Sober Isn't the Finish Line (What Bonnie Raitt Taught Me)

I did a run-through yesterday of the hike/experience I'm leading next Sunday, and it was so gorgeous and uplifting I still can't stop thinking about it. It got me thinking about something I've believed since the day I got sober, and haven't stopped believing in the eight-plus years since.

There is an inner brilliance in you that can come through clearly once you're sober.

Notice I said can. It isn't automatic just because the alcohol and drugs are gone.

Even if you "didn't have that big of a problem." Even if you only quit drinking for your health. Even if you had a problem big enough that you needed a lot of support when you first quit.

If you don't pay attention to that brilliance — nurture it, learn to tell the difference between old conditioning and your own intuition, strengthen your sense of self in a world whose systems don't actually have your best interests at heart — then you're sober, which is great, and truly helpful. But it's not what I now call sobernatural.

Sobernatural is what happens when you've both moved past your drinking self and made contact with the self that was there the whole time, full of promise, waiting.

Bonnie Raitt is one of my favorite examples of this — not because her story is one of instant sober gratification, but because it shows what can happen when you keep going.

Bonnie Raitt got sober in early 1987, in her late 30's. This was after several years of heavy drinking that cost her a record deal and a poorly received album. When she talks about this period, it isn't a dramatic rock-bottom story. She had a skiing injury, and then an opportunity came up to work with Prince, which motivated her to want to feel and look like herself again. She says some sober friends helped her get there. 

But it's not that she got sober and bam, she was famous. It was another year before Capitol Records signed her on. She wrote and recorded a new album that didn't immediately take off. 

Then came the Grammys. It was almost three full years after she'd gotten sober that Nick of Time won four awards, including Album of the Year, and that was the breakthrough. She wrote the song Nick of Time about a year into her sobriety. 

It took three years of her staying true to herself, nurturing her inner brilliance, before it became manifest for the world to see. That's the sobernatural piece. Not the moment you stop, but what you nurture as it unfolds in the years after. 

Now, I'll admit: even at our most sobernatural, none of us are about to become Bonnie Raitt. But we've each got our own particular way of being in this world that's meant to come through. And it's never too late to create the conditions for that.

So don’t let your sobriety languish in the crack behind the couch cushions. Pay attention to it, and pay attention to the spark behind the discomfort that brought you to sobriety in the first place.