Five years ago I found myself desperate to stop drinking but not sure how to do it. My drinking had escalated to daily blackout levels at some point in 2008. My justification was stress and loneliness. The combination of being a single parent, a high-pressure job and the 2-hour daily commute made me feel trapped
At five years openly sober I have friends and family who still unwittingly try to enable me to drink. They don’t mean to hurt me. They want the best for me. But to them, the best thing for me is being able to drink when I want to and stop when I want to, and
It strikes me that my first 100 days sober were a sort of phase 1. What can I say about those hundred days now, looking back? Were they ok? Brutal? Easy? Hard? Wonderful? Painful? Blurry? I suppose the answer is: ALL OF THE ABOVE. For the first sober month or so I did nothing but
One of my close friends will be 8 years sober in April. She’s been at the end of many teary phone calls and has been there at the start of many of my day ones. She’s a real treasure and is wonderfully and un-apologetically honest with me about alcoholism, her battles, and what I may
