Hello From The Other Side . . .
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Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Ireland
Posts: 25,826
Hello From The Other Side . . .
2 Years, where does the time go? 
To be honest it started off slow, the clock on my fireplace used to tick along only 15mins at a time, couldn’t string the few hours between arriving home from work until bedtime completely Sober, that was the challenge, make it an hour, the folly of moderation was old news, I needed to find a way to make it happen, each passing day gave way to my first weekend, it didn’t get any easier, birthday invites arrived, weddings, Xmas, New Years, the universe was conspiring against me, surely this should be getting easier with time? It didn’t feel like it, but it does.
Where does one go when your life is on a downward spiral into self destruction? Where do you go when everyone around you becomes either someone you drink with or someone who alcohol has pushed out of your life? Where is the hope? The dreams and the life that everyone else seemed to be enjoying and yet all you feel is a real sense of loneliness and your only friend seems to be found at the bottom of a bottle, but maybe that was the problem, I hadn’t got any real friends, life had become a simple spiral, auto pilot, running on empty as life was passing me by.
Year 1 was simply about making it, sprinting to the finish line and diving head first through the tape, no airs and graces, just simply making it, I turned down social events, concert tickets, birthdays, and New Years became an early night for the first time in a decade, and sometimes that is what is needed, take things on the chin, put your head down and get on with it no matter the cost, alcohol had made me selfish, but in Sobriety for a time I became even more so, it was backs to the wall in the beginning, Sobriety was going to happen at any cost, because I had learnt to accept it’s importance to my life.
It was a dry but cool Autumn morning, it was a Sunday and as I walked down my street to the local newsagent I had that cool fresh air in my lungs, as I rounded the corner at the end of my street I said hello to a neighbour walking his dog, I walked into the shop, picked up my newspaper and had a chat with the shop owner, it was a Sunday, it was 9am, both of us were in no rush and we chatted about our week, the football scores, the news, the weather, did it matter? It was simply good to be alive, I continued onto my usual Sunday morning coffee shop, clear headed and fresh, newspaper in hand, I ordered my regular, a large coffee and chocolate muffin, I hadn’t a care in the world, and as I read my newspaper I appreciated my 1 Year milestone, I had made it, I felt great, who knew there was something deep inside me that could make it happen.
So what about Year 2? Well that’s when my journey really began, alcohol starts to loose it’s power after 365 days of constantly rejecting it and saying stuff you alcohol, those thoughts that you have at Week 1 become routine when you consistently throw them against the wall, when it comes to stress you go to your other Sober tools, you flex your Sober muscles and you continue on, life becomes less about merely surviving and more about where am I going? What am I doing with my time? What do I want to achieve?
A Sober foundation for life I cannot promote enough, this year I’ve been able to organise my thoughts, I finally posted my recovery story, how alcohol came into my life, how I managed to release myself from it’s grip, plus as an adult child of an alcoholic in my dad, make some sense of my childhood, these stories have been in my mind, my conscious for so long, but I have only been able to collect my thoughts and do them justice recently, hopefully someone somewhere will benefit from them.
Sobriety is not an event, a one day only, a here for the summer thing, it’s an experience, a learning curve, an evolution and discovery of who we really are, what we are all about as individuals, an evaluation of where we came from and a decision about where we want to go, and that journey does not have to include alcohol, we can say no more if we want to, we can make Sobriety happen, throw off the chains, and not be restricted or limited any more.
I sometimes wonder about if the person I am now met the younger version of me, what would I think? or say to him?
“When we were younger, and free . . . I forgotten how we felt before the world fell at our feet . . . Hello from the other side . . . I’m sorry”
Thanks for listening my friends!!
PK
To be honest it started off slow, the clock on my fireplace used to tick along only 15mins at a time, couldn’t string the few hours between arriving home from work until bedtime completely Sober, that was the challenge, make it an hour, the folly of moderation was old news, I needed to find a way to make it happen, each passing day gave way to my first weekend, it didn’t get any easier, birthday invites arrived, weddings, Xmas, New Years, the universe was conspiring against me, surely this should be getting easier with time? It didn’t feel like it, but it does.
Where does one go when your life is on a downward spiral into self destruction? Where do you go when everyone around you becomes either someone you drink with or someone who alcohol has pushed out of your life? Where is the hope? The dreams and the life that everyone else seemed to be enjoying and yet all you feel is a real sense of loneliness and your only friend seems to be found at the bottom of a bottle, but maybe that was the problem, I hadn’t got any real friends, life had become a simple spiral, auto pilot, running on empty as life was passing me by.
Year 1 was simply about making it, sprinting to the finish line and diving head first through the tape, no airs and graces, just simply making it, I turned down social events, concert tickets, birthdays, and New Years became an early night for the first time in a decade, and sometimes that is what is needed, take things on the chin, put your head down and get on with it no matter the cost, alcohol had made me selfish, but in Sobriety for a time I became even more so, it was backs to the wall in the beginning, Sobriety was going to happen at any cost, because I had learnt to accept it’s importance to my life.
It was a dry but cool Autumn morning, it was a Sunday and as I walked down my street to the local newsagent I had that cool fresh air in my lungs, as I rounded the corner at the end of my street I said hello to a neighbour walking his dog, I walked into the shop, picked up my newspaper and had a chat with the shop owner, it was a Sunday, it was 9am, both of us were in no rush and we chatted about our week, the football scores, the news, the weather, did it matter? It was simply good to be alive, I continued onto my usual Sunday morning coffee shop, clear headed and fresh, newspaper in hand, I ordered my regular, a large coffee and chocolate muffin, I hadn’t a care in the world, and as I read my newspaper I appreciated my 1 Year milestone, I had made it, I felt great, who knew there was something deep inside me that could make it happen.
So what about Year 2? Well that’s when my journey really began, alcohol starts to loose it’s power after 365 days of constantly rejecting it and saying stuff you alcohol, those thoughts that you have at Week 1 become routine when you consistently throw them against the wall, when it comes to stress you go to your other Sober tools, you flex your Sober muscles and you continue on, life becomes less about merely surviving and more about where am I going? What am I doing with my time? What do I want to achieve?
A Sober foundation for life I cannot promote enough, this year I’ve been able to organise my thoughts, I finally posted my recovery story, how alcohol came into my life, how I managed to release myself from it’s grip, plus as an adult child of an alcoholic in my dad, make some sense of my childhood, these stories have been in my mind, my conscious for so long, but I have only been able to collect my thoughts and do them justice recently, hopefully someone somewhere will benefit from them.
Sobriety is not an event, a one day only, a here for the summer thing, it’s an experience, a learning curve, an evolution and discovery of who we really are, what we are all about as individuals, an evaluation of where we came from and a decision about where we want to go, and that journey does not have to include alcohol, we can say no more if we want to, we can make Sobriety happen, throw off the chains, and not be restricted or limited any more.
I sometimes wonder about if the person I am now met the younger version of me, what would I think? or say to him?
“When we were younger, and free . . . I forgotten how we felt before the world fell at our feet . . . Hello from the other side . . . I’m sorry”
Thanks for listening my friends!!
PK
Administrator
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Dancing in the Light
Posts: 61,513
PK, Congratulations on 2 years of recovery and thank you for the fantastic post. I think you have captured so much of early sobriety and of the 'switch' to living in recovery. Wonderful!
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