Getting Sober...and Loving it: Hope and Help from Recovering Alcoholics by Derek Taylor | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Well, thanks to the kindly kindness of @Ahhh Girl, this arrived yesterday. I had fun explaining to my wife why I’d been sent a copy of Getting Sober …and Loving It!

As promised, here’s the foreword by Ringo and Barbara Bach. It’s not hugely revealing but may be of interest to some. The book also has brief chapters from famous and non-famous people, the former including Derek Taylor, Eric Clapton, Gary Glitter 🙁 and Anthony Hopkins.

As we have both been rescued from addiction by attendance at a self-help treatment centre, we’re very happy to write a foreword to this book which has been written in conjunction with SHARP (Self Help Addiction Recovery Programme).

SHARP was started by Dr Brian Wells who has himself been in treatment for addiction to alcohol as well as other substances. And his story is in this book along with many others who have got help, got sober and are now enjoying their lives in recovery, one day at a time.

Getting Sober …and Loving It! Shows how to get that recovery and keep it. Addiction is a disease, not a moral failing, and the only way to deal with it is first to admit you have it and then decide to go after recovery. The great advantage in accepting there is a problem is that, after the surrender, you can grow in awareness and have a far, far better life.

It isn’t all doom and gloom and ginger ale. Our own experience of treatment is that you have to be sick to want recovery. You are in a fog which starts to lift after you put down the drink or drug. At first your are on a pink cloud. Sober at last! Then you have to start work on yourself, you can close the chapter and start a new one. You will hear in treatment that ‘it’s a selfish programme’ and you think ‘I’m not going to get involved in a selfish programme’, but you realise that you are simply being asked to take care of yourself and let other people look after themselves. It’s self-help, in treatment.

You can work out your resentments and find out where all this started, when (and maybe why) you had your first drink. You will see in the stories in this book that we all have a lot in common. You can identify with other people and realise that you are not alone — there is a place where you can get help, and there are people who are happy to share with you their own experience, strength and hope.

In our own case, we needed something but like addiction to come into our lives to knock us down and make us realise that a total change was necessary. We needed something to bring us to our knees, and make us do something about ourselves.

Others in the book will share the pain of addiction with you and how they gained through acknowledging it. All the pain and wreckage of our past is now serving us well, standing us in good stead. There really is no gain without pain. Like a lot of truth, it sounds trite but it is clear to see. It’s hard for us to understand how people who haven’t gone through that pain manage their lives because in recovery programmes you find you can manage your life, one day at a time. When things get really difficult you can thin ‘It will pass today.’ If something happens that we really don’t like, the bottom line is we won’t feel like this forever.

You find you don’t have to live with fear and denial any longer. You can face up to your problems and learn acceptance. Accept yourself and other people.

One wonderful thing for us in treatment was that at the outset we were treated like everybody else. Like Rich and Barb. There was no Ringo and Miss Bach. We were right in there with everyone else and it was so great not to be singled out. Simple things become a pleasure again. When we go out now we have such a fabulous time, and we make plans and keep them. As we go past bars we remember that in the old days the bar is as far as we would have gone, at nine in the morning and right through the day.

When we go on holidays now, we don’t hide away. We used to go on long plane journeys, rent huge villas, stock up the bars, hide and get deranged. Now we don’t have to go through all of that. We’re free to have normal, happy family holidays with no compulsions to feed. In our everyday lives, we are aware of our real commitment to each other without having to do all the same things together at the same time which is how it was before, in a state of codependency, which is very common in addiction.

Nothing that we experience in recovery will come as a surprise to other recovering addicts. As we’ve said, the strength of getting sober and loving it lies in the power to identify with others; no matter where they come from or what they’ve experienced, if they’re compulsive users of whatever, there is so much in common it’s amazing. It’s just great to be able to see so clearly.

It’s true that most people aren’t substance-addicts. We were at our friends’ wedding in Fiji. It started at 11am and we were still hanging around at five that night. We were laughing and chatting with another member of a fellowship of recovering addicts, and we were just so surprised that no-one had tried to pull someone else’s wife, no-one had taken off his sarong or danced on the table. These people were social drinkers.

Maybe you are just a social drinker, like the majority of people. If so, fine. But if you’re not, or if somebody you love is having problems… then this book is for you.