Hello, my fellow secular SR folks. Today is one year sober for me. Maybe I expected a thunderclap and some angelic music from on high?
Mostly I just feel quietly contemplative. It's been a wild ride this last year, and it hasn't always been easy. But it has been sober. Not a single slip since I drank my last bottle of wine early Oct of last year.
I was looking back at my old posts, and I started clicking on the profiles and stats of some of the other posters that welcomed me. A pretty high percentage of them aren't active here anymore. This makes me a little wistful and a little sad. I'd like to think they drifted off to live their sober lives, no longer needing SR. But it's likely a lot of them went back to drinking. I wish them well, and I wish them all luck on whatever path they take.
A comedian who's name escapes me now once said the hard part of being an atheist is having no one to be thankful to.
Funny but kind of true. I can't credit any supernatural force with turning my life around, and if I did I'd have to be a bit PO'ed that it let me stumble around blind drunk for 25 years first! I see all those that fell by the wayside on the road to sobriety and I realize that could have been me. I think of those that didn't get sober in time to save their lives and think, that too could have been me.
So today is a bit of a somber celebration. Not so much a time to pat myself on back as a chance to wonder what I could have done by now had I quit twenty years sooner. I can't get those years back but I can try not to waste the chance I've been given, the chance to TOOK BACK from The Beast. Maybe it's fear that drives me to stay sober, or maybe it's simple gratitude. It would be kind of rude to throw away this chance.
To all you who're staying sober, good on you! To those of you who're struggling, know that there's hope.
Thanks to everyone that has helped me along this winding road to sobriety.
