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Getting Priorities Straight in Sobriety

Pursuing Worthy Actions

Neal Hemphill
3 min readJul 24, 2023
Wia-Tirol at Free Images https://www.freeimages.com/photo/move-it-shorty-1309492

Much of my drinking and drugging was due to the fact that I believed I was supposed to be happy and feel good all the time.

It was a childish point of view, and it stayed with me for all too long. It led me away from happiness and toward misery.

I felt good when I was drinking, and I felt good when I was high. If I was supposed to be happy and feel good, I should drink and get high, pretty much all the time. Right?

It didn’t work out that way.

During my early sober days, I read a daily meditation book for men.

One of the pages spoke to me, and I’ve never forgotten the lesson.

What it taught is that the hope and expectation of happiness is misguided. It talked about how the idea of chasing happiness is a fool’s errand because being happy is something that will come and go in our lives, according to many factors that are out of our control.

However, the pursuit of worthiness is a useful way to live. And if one focuses on doing worthy deeds and taking worthy actions, this is something within our control.

From this, there’s a good chance that happiness will come to visit us. But it will be a by-product. And deaths and ill health and loss…

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Neal Hemphill
Neal Hemphill

Written by Neal Hemphill

Writes about Sobriety/Recovery from Lived Experience of 35+ years. Filmmaker telling stories about the struggles of addiction/recovery @ straightaheadfilms.com

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