RISK/REWARD RATIO

I was speaking with Nigel apropos of the meeting this morning which was laden with shares regarding how boring and lonely life was after alcoholism and how unstimulating sobriety has become. But everyone agreed that being sober far outweighed the consequences of alcoholism.

Jake shared that he is now going on 2 ½ years of sobriety and he is in a lonely slump. He has no girlfriend, he is at sea as to what to do on a Friday or any other night and the only friend he has is his puppy. And he has the feeling that wherever he goes he feels out of place. The girlfriend is an old story with Jake and nobody has been able to counsel him adequately as to what course he should take.

John is worried about his teen son who wants to experiment with drugs and alcohol but feels hamstrung by his father who while not passing judgment on this desire, has led a life of sobriety for fifteen years and by his very presence takes the “fun” out of the experimenting. It’s a dilemma that many drunks have experienced with their kids. Who wants a parent whose existence screams “don’t experiment or you’ll end up like me”? They would rather have a quiet partner as a parent, one who has no experiences to teach them.

So Nigel and I discussed the nature and origin of all of this ennui among our fellow drunks and we tried to put a face on the causes of these effects. First, having been raging drunks, we were always on the edge of life living a high risk and perhaps high reward lifestyle. As long as we were strung out on alcohol and drugs we were fine with taking risks, in business, in personal style, in driving and all manner of other behaviors most others would deem as anti-social and reckless.

Yet the intermittent reinforcement of high returns for risk taking solidified those acts and since non sobriety was the cause of our risk taking, its role in life was reinforced. This is the same dynamic that drives gambling.

But once we have undertook a sober existence, the associations of this behavior with drunkenness was unavoidable and we decided that risk taking was an unnecessary and unwanted threat to our sobriety so we eliminated these edgy behaviors to avoid the risk of falling back into drunken behaviors. So we developed a keen aversion to risk taking and we avoid risk like the plague. And we then accepted, rightly or wrongly that this existence must be the price to pay for sobriety and we became restless and discontented with our new life as we now know it.

But Nigel pointed out that the fear of becoming a recidivist sucks up the creative juices and clamps down the creative impulses. We want to remain in a psychically comfortable zone where we do not want to risk our sobriety on any behavior that would make us uncomfortable so we chose to remain placid, moderate and bored. But Nigel said that we, a group of very talented guys, should not be consumed by the fear of falling off the wagon because we may yet pursue risky deals if we know the risks and understand how to mitigate them. And if our fear prevents us from acting we must accept the consequence of being bored to death.

But taking the risk bull by the horns in life requires a vigilant eye and deep wellspring of strength of character. And ultimately the reward for taking that risk is the creation of something new, unique or better than things were prior to going creatively ballistic. If only we could coax our fears out of hiding in the closet into the light of a bolder, calmer us.

The truth is that we have become comfortable in our aversion to risk. And that has made us complacent, not wanting to rock our collective boats, our tranquility and serenity for fear of diving into the bottle again. It is a fine line between fear and folly. We have a healthy fear to avoid people, places and things that will expose us to taking up alcohol consumption again. And we are anxious for fear of once having extended ourselves out of our comfort zones that we will fall prey to those anxieties that led us to drink in the first place. But fearing that this will occur is unproductive, for it keeps active minds fallow.

And as our minds rest from planting too many ideas and activities we miss another imperative, to be engaged, aware and living a zestful life. Because the excitement that new ideas and processes provide makes us fully engaged with our families, society and with our own lives.
So the challenge for us, as Nigel counseled, is to strike out in new directions plying our intelligence in the pursuit of novel and interesting pursuits so that we never more have to complain that sobriety can only be manifest as an inevitably dour and dull existence.

Res October 24, 2010