The Campout (Requiem 5)

Following the relapse, I continued going to meetings. I started hanging out with more people in recovery, and before I knew it I had a regular group of friends. I related quite a bit to one friend in particular: JM. He, too, had used with his mother. He had also gone through treatment at the same place I had. We would drive around and talk about some of the things that we had done in active addiction (translation: before we sobered up). Not being too far removed from doing these things, sometimes it was hard to talk about them. After you've been sober for a little while you are able to laugh about the things you've done, but at first there is nothing funny about the way of life you led. Ever since we first sobered up, we had been hearing about a campout that was supposed to be like sober Woodstock. We decided to go to it. I had been sober about 30 days by then. When the Friday came, we packed up tents, sleeping bags, and stopped by the store to buy some food. We took his red truck and hit the road.

By the time we got there it was dark, but we could see it was going to live up to the hype. There was a pavillion near the entrance to the campground covered by a roof with a stage at one end. A band was playing and people were dancing. We drove around in the dark until we found a spot to set up our tents. We got everything set up and went up by the band. I recognized some of the people from meetings I'd been to. We hung out that night and went to sleep, excited at the prospect of a few days to enjoy the unknown. When I woke up, it was like waking up on a different planet. Because it was dark when we arrived the night before, I'd missed the surroundings. We were in a valley surrounded by mountains. A little ways from the pavillion there was a river with a bridge over it. The beauty was awe inspiring. There were tents everywhere. Behind the covered area, there were rudimentary cabins. Although it couldn't have been past 8:00 in the morning, people were already up drinking coffee and talking amongst themselves in small groups throughout the campsite. When everyone was up, we made some breakfast and set out to see the campground. During the rest of the day, there were contests like tug-of-war and arm wrestling contests. There was a stable of horses near the pavillion and we'd see people riding horses across the river to the trail. To someone who had spent the previous few years drinking and using drugs all the time, it was enough to make you a kid again. We passed the day leisurely laying around in the sun, enjoying being alive and sober. At night there was a 'sobriety countdown'. Almost everyone there went up to the pavillion for it. There was an announcer who started it saying "50 years. 49 years. 48 years...." When the announcer said your amount of sobriety, you would stand up to a round of applause. There were people on the sides counting the hands. Here is the cool thing: the less time sober people had, the louder the applause so that by the time somebody stood up with one day sober everybody was on their feet and the noise was deafening. The newest comer to sobriety was then invited to the stage to be presented with a book from the person with the most sobriety. It was a very humbling experience and one that I can't really relate to anything outside of recovery.

There are a few suggestions made to newcomers to recovery. One of which is to avoid any major decisions for the first year of sobriety.( i.e. divorce, quitting a job, moving to another state, etc) Another is to abstain from romantic relationships during the first year. The reason is that in general, we are looking for anything that will help us feel better. Relationships do that at first. The problem is that when we feel good, we don't have a lot of drive to improve ourselves and learn to live sober. By the time we hit bottom we aren't very good at relationships, so there will usually come a time when those good feelings will go away. If we haven't been working on learning to live sober, we're going to put ourselves in a position where we feel badly and want to feel good again. You can do this in recovery, but it's a slower process than we alcoholics want. We know exactly how to feel good again fast: a drink. It doesn't always happen this way, but it happens enough that many people tell newcomers to avoid romance like the plague for the first year. Some of us are better listeners than others....

After the countdown, there was a talent show and after that a dance. During the dance I ran into a girl I had seen at a few meetings. I asked her to dance. After that we starting chatting. Long after the dance was over, she mentioned she was going to catch hell from her sponsor (with whom she was sharing a tent) for coming back to the tent so late. I caught her drift and took my cue: "No problem, I've got extra room in mine...." And so it began.