Yesterday was the 12 and a half anniversary of when I got sober.
A lot of months, the 4th comes and goes, and I don’t really pay attention to another month of sobriety going by. The six months before I got sober tend to start getting my attention because my Facebook memories start to turn a little bit darker, and in looking back at them, it was pretty obvious I was struggling and getting more out of control.
Some years, I note specific dates just because I feel it is important to let people know I am still sober. It gets a lot of attention on my page, mostly congratulations or people saying they are proud of me. It feels good to have that reaction, and it sometimes helps me remember why I got sober and just how life was before that point. The last few years before then were increasingly a struggle on multiple levels, and the last year to six months was an escalation of that descent into chaos.
Sometimes the posts are for me, but I also know that it sometimes helps others who are questioning their relationship with alcohol. Sometimes that attention from the people I am at least Facebook friends with is a bit harder because I don’t know how to help them when they ask questions on how I did it or what my secret was.
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I really don’t know the answer to that, and I do think that everyone who has addiction problems has some similarities in the disease. Loneliness, the search for something to fill an emptiness or fix a hurt, the search for something that both makes you alive to feel the good in life, or the numbness to take away the pain.
A lot of the things that others do, I didn’t do. No AA, no treatment program, no hospital stay, no medical help, no therapy. no arrest or court-ordered intervention. Honestly, as far as rock bottoms go, some people would consider mine not that low or a soft landing. The problem is that each person is different. I was losing myself and the good within me. I was losing the ability to help my son as he was navigating through his addictions. I was at a crossroads, deciding what was most important and who I was.
To this day, I don’t know what made me different from those who don’t get sober. I don’t see myself as being “stronger” than anyone else. In fact, a big part of my sobriety is fear of going back to who I was and what my life was before that day. It has been a lot of work since then to figure out who I am and what is truly important to me. My life is very different from what it was over 12 years ago, but it is more fulfilling, and I have had so many more happy moments since then.
Not everything is perfect. I lost some personal relationships, and others changed or drifted apart; that still hurts. I still have struggles in how to navigate some of the more painful aspects of life without the crutch and escape that alcohol brought me. I still deal with the anxiety of going into bigger groups of people, and the small talk that alcohol made so much easier. Sometimes I miss out on invites to events where alcohol is a primary focus, or if I get invited, I make the choice not to go for that reason.
To be honest, I think a large part of my success is the fact that I was blessed with a pretty good support system around me. Even with some who had/have their own struggles with alcohol, I had more support than I had resistance in my core peer group. For me, that gave me the space and support to grow enough to become a better version of myself every moment. I can’t give everyone that, and I know that I am one of the blessed few to have that. I am grateful for that. I also realize that even sober, there are moments I am not the best version of myself, and I can continue to grow in that area of life.
So what can I do to help those who don’t have that support? It truly is one moment at a time, and I realize that it could all end in a moment. I want to help others find the peace and happiness that I found. I’m still struggling to find how to be of better service, and maybe I am getting to the point where that may be my life’s calling in the not-too-distant future. One thing I have learned in the last twelve and a half years is that anything can happen. Sobriety, marriage, and three cats are just some big examples of things I said I would never have, but here we are.
