Thanks, Dee! Creeping right up on 13 months now. Things do change around that year mark, in ways that are hard to describe. As the horror of my old life falls away in the rear view mirror, open road seems to open up in front of me. There's a little bit of that bewildering "well, now what do I do?" feeling once in awhile. I feel less and less like I'm surviving and more like I'm living. But that sense of certainty is gone, that illusion of control. When I drank I pretty much knew what every day and every night was gonna be like, what was in store for me. Now I'm in open and uncharted waters.
I'm an atheist but I can understand why spirituality is a big element of AA. Once you chuck the thing that defined your life you need something to fill the gap. And once your mind, once so narrowed by addiction that you couldn't see past your next fix, begins to open you realize there has to be more. A drunk doesn't need more, can't handle "more"...s/he just needs their fix.
The good news is that non-drinkers also have to manage grown up lives, and they somehow do it!
Everyone has to decide what the meaning is in their life. For some maybe that's God, charity, family, etc. I'm in that phase of deciding what my life might be, what I might be now that it looks like I have to grow up.