Midton, great post! Your optimistic post makes me feel optimistic. Thanks!
Several times at meetings, people have looked directly at me and said "I wish I would have gotten sober earlier. Stick with it." It took a little while for me to understand that, because early on I wondered if I would be missing out on all the great drinking years I had ahead of me. Talk about AV lies! Those years were not going to be great, and I had a feeling I wasn't going to live to be very old drinking the way I was. True, don't we all wish we'd done it sooner. I think about this quote from Kung Foo panda "you may not get it the first time, or the third time, or the 30th time, but you'll get it when you need to." Happy to be here now : )