Congratulations on one week ES!
Anyway - my questions for the week are how did you tell your friends/family? Did you tell them or did you just go to meetings and make new friends? And finally, is it normal to NOT want to tell people? I know that part of the recovery process is admiting you are powerless - what does that require? I guess I am hoping I can just quietly become a non-drinker without having to publicly own my alcoholism.
I pondered these questions too. So do a lot of others, because your questions are frequently asked here on SR.
I don't have answers that are the right or wrong way, I can share what I chose to do.
Telling my immediete family was a choice I made very early on. My husband and kids were the recipients of my baffling and often hurtful behavior, so it was important to me that they were the first to know I was making an effort to change.
More distant relatives and friends are a different matter. I told my best friend because we were drinking buddies for years and I know she has struggled to quit drinking before. Once I told her, we became buddies in recovery and it has been a fantastic development in our near 46-year friendship!
I have a lot of acquaintances and friends I am not particularly close to, I might see them once a year, and I don't see the point of sharing news of my sobriety with them considering I don't share any other personal news with them.
Essentially: you don't have to publicy own your recovery. A lot of it is individual. Some people are very comfortable being open about their sobriety, but I am a very private person. Being either way is fine.
It is not just a general powerlessness: the big book is very specific in explaining that we are powerless
over alcohol. It doesn't mean we are powerless in all areas of our lives. To admit being powerless over alcohol is something we admit to ourselves: it isn't stated that we must admit this to anyone else.