Service Work:Recovery Isn’t Just About Me Anymore.

When I first got sober, I needed help.

I needed people who had been where I had been. People who understood the insanity, the fear, the guilt, and the chaos that came with addiction. I needed someone to show me that there was another way to live.

Those people didn’t owe me anything.

They helped me because someone had helped them.

That’s service work.

Early in recovery, I thought getting sober was mainly about stopping drinking. Today I understand that stopping was only the beginning. Recovery has taught me how to live differently, and service has become a huge part of that.

Service Doesn’t Have to Be Something Big

Sometimes we hear “service work” and think we need to become a sponsor, chair a meeting, sit on a committee, or take on some huge responsibility.

Those things are service, but service can be much simpler.

Making coffee before a meeting is service.

Setting up chairs is service.

Cleaning up afterward is service.

Greeting the person who nervously walks through the door for the first time is service.

Giving someone a ride is service.

Answering the phone when another person in recovery is struggling is service.

Listening instead of always needing to be heard is service.

Sometimes the smallest thing we do can mean more to somebody than we’ll ever know.

Service Gets Me Out of My Own Head

One of the dangerous places for me to spend too much time is inside my own head.

When everything becomes about my problems, my frustrations, my wants, my feelings, and what other people are doing wrong, life can get pretty miserable.

Service interrupts that.

It asks me a simple question:

“What can I do for somebody else today?”

That doesn’t mean ignoring my own recovery. My sobriety still has to come first. But part of protecting my sobriety is learning that the world doesn’t revolve around me.

Helping another person gets me outside of myself.

Somebody Did It for Me

This is probably the biggest reason service matters to me.

I didn’t get here alone.

People answered my questions. People listened to me. People shared their experience. People opened meeting rooms, made coffee, sponsored others, gave rides, picked up phones, and showed up when they probably had plenty of other things they could have been doing.

They kept recovery available for me until I was finally ready for it.

I can never completely repay those people.

But I can pass along what they gave me.

That’s one of the beautiful things about recovery. We don’t really pay it back.

We pay it forward.

Service Keeps Recovery Alive

Programs like AA don’t survive because somebody somewhere is getting paid to keep everything running.

They survive because recovering alcoholics continue showing up for each other.

Someone unlocks the door.

Someone makes the coffee.

Someone chairs the meeting.

Someone talks to the newcomer.

Someone takes the service position nobody else wants.

Someone stays afterward and cleans up.

Someone sponsors the next person.

And then hopefully that person eventually does the same thing for somebody else.

That’s how recovery keeps moving forward.

From Taking to Giving

Addiction took a lot from my life, but it also made me a taker in ways I didn’t always recognize.

Recovery has taught me something different.

How to give without expecting something in return.

There was a time when I needed people to carry me.

Today, I have the opportunity to help carry someone else.

That’s growth.

That’s gratitude.

That’s service.

And that’s part of what Normalize Sobriety means to me.

We shouldn’t just normalize people choosing not to drink. We should normalize people helping one another recover. We should normalize reaching back for the person behind us. We should normalize talking openly about recovery so the next person knows they aren’t alone.

Because somebody helped us get sober.

Now it’s our turn to help somebody else.

Service doesn’t just strengthen the person we’re helping.

It strengthens our own recovery too.

Keep showing up.

Keep helping.

Keep giving back.

Normalize Sobriety.

Others helped us get sober. Now it’s time for us to help others.

Keep it Clean. Keep it Simple.

NormalizeSobriety.net