- Alcohol
- Friends & Family
submitted by: Susanne Johnson
Laura started drinking alcohol at about 16 years of age. Many years of alcohol consumption led to addiction and in 2012 she started, for the first time, to get into sobriety at age 43. Her sobriety lasted only eight months, and if she looks back today she sees that she was not doing everything she should have done to stay sober.
She really wanted to be sober, but didn’t know what was missing and was not fully committed to her recovery. Not really able to figure out what she wanted, she kept falling into relapse, but kept going to 12-step meetings and took the words “keep coming back” seriously. Laura had a sponsor, kept going to 12 Step meetings and just could not figure out why she could not stay sober. But she kept trying and knows today that this was one important thing she did right.
During this time of relapse and coming back she reached a bottom of her life, where she knew she did not want to continue live like this anymore. She knew then clearly that she had to make the choice of either dying the way she was living then or choose recovery and changing everything. She came to the conclusion that it was more important for her to give everything that it takes to enter a life in recovery and continue to live. If she looks back today she describes this time saying, “All was black, my inside was black. It was like in a deep black well; all around me was black and there was no light anywhere, and no future in sight.”
At this point of feeling totally hopeless she called her sponsor and asked for help. Her sponsor helped her to find a place in a rehab facility and as she entered there she felt just so tired and willing to do anything they would tell her to do. Laura went to treatment and did everything she was told to do. She doesn’t forget how she entered the facility in the middle of the night. As she woke up the morning she entered treatment, she knew right away that she was in the right place and thought “How can I get so lucky to be in a place like this.”
She loved the program and felt so grateful to have the chance to enter such a wonderful place for her recovery. The people at the facility in Georgia, were so inspirational to her, that today she just loves to see other people finding sobriety as well.
“These were people who cared about me; they gave me a second chance in my life”, she says. Laura was so emotional about the fact, that she met some of the people that work at the facility during the Heroes in Recovery 6K in Atlanta. They were very excited to see her with her just over 100 days of sobriety. “Some of the people have a special place in my heart.” she says, “They were so inspirational and gave me this wonderful life I have today.”
All of this change did not come easily. Laura was married for 21 years and will now get divorced in the next few months. Her relationship was one of the things she could not come to terms with in the past and now that the fog is lifted she sees that she was for a long time very unhappy in this relationship and it was one of the reasons that kept her drinking. The divorce comes hard for Laura, as she has two teenage children, ages 17 and 15 that live at home with her husband, while she is currently living in a sober living community, and she misses them terribly. She plans to move closer to her children shortly. Her children are very proud of her recovery and just want her to get better.