Why not call AA or an addictions counsellor, and start looking at your drinking while your resolve is strong?

Sobriety is much much more than not drinking - and it's hard work - but it's tremendously rewarding.

Karimpatim - No-noone to really help me. Right now, I'm just spending alot of time alone. Just me and Good Lord above. I like it that way for now. I need quiet time badly. For once in my life, I'm allowing myself to have that time.

Rowan, what does it mean that sobriety is much more than not drinking?

Well, for me, it's about taking steps to correct past wrongs. Being a better parent to my children through not drinking and by taking a more active role in their lives.

It's about spending time with other people in recovery. It's about getting right with God. It's about apologizing to people I may have hurt through my actions, and by changing my behaviour.

It's about helping others who enter recovery, by sharing my own experience.

In a nutshell, it's about CHANGE.

When I drank, I did so in order to escape from life, from depression, from insecurity, from fear, from feeling rotten. I wanted to numb out, and to not feel. I didn't learn how to cope with life, I just drank it all away. And when I stopped drinking, I found myself not knowing how to cope with life without feeling overwhelmed or like wanting to kill myself.

Sobriety, or if you will, recovery, is teaching me a little at a time how to rejoin the human race. I attend relapse prevention group therapy twice weekly and it's helping me to look at family of origin issues. All of the above is helping me to become whole. I was so broken, starlite dawn.

Oh Rowan, what a powerful post. Thank you for sharing you. Your last line made me feel so sad. I am happy for you that you have found help and are beating this addiction and finding you.

I think it's just great that you know why you drank. I don't have a clue why I drink. I really don't.

Thank you all. *smiles*

Stay sober, and you'll find out :)

Starlite - You are making it girl - you are making sobriety and happiness into a reality.

I am so proud of you, especially after the death of a loved one