I am glad I found this site. My life was pretty much on script until 18 months ago, when King Alcohol derailed it. Many of the same problems as others - getting a divorce; less time with my kids; DUI; alienated wife and friends; the list goes on. I live alone as my wife and I are separated. I have been to treatment multiple times over the past three years, go to AA meetings, so I know the program, but have been a chronic relapser. And with each one, more issues arise. Yesterday I made the final decision to quit for good. I was using alcohol as an anesthetic. But there is no problem that a drink won’t make worse. Each time I left treatment, I put together decent stretches of sobriety, only to succumb to the gremlin in my head. My sponsor really lit into me today. I think some tough love was what I needed. Alcohol and I were a bad marriage. It was fun right up until it wasn’t. Cunning, baffling and powerful indeed.
Trite but true - nothing changes if nothing changes.
I can relate. I’m a chronic relapser myself, and my sponsor was until he dedicated himself to the program. Try not to internalize that label, instead be kinder to yourself and just remember that relapse is apart of your story, but it is not the end of it.
We’re lucky to have made it back to the rooms after a relapse. Not everyone is so fortunate. For what it’s worth, I’m proud of you. Sobriety doesn’t solve all of our problems, but it does make our problems easier to deal with.
Keep coming back my friend. Or better yet, just stay and join us. 
Thanks for the support. Never did I imagine that I would be a four-time treatment alumnus. But alcoholism runs in my family, and if my dad, sister and cousin can get and stay sober, so can I. Bill W’s line in the 12x12, “why all this insistence on hitting bottom. Most of us have to be pretty mangled to accept the principles of the program.” But I think have and it is time to turn the ship around. As an early sponsor said to me, “It’s a disease. If you could have stopped it, you would have stopped it. It’s your story. Own it and it will ultimately allow you to help a lot of guys.”
Relapse is a part of my story. I only had a couple, but they were absolutely brutal. One was almost a year and the other damn near drove me to suicide. Sometimes it takes what it takes for us to finally recover. I know a lot of people who were in AA for years before the program finally stuck, now they have 20+ years of sobriety. We all just gotta go a day at a time.