Hi All, just thought I'd pop in and say Hi, been an "interesting" 3 years. Finally got the message in March this year that I couldn't stay stopped without working a program so got myself back to AA, this time in the right frame of mind which was one of complete surrender. Picked up my 5 month chip on Tuesday last week, starting to appreciate what a manageable life looks like and as a result see how completely unmanageable life had become. It's wonderful seeing the positive ripples of my recovery spreading out to affect others instead of the reverse. Friends and family are starting to migrate back - AV told me that I just had a dysfunctional family who didn't call or visit and being let down by friends was how things worked. Now realising that family didn't want to be here and I had the wrong kind of friends.
Coming back on here in March and seeing my join date of December 2012 was a shock. 4 and a half years of struggling with this on my own - crazy. I've many times had Courage's "so - what are you going to do different this time" (thanks) comment in my head. Having been drinking for so long and right through formative years, the addictive voice was 80% of my public personality - going to AA and actually getting involved would have meant demolishing the 80% and trying to function on the immature, untested 20% while removing the coping crutch and at the same time have the 20% have to rationalise the fact that the 80% had been outright lying to me for years, plus cope with the years of guilt and shame blowback. Getting involved with a program was too big but just the right size for AV to use to keep me off the wagon.
Therefore there needed to be a correspondingly big enough rock bottom to put the "sh1t you'll have to face in recovery" vs "dangers of not recovering" into perspective which thankfully didn't result in my loosing too much and I've pretty much dealt with the wreckage from that now. Although ironically the biggest fallout has come from my having to move on from certain people in my life that weren't helping that didn't appreciate being told as much.
This group was where it all started and much as I get the waves of "oh cr8p - did I really do that..." I'm also grateful for the moments of thankfulness I get for people who helped guide the way to the path I'm now on - so thank you Class of December 2012.