A hallmark of my alcoholism was dishonesty. Not dramatic dishonesty. Not criminal dishonesty. Quiet dishonesty. The kind that erodes you slowly.
I was dishonest with almost everyone in my life about my drinking. I minimized it. I concealed it. I rearranged facts to make it seem less problematic. I told partial truths. I edited timelines. But the person I lied to most consistently was myself.
“I can just have one.”
“I’ll quit tomorrow.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“I deserve this.”
Those weren’t slips of the tongue. They were negotiations. Every one of them was a compromise with my own values. And for years, that quiet lack of honesty kept my drinking intact.
Looking back, I don’t think alcohol was the engine of my addiction. Dishonesty was. Alcohol was just the mechanism. As long as I could blur the truth, I could keep drinking. As long as I could distort reality slightly, I didn’t have to confront what was actually happening.
Sobriety, I’ve learned, thrives on clarity.
What My Sponsor Meant by “Radical”
Early in recovery, I had an AA sponsor named Bob. Bob was steady and direct. He introduced me to a phrase that confused me at the time: radical honesty.
I misunderstood it immediately. I thought it meant brutal truth-telling. Saying everything I thought. Being unfiltered. Telling people uncomfortable things in the name of authenticity.
That’s not what he meant.
Radical honesty isn’t about telling your wife her dress is ugly. It’s about refusing to lie to yourself. It’s about not negotiating with your own standards. Not moving the goalposts. Not rewriting reality because it’s inconvenient. It’s about alignment.
Radical honesty is about not negotiating with your own standards.
My alcoholism lived in the negotiation. One drink becomes two. Tomorrow becomes next week. “This is the last time” becomes a familiar script.
Radical honesty cuts through that. It asks simple questions:
Are you proud of this choice?
Does this align with who you say you want to be?
If no one else knew, would you still feel good about it?
Those questions are uncomfortable because they remove the wiggle room. But they also remove the fog.
Honesty Gets Quieter Over Time
In early sobriety, honesty felt loud. I had to say hard things out loud. I had to admit what I didn’t want to admit. Now it feels different. Now it’s mostly internal.
It’s waking up and acknowledging when I’m restless instead of blaming someone else. It’s noticing when I’m overworking to prove something. It’s catching myself when I start to romanticize the past. It’s telling the truth before the story gets complicated.
There’s a misunderstanding about honesty. Some people think it means bluntness or confrontation or constant exposure. That’s not what I’ve learned.
Honesty doesn’t require cruelty. It doesn’t require broadcasting your thoughts. It doesn’t mean you weaponize truth.
It means you stop compromising with yourself.
If you say you value sobriety, you don’t secretly resent it.
If you say you want discipline, you don’t negotiate exceptions every day.
If you say you want peace, you stop feeding the things that steal it.
Your private standards begin to match your public claims.
Sobriety Is Simpler When You Stop Lying
I used to think recovery was about not drinking. Now I think it’s about not lying.
Not lying about what you want.
Not lying about what hurts.
Not lying about what you’re capable of.
Sobriety forced honesty into my life. Over time, honesty has made sobriety easier. Not easy. Easier. Because once you stop distorting reality, the decisions get simpler.
“None for me.”
There’s no negotiation in that sentence. Just alignment.
If you’ve struggled with alcohol, you probably know what it feels like to bend the truth in your favor. To soften it. To delay it. Radical honesty isn’t loud. It’s steady. It’s the quiet refusal to compromise with yourself.
And for me, that’s been one of the most important parts of staying sober.
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