I had never thought of myself as unstable, nor ever noticed anything particularly erratic about myself until about three weeks after I got sober. My first several meetings were somewhat numb experiences. People talked about all kinds of alarming, bizarre stuff at meetings and, amazingly, I had almost zero reaction to any of it. In large part life remained steady and went on as normal.

Then came withdrawal. Volcanic rage, wild mood swings, explosive and violent anger—I’d never experienced such things! At that time I had a fairly high level of a martial art under my belt and became genuinely afraid of what I might be capable of. I burst out laughing at a funeral. I burst into tears a couple of times. When other people were around, I would literally grind my teeth, growling to myself, “Don’t they understand what I’m going through?” Deep despair and depression would drown me, followed by impenetrable pink-cloud enthusiasm. Any attempts at control were obviously futile.

This business went on during every waking moment; I was never given any rest. I cannot recall any other period of my life that was so uniquely unpleasant. After about four months it started to taper off, and by the end of my first year I was doing wholly better.

I’ve been sober for about six years now, and I have not seen any consistency in people’s withdrawal experiences. Some people have it better, some worse. but I got through it the same way many others have. I kept my eyes on the people who had years of recovery and trusted that if I did what I was told, one day it would get better. What proof did I have? I didn’t have any, but it seemed to me that these people had been through it themselves, and they appeared to be doing pretty well nowadays. Maybe if I did what they had done I might one day do well also.