When Forcing Life Stops Working: A Lesson In Surrender From Six Years of Long-Term Sobriety

Disclaimer before we dive in:

For the sake of not typing a paragraph every time, I use the word God. It is simply the easiest three-letter placeholder for… whatever. Please feel free to mentally replace it with Good Orderly Direction, Universe, Universal Love, cosmic Wi-Fi signal, Beyoncé, or the Giant Mystery That Helps You Sleep at Night. I truly do not care. Just pick whatever version makes your nervous system unclench and roll with it.

When Nothing Works Out, Even in Long Term Recovery

There comes a point in recovery when the battle is no longer against alcohol or drugs. The real opponent becomes control. In my early sobriety, surrender looked like setting down the bottle and trusting that something greater than me would help me survive the night. Now, six years later, surrender looks like unclenching my grip on life, loosening my white knuckled plans, and allowing things to unfold without forcing them. I thought getting sober would be the hardest thing I ever did, and maybe at one point it was. But no one prepares you for the day when the addiction morphs, when it stops being a substance and becomes an obsession with controlling outcomes.

Six years ago, during my final withdrawal, I was curled on my living room floor screaming into the carpet for God to get me through one last night. I begged. I promised anything. Just let me survive this and I will change everything. That moment is literally tattooed into my nervous system. I remember the taste of fear, and praying out loud into the empty room, believing that if help did not come, I might actually die. That memory is what still keeps me humble to this day. I intentionally hold onto it, not because I am stuck in the past, but because remembering who I was keeps me grounded in who I am becoming. One bottle of wine would be enough to send me back to that place. Maybe not on night one, but by week six, my life would unravel and I would be right back on that living room floor. The boy who cried out to God is not someone I used to be. He is a part of me that I honor so I never try to outrun him again.

When Sobriety Stops Flowing: The Season of Forcing and White-Knuckling Life

Over the last several months, life started revealing that although I was not relapsing on substances, I was relapsing into something subtler: force. I had been operating from pure yang energy, my masculine output. Action. Drive. Hustle. Obsession. I was pushing outcomes instead of listening for direction. I was living entirely from my will, not God’s. It did not start as some dramatic spiritual crisis. It started quietly. It started with a breakup.

The end of a two and a half year relationship shook something loose in me. I had believed that relationship was part of my forever story. When it ended, I was cracked wide open. The breakup forced me into a new level of honesty with myself. It invited me back into shadow work, the same type of emotional excavation I did when I worked Step Four years ago. The breakup was the detonator, but the real explosion happened after. Something inside me decided that if I could not have the relationship I wanted, I would at least build the life I thought would protect me from ever being that vulnerable again. I would create success so undeniable that no one could ever leave me.

So I shifted into hyperdrive.

I left my corporate job a year and a half ago to pursue consulting, freelancing, and creating a life that felt expansive and true. I loved the freedom. I loved the creativity. I loved the connection to purpose. But after a while of wrestling with uncertainty and the discomfort of being my own boss, the lure of stability crept in. The comforts of corporate life started calling to me. Predictable paychecks. A defined role.

Expectations set for me instead of by me. A system that built accountability around me so I did not have to hold myself fully responsible. My ego whispered that maybe a high paying job would fix all the discomfort I was feeling, and I listened. I decided to pursue a full time role again, telling myself it was temporary. Just something to hold me while I figured out my next steps.

So I went into full force mode. I applied intensely. I prepared obsessively. I interviewed flawlessly.

And I got four life altering opportunities, each one more promising than the last.

When Opportunity Disappears: What Closed Doors Mean in Long-Term Recovery

The first opportunity was a full time offer, but when the owner sent the compensation package, it was fifty percent below my requested salary. The math alone felt like an insult, but it was more than the money. I felt the universe whispering that I was shrinking myself to fit into something that no longer matched who I had become.

The second opportunity moved me to the final round of interviews. I nailed every conversation and every assignment. I was told an offer was likely coming. Then at the last moment, they gave the role to someone else. The explanation was that the candidate had experience managing more than two hundred client accounts at once. I still question whether that person exists or if they were invented to soften the blow.

The third opportunity was my runner up favorite. I was offered a director of operations role for an international ad agency. Two days before I was supposed to start, one of the cofounders was deported from the United States. After sending a final voice message confirming my excitement for day one, the company ghosted me.

No explanation. No closure. Just evaporated.

And then came the fourth one: THE DREAM JOB!

The one with the salary that made my jaw drop.The one with equity.The one with full health insurance.The one with a team I genuinely admired and wanted to grow with.

This was the kind of offer people pray for. I got the congratulations call. They hyped me up. I cried from relief. I felt like everything was finally falling into place. A few hours later, I received another call. I answered, ready to sign the contract.

Instead, they rescinded the offer.

They told me that leadership felt my geographically flexible lifestyle created too much unpredictability within their company culture. They perceived the freedom I had worked so hard to build as a liability.

I felt like I had been punched. I sobbed. I tried advocating for myself. I argued. I begged. I negotiated. Nothing worked.

After that fourth loss, something inside me broke open.

How to Recognize Patterns and Spiritual Redirection in Sobriety

When the same pattern repeats over and over, at some point you have to stop asking what is wrong with the world and start asking what needs to shift within you.

Why was I making it to the finish line only to lose at the last second? Why did every opportunity collapse right before the moment of arrival? What was the universe trying to show me that I was resisting?

So I pulled back. I withdrew from the chaos. I spent time in nature. I meditated. I got quiet. I stopped demanding answers and started listening for truth. And the truth came through crystal clear.

I was not supposed to go back.

Not to corporate. Not to predictability. Not to the version of myself that needed external validation to feel safe.

I was trying to trade purpose for security. I was trying to trade freedom for comfort. I was trying to trade soul for paycheck.

The universe was not punishing me; i was protecting me. It was redirecting me back onto the path I had chosen before fear interfered.

Taking Action vs. Taking Control in Recovery: Why Self-Will Blocks Spiritual Alignment

Addicts have a complicated relationship with control. We do not just like certainty. We crave it. We try to manage outcomes with the same intensity we once used to chase our next high. We convince ourselves that if we try hard enough, push hard enough, strategize cleverly enough, we can bend reality to our will.

Control becomes the new drug.

But control has withdrawal symptoms just like alcohol did! Anxiety. Fear. Panic. Obsessive overthinking.

The truth is that long term sobriety requires a different kind of courage. In early recovery, the battle is letting go of substances. In long term recovery, the battle is letting go of the illusion that we are in control.

Life showed me very clearly that if I continued trying to manufacture outcomes, I would keep losing.

Not because I was inadequate.

Because I was misaligned!!

Shifting From Control to Surrender: Choosing Yin Energy in Sobriety

The universe operates in balance. Masculine and feminine. Doing and being. Effort and surrender. Yin and Yang. My entire adult life has been dominated by yang energy. I chase. I pursue. I go after what I want. I create momentum. I build my life through force. There is power in that, but there is also danger.

But recovery also requires equal parts yin.

It requires receptivity, listening, trust, and allowing.

People in the recovery rooms love to say “your best thinking got you here,” as if the mind is only capable of destruction. I have always hated that line. Yes, my thinking once led me into addiction, chaos, and self-annihilation. But that same mind, healed and aligned, has also built a life beyond anything I ever imagined for myself. Sobriety taught me that my thinking wasn’t the problem, but the energy that fueled it was.

Early recovery revealed that white-knuckling and forcing outcomes nearly killed me. Long-term sobriety showed me that trying to control everything almost cost me my peace. When I operate from pure yang energy all action, urgency, gripping) I become depleted, anxious, and disconnected from spiritual alignment. When I return to yin, to stillness and surrender, I remember that I don’t have to force what is meant for me. What is mine moves toward me, naturally, inevitably, without strain.

Sobriety, Ego, and Spiritual Anonymity: Recovering Out Loud Without Losing Yourself

Part of my spiritual journey in sobriety has been learning how to embrace anonymity. I have always loved the Sufi principle: be in this world, but not of this world. I used to believe that the moment I started speaking publicly about my spirituality or recovery, the sacredness of it would be diluted. I feared that if I turned my journey into content, I would lose the soul of it. I did not want to become a sobriety influencer posting staged inspirational quotes with soft lighting and a latte.

But anonymity is not the same as secrecy.

For six years, I let recovery be something private and intimate between me, myself, and God. Those anonymous hours in meetings and meditation saved my life. They gave me room to be messy, raw, and real without performance. I protected that space fiercely. And for a long time, that was right.

Then something shifted.

The phrase recover out loud kept coming up in meetings, conversations, podcasts, everywhere. Not as an ego driven push to perform or brand myself as sober, but as a calling. Recover out loud means letting your life become evidence that recovery is possible. It means being a lighthouse without becoming a spectacle. It means sharing enough of yourself that someone who is drowning can see that land exists.

So on my six year anniversary, I finally shared publicly that I am sober. It felt like a second coming out, even more vulnerable than the first. I posted. I shared. I told the truth. And instead of losing the sacredness of my recovery, something profound happened.

I felt more connected to it.

What Life Teaches Us in Sobriety When Nothing Goes as Planned

Looking back at the last few months, I can see clearly that life was redirecting me away from misalignment and back into authenticity. Each collapsed job offer was a spiritual intervention, not a failure. I was not losing opportunities. I was being protected from abandoning myself. I had asked for a life of freedom, purpose, and creativity, but when fear showed up, I started running back to the only model of safety I used to know. Corporate stability. Big paycheck. External validation.

Fear made me forget that I was already building the life I used to pray for.

Pain made me forget why I left that world in the first place.

But grace intervened.

Sometimes growth looks like everything falling apart at once.

The Hardest Part of Long-Term Sobriety: Surrendering Self-Will Again and Again

Six years sober does not make me an expert. It makes me a witness. I have learned that relapse does not always look like drinking. Sometimes relapse looks like forcing. Sometimes relapse looks like trying to manage outcomes. Sometimes relapse looks like deciding that your will is more important than God’s.

When I feel my ego inflating or when life begins moving too fast, I intentionally remember that night on the living room floor. I remember the smell of carpet fibers and sweat. I remember the terror of thinking I might die. I remember begging God to save me.

That memory keeps me right sized.

I am still capable of becoming that person again. Not because I am failing in sobriety, but because I am human. Remembering who I was helps me humbly embrace who I am becoming.

A Message for Anyone in Long-Term Sobriety: You Do Not Need to Force What Is Meant for You

Recovery does not just ask you to stop using.

It asks you to stop gripping.

It asks you to recognize when you have taken your will back.

It asks you to trust the signs even when they do not make sense.

You do not have to force what is meant for you. Rejection is redirection. Closed doors are divine protection. Surrender is a spiritual strategy, not a passive emotion.

Every time I tried to force life, it fell apart. Every time I surrendered, life flowed.

So here is the truth I landed on: I am choosing to lean into my yin. I am choosing faith. I am choosing to be led instead of dragging life by the throat. I am choosing the life I prayed for, not the life I used to tolerate.

Six years ago, God saved my life on the floor. Today, God saves my peace in the quiet.

If you are reading this and you are caught in that exhausting tug of war with life, take this as a sign:

You do not have to force what is already yours. You do not have to grip the future to feel safe.You do not have to figure it all out today.

You just have to stay open.

You can do it. You are not alone. And if you ever need a witness, I am here.

Loud. Imperfect. Devoted. And sober as hell.