Staying sober and staying in the program

Forming a balanced attitude towards sobriety in SA recovery is challenging for me.  I mean that for me, it is a matter of life and death.  My acting out took me to a place where I could have been arrested. It could have ruined my life forever.  So I find myself radically attached to the idea that it is an all-important thing. And I find myself even more attached to it because I'm often surrounded by SAs for whom sobriety is relative... great when you can get it, but not worth losing sleep over. I often have to be my own cheerleader - that this is still a crucial pursuit for me.

At the same time, I recognize that to me it's vital to stay in the program, as well as to be sober.  A good friend of mine in the program lost several months sobriety yesterday and I realize that that could be me at any time.  And if one day it is, God please forbid, I'll need to be humble enough to stay in the program and begin again - not using it as an excuse to go on a spree and end up heaven knows where. 

So maybe it's another one of those headscratching paradoxes of recovery.  Sobriety is everything; it is life itself and at the same time, sobriety in some cases is not everything, life will be found in staying in the program even if I lose sobriety.