Today marks day 21 of my journey to recovery. In a different attempt at getting sober, this is when I relapsed. I feel confident that I will be exceeding that this time and will once this weekend is over. It made me reflect back when I was 21 years old. I hadn’t tried any drugs or even touched alcholol at this time in my life. I had a 3 year old son and was living on my own in subsidized government apartment. This was my first time living away from my parents. I was so excited and grateful. I was working at a retail store. I had dropped out of college due to partly bad grades, but also because the desire was not there at this time in my life. I spent countless nights on the AOL chats meeting men that were boys ha ha. I remember actually meeting in person one guy that was younger than me. He and his friend wanted me to buy alcholol for them so I did. I guess I was bored that day. I bought it for them and then we went our separate ways. Pretty bizarre when I think back on it and what the hell was I thinking!? Oh yeah! I was 21 and not thinking.
What is your milestone and is it a age you have been through that you can reflect on?
So, today at 8pm will mark 2 weeks sober for me. I started drinking when I was 18 and have been pretty much nonstop until now, 8 years later. The thing I think about when it comes to alcohol was I’ve never once in my life got drunk because “I wanted to get messed up” (like you hear so much in college). I drank because I fell in love with it and wanted more and more until before I realized what was happening I couldn’t control it. I wasn’t the kind of person who drank all day long, started in the morning kind of thing. But when I drank, I would not stop if someone offered me a million dollars (which in the past 2 and 1/2 years has been almost every night since I live in a resort town and am dating a drummer, lol). Looking back on it, I realized that has been the way it’s been ever since I started drinking.
The very first time I drank, I got ridiculously drunk by pure accident (I was in Ireland as a graduation from high school gift with my mom and a close family friend). We got a glass of wine on the plane (we left in the afternoon from PA) and we skipped over the night and landed in Ireland at 10am. Well, just because it was 10am didn’t stop us from continuing to drink (which my mom barely touches alcohol simply because she doesn’t like it, I guess we got caught up in the Irish mentality lol). By the early afternoon/early evening, I was so drunk I could barely walk. I felt miserable and awful, I got sick, the world was spinning, woke up feeling like death, the whole ten yards. But all I could think about was how good that wine tasted.
I can’t believe how much I have consumed in the past 8 years but I feel extremely lucky that I am taking control of my life as early as I am. I have taken the power away from alcohol before I have racked up decades of drinking and I’m still staring at the bottom of a wine bottle feeling like crap.
Congrats on your new outlook on life. From your info about yourself you’ve had a burden to carry. And alcohol most definitely helped in easing some of that. And a world I’ve been threw myserlf. I’m new on this wish had come sooner. But as sober I’m a few years in. But anyone wanting to take life back I’m all about that. This world is full of sober peeps looking out for one another. In all honesty sobriety must come with truth. So many want to tell there story and the truth comes out. Best of luck on your journey there’s more help then when I became sober 10/15/12 and still going strong. That’s from all the extra help available out there😊