Welcome and great going Mellie, Jay and North!!! I. too, like that analogy, Mellie. Funny that you should bring it up becasue recently I have been thinking about the 2 distinct phases: getting sober and staying sober. I was stuck in the getting sober phase for way too long. In hindsight, I never gave sobriety enough of a chance, mentally or physically. It was as if I couldn't see beyond the pain, the effort, the wreckage...it was too overwhelming and back to the bottle I would go. Then, miraculously, something changed and I was able to build up, bit by bit, some sober time. As foreign and unattainable as sobriety once seemed, is now how my drunken loop appears to me now. I look back and think...what a waste...how bizarre (altho it made sense to me at the time) my behavior was...how my whole life revolved around drinking...how much I sacrificed. For what? I was miserable and every time I returned to the bottle, all I was doing was deepening my misery. But what they say is true...here and in AA and in SMART and whatever other program that pulls people from the pit. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and it DOES get brighter and one day, you will look back into that darkened hellhole and wonder what it ever was that chained you there.
On that note, Dean, when I found SR I was reading "Eat, Pray, Love" and the author was asked to describe herself in one word. She couldn't decide between "Hide" or "Seek". I really related to that and felt myself at a pivotal juncture; I had to make a choice to either "Hide" or "Seek". Thank God I made the right one.