Hi All;
Just caught up reading. Congrats on your 7 years Mesa and your upcoming 7 years bim--something I aspire to!
I'm grateful for so many things right now I can't easily list them all. But at the moment I am warm with pot roast cooking in the oven looking at a beautiful lake in a paid-for house. I retire in 16 weeks with a good pension and health insurance. (For our friends from other countries, in the USA, that is saying something). To get here has been a lot of work and struggle which I made 1000 harder with my past multi-decade alcohol abuse--so sobriety is always near the top of my gratitude list.
I've struggled as a child and adult with lack of money all of my life, so this strange turn of relative prosperity feels odd. I still have plenty of debt, including large student loan debt and other things, but I can finally see my way to the freedom of being debt-free in five years and living a sober and peaceful life with no more relapses. I realize that I used the despair of debt and fear as one more excuse to drink my "troubles" away instead of facing them, getting extra work, and working on resolution. It is no accident that my financial recovery corresponds to my "big quit" of alcohol and embracing recovery in 2013. In fact, it is a direct cause-effect correlation.
Until I quit drinking, I barely was keeping up with the job I had. Quitting gave me time and the emotional resolve to quit whining and get extra work to pay things off and start climbing out the the hole I dug even deeper in my last two decades of heavy drinking. I am lucky in that I had opportunities to work beyond my regular job which not everyone has, but it wouldn't have ever happened if I hadn't embraced sobriety, faced the fear, and gotten honest with myself. I have had several short-lived relapses since 2013, but each time I come back stronger and more determined to solve this problem for good. That is one reason I appreciate all of you showing me it can be done.
I am sharing this in the hope that other people who may be struggling with something similar will be encouraged to take a deep breath and start with little steps towards fixing their situation. It looked impossible when I started, but by working on a positive attitude & self-care, making a "Life" plan along with a sobriety plan, and being patient with slow and steady progress I built some momentum, which surprised me more than anyone. Just take the first step of getting sober, and the rest can surely follow. . .