the mall, let alone 1,500 miles in an airplane. So I kept picturing the bickering, the heat, the long lines, the physical pain I was going to feel, the big dinner bills… and I almost started to lose my patience and drain out every ounce of spirituality before we even boarded the plane.

Luckily. on Sunday afternoon, the evening before we flew out, I got to a meeting and I put it out there in a room of 20 sober men. Holy crap does that help. It doesn’t seem like it would help. But it does. Even now, with quite a bit of recovery time under my belt, I forget the power of naming your problem to somebody else and asking for help.

In this case, the help that I got was a string of text messages the following day from guys saying stuff like, “Have a great trip. You got this. You’re really freaking sober right now.”

I gotta tell you… they were right. The trip was fantastic. Everything I thought could pop up did actually pop up, but I was able to navigate it and we had an absolute blast. Seeing my kids’ faces as they got to do all of these things they’ve been dreaming of for years… honestly, it’s right up there with any accomplishment I’ve ever had in my life.

When I got sober, it was for stuff like this. I have stayed sober because I want to be sober—I have found that it is really important that I am sober because I want to be sober, not because my boss or my friend or my wife or anybody else wants me to be.

But I went to rehab because I thought I was going to die and I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live and I wanted to give my wife and kids the best life possible. I wanted to be able to take them to Disney and New York City and put them through college and whatever else they might dream of.

And for six days last week, we did it. One thing that hit me a little bit is that I found out I was doing a little better than I thought I was. Working a strong recovery program requires constantly pushing yourself, working through resentments, calling out your character defects, and that can get a little heavy. I often end up thinking, “Damn, shouldn’t I be further along than this? How am I still resentful and gossiping and argumentative and impatient and on and on and on?”

What I found out was, I am doing just fine. I would say I realized I’m doing better than I thought, and it wouldn’t surprise me if you’re reading this or listening to this, that you might be doing better than you feel, too.

So my suggestion to you would be to grab a couple of kids and take them to Disney for a week and see what happens!

Just kidding, don’t do that.

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

A $1 bill met a $20 bill and said, "Hey, where have you been lately?"

The $20 answered, "I was on a cruise ship for a while and hung out in the casinos, then I came back to the States and flew out to L.A., went to a couple of baseball games, out to dinner, took in some of the new movies, that sort of thing. How about you?"

The $1 bill said, "Oh, you know, the same old thing—meetings, meetings, meetings."

(Credit: AA Grapevine, September 1999)

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