30 Years of Coin Flips

On Friday, August 9, I celebrated 30 years clean and sober. When I lay in bed that morning, I felt suspended in time: then, and now, and all the points in between.

I want to talk with you today about the passage of time in a recovery journey. Being clean and sober for 30 years feels utterly improbable and surreal—like I’ve been flipping a coin and it keeps coming up heads. The first coin flips, especially, were true miracles.

It was a miracle the day I hit bottom—I’d been smoking crack all weekend, with no food, water, or sleep for five days. I was sitting in the crack house wearing a blonde wig because I’d been working as a call girl, and the vision I got was a crystal clear awareness of the contrast between who I was and the identity I had imagined for myself when I was a kid.

When I was 11 years old, I wanted to be an astrophysicist— a scientist and an academic. The cognitive dissonance between what I wanted to be and where I was was mind-blowing. I knew, at that moment, that unless I got up and got out, my life was never going to be anything but what it was at that moment.

So I got up and walked out the door. That was the first coin flip. It felt like I had a 50-50 shot.

Then improbability kicked in. I thought I was just going to quit. I didn’t think it would be hard. I didn’t know I was an addict and an alcoholic. Then the next coin flip: I had a date with a guy and he took me to a 12-step meeting on our first date. THAT coin flip seems very improbable. It was a Tuesday night, and that’s what he did on Tuesdays, at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

I stayed clean and sober for the next week, and he took me back to the meeting the next week. And the coin flips kept coming, and each time they came up heads.

Addicts tend not to get clean and sober. Same with food addicts. But we have people in BLE who’ve been flipping the coin for years and coming up heads.

Being Bright doesn’t mean you don’t have to work for it. It does get easier, though. To use my coin metaphor, what happens is that you take actions that weight the coin in your favor. I didn’t feel, when I woke up today, that I wasn’t sure I’d be clean and sober. It’s not a certainty, but it’s likely. Why? Because I have taken so many actions to weight the coin. So when I flip it, it’s likely to come up heads.

The actions I took over the years changed my identity. I now identify as a recovering addict and alcoholic, clean and sober. I do not drink or do drugs. I don’t eat sugar or flour, and I weigh and measure my food faithfully.

I saw someone at the ten-year luncheon who had a tattoo that read “If the cost is my peace, it’s too expensive.” I relate to that. Last night I went out to dinner, and the salad looked like a little too much. I went over to the trash bin and flicked some of the salad in it. I don’t ever want to walk out of a restaurant wondering if I ate too much food.

A few years ago, I wondered if I could pick up drinking alcohol responsibly and safely and have it work for me. I took that idea to David and most definitely did not think it was a sound idea, and his reaction snapped me out of it—and once again the coin flipped in my favor.

Time, in recovery, takes time. You don’t get a single year Bright without putting in the time. It isn’t one big Herculean effort. But the time passage isn’t exactly linear. Not linear at all. In fact, I do believe the passage of time in recovery is logarithmic.

The early days tend to take forever. Those first hundred days of Bright Line Eating is several eternities because you’re changing everything about yourself. It takes so much focus and many coin flips each and every day. And all day, every day, you have to hustle to do things that will weight the coin.

After a year, you may feel like you’re reborn. To have gone through a full year is miraculous. After two years, you start to feel like you know what you’re doing if you’re really working the program. It gets easier.

When you get to 5, 7, 10 years, you’re such a different person. When milestones come around, you feel like you’re in an incredible state of grace. You’re Bright, and in your Bright Body, and you feel awestruck that it feels so good. After that, the years start to race by quite quickly, and eventually you feel like you’re just getting credit for not dying.

The secret to staying willing to weight the coin is that you must fall in love with the growth you experience. Pour yourself into each new challenge, whatever that might be, whether that’s working on your marriage or getting a new degree or finding new ways to be of service in your relationships. There’s always a new frontier of growth. When you stay engaged, you’re doing what it takes to weight the coin. And it’s all worth it. So very, very worth it.

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