sydneyman

Now into my 12th month of sobriety. I am calling it the holy month.. I am taking stock of my life and what the journey has taught me so far or some things I now have learnt

I am not deprived of alcohol

Learning to deal with the feelings and some of them can be so tough but they wont kill me

Pause before action, no more knee jerk reactions

Life is not perfect all the time but dealing with life is so much easier sober

Never to give up

Boundaries

Some friends will go but that's OK

Most importantly I have learnt that I don't HAVE to drink anymore. The society says I do but No I don't.

There are plenty more but I think they are the top ones that pop in my head now..

Now when I meet people and drinking/alcohol comes up I say I don't drink. They say why? I say " Its a lifestyle choice that I have made" I don't need to go into my history of alcohol abuse unless I want to. Its true, I have made a sober lifestyle choice and boy is it good.

NerfThis

Congratulations on a year of sobriety!


This one is a really big one for me. I remember on some of the particularly bad days, the most basic tasks were completely unmanageable. I never want to go back to that.

sydneyman

Totally. Pacing around my apartment waiting for the liquor store to open if I ran out. Total insanity. A total mess of a life. Its good it doesn't need to be like that anymore. The thing is that I remember my Day 1 like yesterday. Its cemented in my head. Drinking in the morning before my partner drove me to rehab. I was a sad human then. I am a completely different person today. I like myself now. I hated myself then.

Anna

That's a wonderful post and you have a great attitude. Congratulations!

Dee74

Congrats Sydneyman - and thanks for your share

D

Dropsie

So true!

Lucinda2

Huge congratulations! A 'lifestyle choice', I am going to hang onto that one.

SassyAdria

happy 12th Month!

Thanks for pointing out about the feelings part - feeling like i'm losing it a bit with the feelings. I'm just under 3 months sober. I am still struggling very much on certain days to deal with emotions, and be the person i want to be, which is not the sober lunatic I sometimes am lol. Everyone's advice about family/work issues is "just stop caring" -- if only it was that easy! Binge drinking was my way of not caring about anything at ALL, before. Now, I'm not dumbing myself down with alcohol and I am taking in the emotional roller coaster ride ...

Found that it helps to take my alone time, which I enjoy now that I'm sober. It doesn't make me feel restless or insecure to be alone anymore. I'm happy about that.

least

Congrats! You're coming up on a year sober!! Thanks for your message of hope.

sydneyman

Feeling the feels, the good bad and ugly I think has been the most difficult part. NO numbing any of it away with a substance of any sort. You need to go with the flow and deal with issues. I do admit that there has been many **** this moments along the road. I have learnt to sit with the feels and dissect them and work on the issue/s.
I feel that now I am the most caring and considerate that I have ever been. I was so consumed by my active addiction that I only cared how to feed the monster within me and how to make it happy.
I see it as growth, any obstacle I face and solving them is when I grow. The more I distance myself from booze the more I look at it as "WTF was I dong and thinking all those years". I am never going to regret my past, I cant as it has shaped me to who I am, with the bad bits as well. It was a chapter of my life that caused a lot of anguish to myself and the people closest to me. My mother for example never saw her son sober since his teens and now she is gone. I was drunk at her funeral, well I was drunk all the time. That I regret big time. But it will never change or go away. So I will do my best to put sobriety before anything else in my life and be the best version she intended me to be. I am not going to dwell over it but move on and do her proud the way I am living my life today.

Enjoy the alone time. That's when you are healing the most. Be present, mindful and grateful on a daily basis! Immerse yourself in sobriety/recovery related literature/podcasts etc and NEVER be complacent. The days will increase. I am now looking forward to my one year of sobriety. I will tackle and shake my recovery up a bit in the New Year. Its like life needs a bit of readjusting now and then.

Keep going. There is nothing better.. maybe sober sex !!!!

Midwest1981

congrats!!

Hodd

Lucinda2

Thank you for this honesty. My mother died when I was in active addiction. I had been an addict for 22yrs at the time of her death (since I was 16). The events surrounding her death and my addiction are too awful to put on a public forum. It is very painful. I feel much like you, there is no changing it and no taking that away. I can only do as you say and be 'the best version she intended me to be' now. I have never heard anyone talk of this before, I am sorry that you have to live with this and I thank you for sharing it.