Originally Posted by Pipefish

You're waking up....and that is a good, good thing, and in my experience, a profound thing. It can also be painful.

Not wishing to repeat how I had lived, one of the routes out I took was to do the step programme in AA. It really does have the potential to be a very healing process for you, and others. This for me was particularly in the recognition that we are sick people trying to get well, not bad ones trying to get good, and the consequences I could see of my drinking were the results of dropping standards, and values, I never dreamed I would. But I did. Because that's alcoholism, and that's powerlessness. And that's a very powerful lesson. It's the recognition that helped me see I need never do any of that again.

So, we're left with the consequences. One of the promises in the BB (and holding the promises close, for the precious thing they are, has been incredibly important in my own recovery) is that once through this healing process "we will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it, and we will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us." Both of those could apply to your current situation, and have most certainly applied to my own life. Experiences we share, the uncomfortable ones, the ones we wish had never happened, have an incredible power to help other people once they are resolved, moved on from. So it may not seem so now, but what you've recognised is pure gold.

The steps, living the principles of the program has the potential to be incredibly healing. At the same, there is no magic wand, there's only time, and taking those baby steps to the kind of a normality that is a new, sober one, and unfolds as we go along. Mostly what I needed was normal, everyday things, even as others have suggested here, to have some fun! When someone suggested fun to me, I nearly fell over!! Didn't they realise how grave my situation was?!! But fun, is so, so needed. Over time, I've discovered what is fun for me - reading, gardening, friendship, running, looking after my animals, taking care of my home. It's also been about finding work that suits this sober temperament (a journey all of its own) I've also dedicated a lot of my spare time to spiritual practice and meditation. Finding out what I needed has taken time, patience, and a willingness to hang in there, come what may. And there is no arrival, because what suits now, will change as time goes by.....that's the beauty of recovery. Addiction is kind of a blind alley, whereas sober, the world begins to open, and so do we.

Most of all, be gentle, with yourself and others - my experience is that it took time for me to trust myself, and time for others to trust me, and each good action, soberly taken, is an amend for the past. It is possible to rebuild relationships, and most certainly possible to find new ones, and the one you develop with yourself, is the most important of all in finding out who you are, and what works for you. Not always easy, but most certainly not to be missed. That at least, is my experience.