Today I am 8 years sober, so I wanted to commemorate this day with 8 ways that sobriety and the Twelve Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous has transformed my life:
1) I have become consistent and reliable
2) I am able to connect to myself, to others, and to God
3) I have learned to ease my fears of not belonging or not being accepted
4) I have learned how to speak my truth and advocate for myself
5) I have become empowered to live honestly
2) I am able to connect to myself, to others, and to God
3) I have learned to ease my fears of not belonging or not being accepted
4) I have learned how to speak my truth and advocate for myself
5) I have become empowered to live honestly
6) I have been reconciled to my friends and family
7) I have fostered strong female friendships
8) I have learned how to be accountable, and to not be a victim
Three years ago, when I received my five-year medallion, I was in a lot of emotional pain. Family drama, low self-esteem, and apathy, made the year or two leading up to that accomplishment a perpetual taunting of relapse. By grace and stubbornness, I made it through, and my only message that night was to not give up. The statistics for relapse in the first five years are huge. For every five-year medallion, 45 one-year medallions are handed out. In this pandemic, that number is probably higher now.
To make it to a state where relapse is less and less likely, requires a long and hard-fought resolution. Willpower is but a renewable resource, and can be recharging when we need it the most. This is just the way it is, and why as a health coach we are trained to not rely heavily on it. In these most desperately trying times, I have found acceptance of pain and suffering to be the only true remedy. We made a decision to not escape through intoxicants. It hurts in the moment, but it leads to an everlasting reward. As the psalmist wrote, “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.”
Eventually, those sober nights turn into sober days, sober days into sober weeks, sober weeks into sober months, months into years, then decades, until this way of living becomes the only normal one we truly know, and turning back on it becomes less and less likely. This is because as with so many other things, we are in a numbers game, and we eventually start to have wins in life. Gaining confidence in sobriety, we begin to understand that coping with losses via the bottle is no longer a viable option.
7) I have fostered strong female friendships
8) I have learned how to be accountable, and to not be a victim
Three years ago, when I received my five-year medallion, I was in a lot of emotional pain. Family drama, low self-esteem, and apathy, made the year or two leading up to that accomplishment a perpetual taunting of relapse. By grace and stubbornness, I made it through, and my only message that night was to not give up. The statistics for relapse in the first five years are huge. For every five-year medallion, 45 one-year medallions are handed out. In this pandemic, that number is probably higher now.
To make it to a state where relapse is less and less likely, requires a long and hard-fought resolution. Willpower is but a renewable resource, and can be recharging when we need it the most. This is just the way it is, and why as a health coach we are trained to not rely heavily on it. In these most desperately trying times, I have found acceptance of pain and suffering to be the only true remedy. We made a decision to not escape through intoxicants. It hurts in the moment, but it leads to an everlasting reward. As the psalmist wrote, “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.”
Eventually, those sober nights turn into sober days, sober days into sober weeks, sober weeks into sober months, months into years, then decades, until this way of living becomes the only normal one we truly know, and turning back on it becomes less and less likely. This is because as with so many other things, we are in a numbers game, and we eventually start to have wins in life. Gaining confidence in sobriety, we begin to understand that coping with losses via the bottle is no longer a viable option.
Getting to that point however, might take dark nights of the soul – the only way out is through. My message at 8 years is the exact same as it was at 5 - don't give up in those hard moments. We might feel lonely, ashamed, bored, excited, triggered, apathetic, depressed, confused, victimized...the list can go on, ad infinitium, but eventually we will come to understand that those are just feelings that we don’t have to avoid or be enslaved to. We can eventually learn to alleviate and even transmute these feelings, and being in them soberly, can enable that process.
Embrace Yourself - Be Happy "YOU" by Pooja Grover
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