NFL Legend Joe Namath On Overcoming Alcoholism And Being An Inspiration For The Underdog
Joe Namath joined Brian Kilmeade to discuss his new book, “All The Way: My Life In Four Quarters”
I reached an unusual milestone in Alcoholics Anonymous this week – I celebrated my 10,000th consecutive day sober. The milestone is unusual because it takes just over 27 years of continuous sobriety to get there.
Many of the men with whom I got sober back in 1992 are still active in recovery today. They’re enjoying what we call “contented sobriety” – they’ve long since worked out any family-of-origin and health issues, money and work problems, self-esteem concerns, encounters with the IRS or the criminal justice system, or the other challenges of life that alcoholics and addicts tend to bring down upon themselves.
So the question is this: if some people can achieve long-term sobriety, why can’t everyone?
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The unfortunate reality is that most people who come to A.A. won’t get or stay sober. Twenty newcomer coins are produced for every one-year medallion sold.
How come? Does A.A. fail most alcoholics? Or do most alcoholics fail A.A.?
There’s nothing easy about getting sober.
There’s the physical addiction to the painkilling nature of alcohol and drugs. There’s the emotional reliance on substances – the sense that you can trust them in a world where people, from parents to lovers to fellow users almost always let you down.
There’s the spiritual loss of values, where any sense of right and wrong we learned as children gives way to the compulsion to protect one’s right to drink and use. Given the nature of addiction, it’s astonishing that anyone ever gets sober.
So you’re asking people to give up the one thing that seems to make life worth living and that eliminates the deep emotional pain they suffer, the one thing they can count on.
In exchange for what? A folding chair in a church basement with a bunch of overly enthusiastic strangers?
No thanks, say most alkies. I’ll pass.
The results of active addiction are inevitably institutions (prisons or hospitals or both), insanity, or death. Any rational person would be alarmed by such likely outcomes and would take any steps to avoid them. Of course, there’s nothing rational about alcoholism and addiction, and therefore there’s little rationality in the thinking of alcoholics and addicts.
So recovery means trading the certainty of feeling better right away (by drinking or using) for the uncertainty of feeling better eventually (by stopping drinking or using). For most alcoholics and addicts, that’s just a bad bet.
On top of that, recovery in A.A. requires what the program refers to as the enlargement of one’s spiritual life. In other words, you’ve got to business with God. Maybe not the God you grew up with. But you’ve got to invite some Power greater than yourself into your life if you expect to “stay stopped.”
Most alcoholics and addicts come to their first meetings either hating God or just having no interest in the concept of spirituality. And they’re told practically from the beginning that unless they’re willing to develop a relationship with a Higher Power of their own choosing, they are unlikely to recover.
Worse, alcoholics and addicts are not exactly “joiners.” Alcoholism is a disease of isolation. In A.A., it’s said that “the disease wants to get you alone, so it can kill you.”
So it goes against the grain of most alkies and addicts to show up regularly at social gatherings called 12 Step meetings. The meetings can be fascinating and even liberating to those who enjoy recovery, and a tedious punishment to those who don’t. And then you have to choose a “sponsor” or mentor figure, with whom you will eventually share your deepest, darkest secrets.
So you have to give up your best friends (alcohol and drugs), go through whatever withdrawal symptoms you’ll face when you stop taking them, get a God concept, and deal with a bunch of happy people. And you’ll have to trust a human being with your most humiliating memories. So it’s easy to see why most people who come to A.A. don’t stick around.
And yet.
For many newcomers and old-timers alike, there’s something compelling about a roomful of people talking honestly about their own misadventures. It can be a relief to find, finally, human beings who will listen to you and want nothing from you.
Developing one’s own spirituality, however haltingly? Worth a shot. And discovering that you have something to offer other people, whether it’s friendship, a listening ear, a ride to a meeting, or an honest day’s work? It changes your self-perception, slowly, one estimable act at a time.
There’s nothing easy about getting sober – if it were easy, everyone would stop and stay stopped. I myself had eight “first days” in A.A. over a 25-month period prior to my current sobriety date. But then something in me changed. I didn’t want to stop drinking – I just wanted to stop suffering the consequences of continuing to drink.
Not long ago, at an evening meeting, I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in more than 25 years. We’d gotten sober together in Boston meetings back in 1992. He told me he had 90 days sober. Ninety days? I asked, astonished. What happened?
Those steps are so stupid, he told me, referring to the 12 Steps, the recovery program at the core of A.A. that put newcomers on a path toward sobriety, spirituality and self-worth. I didn’t think the steps were stupid. They’d saved my life. My friend asked me to drop him off at a laundromat a few blocks from the meeting where we met.
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Was he going to do his laundry at 9 o’clock at night? No, he explained. You could sleep in the laundromat because it was open 24 hours. The hard plastic chairs weren’t comfortable and the lights were bright, but it was better than sleeping outside. So I gave him a ride to the laundromat, and then on another night to his brother’s apartment, where he was sleeping on the couch.
The old joke is “A.A. is for quitters.” I’d rather be a quitter than sleep in the laundromat. Or be dead or in prison. A.A. has never failed me … for the simple reason that I never failed A.A.
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