A Dog in a Cage

I met a man, very new to sobriety, who described himself as like a dog in a cage. In his view, in his newfound sobriety, he was only restraining his natural self and eventually he’d come out of his cage and revert to his “natural” behaviors. Early sobriety is difficult. I felt I was acting a role, like I was in a play, and in those days the devil often whispered in my ear that I was just a fraud, pretending to be something I wasn’t. But there is great value in the idea “fake it til you make it”, because as a wiser man than me once said, “you’ve got to quit drinking to learn how to quit drinking”.