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Emotional Sobriety – Chapter 2

A drawing titled “Masked Lover #15”, completed on October 24, 2026). The original was made for and given as a gift to a woman I found attractive.

It’s sobering to be yourself and experience failure. An opportunity for reflection, especially when all of this is so new to me. In my experience, there are usually three courses of action when rejected:

• Change the target
• Change the approach
• Change both

In this case, it just makes the most sense to change both, because I’ve both been focusing on the wrong things and the wrong people. I’ve had messed up priorities, putting my own interests ahead of the interests of the people I am planning to serve. At the same time, I have to recognize how new I am to this, so mistakes will be made as a part of my learning process.

The most important dates are as follows:

1. My Sobriety – 9/11/25 – 13 months ago
2. My Shahada – 6/28/26 – 4 months ago
3. New Port Richey – 8/18/26 – 2 months ago

My life really began when I got sober. While it only took about a month or so to physically get sober, it took much, much, longer to emotionally get sober. Yesterday felt like the first real day I could be honest with my emotions, where I didn’t feel the need of a substance, or another person to feel complete. All I need is the presence of God.

Emotional sobriety is the ability to experience the full range of human emotions—such as joy, sadness, anger, fear, and disappointment—without turning to substances, numbing agents, or destructive behaviors to escape them.

Originally coined by Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, in a 1958 letter published in the AA Grapevine, the concept goes beyond physical abstinence. It focuses on inner stability, self-awareness, and emotional regulation.

I chair an AA Grapevine meeting every Wednesday. I’ve been hosting it for a few weeks now but I never thought to write about it, despite naming this story after a concept originally presented by the magazine.

In addition to chairing that meeting, I attend at least one AA (or NA) meeting per day. On some days I do more (anywhere from 2-5) but recently I’ve realized that I’ve been overdoing it. There is a such thing as too much of a good thing, especially when there isn’t enough religion and not enough prospecting for marriage.

Sometimes I don’t know what to do with my emotions. That’s one of the main reasons I enjoyed being an artist, but my struggle has been that my art is so closely tied to my addictions. I don’t really know how to create art while being conscious of God. In the same vein, I don’t know how to interact with women while being conscious of God. I don’t know how to recruit for or sell insurance without being completely conscious of God.

The problem is that I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and I’m always attracted to people who are composed on the outside, and rotten on the inside. At first, I struggled to listen. People would always say things that immediately raised red flags; they would express their unresolved resentments, their desire to regress as opposed to progress, and their lack of understanding of the material in the books we read, rather an expressing vulnerability or a desire to learn.