Frisky

A responsibility to share your stories?

Amy Winehouse's dad and Alastair Campbell were on Sky news this morning talking about the need for people to talk about their stories of recovery.

Their point was that people falling off the wagon makes for great news but somebody being sober for three years is not really newsworthy. Thus we don't here the success stories half as much.

I'm not really sure that it's anybody's responsibility to share, but it did make me think it would be nice to hear more.

My story is really quite boring! I was drinking a bottle of vodka a day to "treat" my anxiety. That in turn made me more anxious. I went through a home detox and had one slip up. Afterwards I thought less and less about alcohol and started to treat my anxiety properly. I started volunteering and was doing really very well.

It's near enough three years of sobriety, and it just feels normal. It's not exciting anymore being sober, it's just the norm. I don't think about it and that is just perfect. The longer you go the less of a grip it has.

I said things were going well. My anxiety problems have returned again with a vengeance over the past six months. But I am certainly not going to turn back to the bottle to treat them. Not because I'm stomping my feet and refusing to go down that path, but because it is not an option that enters my mind.

I think that could be why many people don't share their stories. It's yucky dragging up the past and reliving old memories, especially when it is something you don't have on your mine all the time. It was hard getting there and now I am there.

Now I am off to turn my stubbornness towards my anxiety. If I can conquer alcohol I can conquer anything

ETA: I made it sound like quitting was easy lol. It wasn't, it was flaming hard. But just because a thing is hard doesn't mean it's impossible. Far from it. It's easy now. And once I was past that initial six months every day was less of a battle.