- Alcohol
I want to thank Laurie Dhue for posting on YouTube. Her videos are encouraging, and I watched them all. My story is a cautionary one for anyone that believes they’re in recovery and will always be, “happy, joyous and free.” I walked into the program ready, willing and able and never looked back.
Until after 9 1/2 years sober. My 40th birthday. In San Diego. I decided to have a margarita. I suppose there were a good six months leading up to that decision, but I took the step of actually taking that drink, and suddenly all of my accumulated time was gone, gone, gone.
Since then I have gone to a couple of meetings, but I never did like the program. Not because of what it did for me but because I hated the repetition, the people in and out, the constant “fake it until you make it” attitudes. I had apparently done that for years. I couldn’t make the commitment again. I tried accumulating time on my own, quite a few times. The usual was 30 days, sometimes 90 days, the longest 6 months.
I’m here to attest that coming back to the program is much, much harder than living in the program. I’m not sure if I will ever accomplish turning myself over completely again, but I’m convinced that I will somehow stop drinking for the rest of my life. I live in isolation due to some really stupid decisions I made while drinking, and now I have to get my life back. I hope. And that’s why I’m writing this. If you wonder if things will be better out there, they won’t. I hope I find that shred of dignity I’m looking for a second time. I’m not sure it’s all about support groups, but I’m serious about sobriety again. It led me to this page, so I’m pretty confident I am on the right path.