The Pink Cloud

When I was a teenager, I got my first pair of glasses.  I walked out of the eyeglasses store and was shocked. I had obviously had no idea how bad my vision was.  The world looked completely different—especially the colors.  It was like the scene in “The Wizard of Oz” when Dorothy’s house finally lands after the tornado.  She picks up Toto, opens the door, and walks out of her black and white Kansas world into the Technicolor wonder of Munchkinland.  That’s what I felt like when I walked out of the eyeglasses store with, literally, a new way of seeing the world.

This is also what it felt like when I was about a month into my recovery.  Everything seemed new and beautiful.  I fell in love with the principles I was learning in recovery.  I was elated to finally be free of the substances that had been hurting me.  My brain fog cleared up.  I made new friends.  I was on top of the world.  And then I started reading in some of my recovery literature about “the pink cloud.”  Apparently, most people in early recovery feel the way I did—like they’re living in a pink cloud of euphoria at finally being sober.  But the literature told me that the pink cloud wouldn’t last—that the novelty of being sober wears off once you realize how much work it takes to stay sober, and that the work must continue for the rest of your life.  This is when people are most likely to relapse.  I was terrified of relapsing.  So I talked to one of my friends from my meetings about it, and she told me that, for her, a gratitude journal had been the key to carrying her past the pink cloud phase and into lasting sobriety.

This sounded like a cliché to me.  How could something so small help to keep me sober?  I thought maybe I could take a shortcut to gratitude—just thank God throughout the day without doing the journal part.  But I didn’t see any lasting changes.  So despite my doubts, I decided to trust my friend and actually do what she had told me to do.  I bought the prettiest journal I could find and dutifully wrote my first list.  My friend had suggested that I start with five things that I was grateful for. At first, I struggled to find even five. I remember listing my husband, my three cats, and my home many times in those first days just to make the list long enough. But slowly, gradually, I found myself looking for things during the day that I could write in my gratitude journal at night. And that list of five items grew—to ten, to twenty, to several pages.

As my list got longer, and my stack of gratitude journals grew, my life changed.  Once again, it was like moving from a black and white world into a vibrant, Technicolor universe—but this time, it wasn’t because I had new glasses.  I had a new way of looking at the world.  I started to see God’s fingerprints everywhere.  I noticed when the prayers I prayed were answered.  I noticed the miracles of little things, like a crocus poking up through snow, and rejoiced over the miracles of bigger things, like truly experiencing life with Monty, in many ways for the first time.

For over five years now, I’ve made a habit of gratitude.  Every night, I write down the date and “Thank you, God, for. . .”  By doing this, I’ve managed to stay in my own kind of pink cloud—sober, blessed, and so very, very grateful.  I’m convinced that my gratitude journal ritual has not only helped to keep me sober but also kept me from spiraling down into depression.   In this month when we’re all focused a little more on gratitude and thanksgiving, I’d like to encourage you to start a gratitude journal.  It’s a simple, beautiful way to change your life—in fact, it sounds so simple that you may think, like I did, that it can’t possibly make a difference.  It does.  So tonight, write down five things you’re grateful for.  Just five.  And I promise you—the way you see the world will begin to change.  You’ll move from Kansas to Munchkinland as you spend your days looking for things to be grateful for.  And the refrain of your heart, over and over, will be “Thank you.”

Thanks

– W. S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is.