Natnat! 
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Impressive story. It reminds me of a quote I’ve read here somewhere: “it works if you work it” ore something like that.
You worked hard to get what you wanted.
You are here a lot. It looks like you respond on every message I read here 
Amazing!
You are a big part of the community here, thank you for it
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Joined this app today. Been struggling with a few things a month in, and your story really helped me, so thanks for that.
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Best definition of hitting bottom I ever read. Thanks, Sassy.
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@KiwiJay
I am so grateful my story was a support to you. I haven’t been on this app in quite awhile and your comment made it into my email so I logged back on here and I am so grateful that you brought me back, thank you 
if you ever need someone to talk to I am here for you anytime, feel free to message me. Hope you are having a nice weekend and doing okay, sending you love 
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@petzam here is the thread. I hope others will post here, too, since this thread hasn’t been updated in quite a while.
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Thanks ! I’ll try to ask my questions here then 
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I see that people talk a lot about the fact that they changed a lot during first year of recovery. I am now around 1 month and a half sober. I read all that but I do not really identify. Until now I think that my life improved a lot and I also find myself having mood swings to some degree.
I would like to know what it looks like to say “I have changed a lot during my first year”, what has changed? How did you change? When? How did you realise you have changed?
I guess my favourite type of answer would be someone telling about his/her story with a timeline. But anything would be nice !
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Here’s another great thread FYI, more recent, too. When I have more time I’ll try and respond to your questions 
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I’m almost to 7 months so not quite a year but I think the transformation looks different for everyone. Everyone moves and feels it at a different pace in my opinion. For me it comes down to understanding what kind of person you’re hoping to be in sobriety, what do you want to do with your journey, these are questions that are answered in your own timeline. For me, I wanted to be a more humble and thankful person. I’d always been that way in my heart but I really wanted to live my life everyday thankfully. So for me I felt the transformation in sobriety pretty quickly because I spend everyday thinking about what I’m thankful for and how choosing sobriety protected the things in my life I’m most thankful for and love the most. To feel transformed you have to first understand not only that your goal is sobriety but the type of person you want to be through that journey.
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The change was gradual.
The first I noticed was the physical changes, better sleep, more energy, feeling better in general, regular bowels. Etc.
The mental changes were even more gradual, but they were there, things like less selfish, more engaged with wife and kids, genuinely invested in other people instead of myself, more responsible, better self discipline, clear thinking, better stress management, etc.
I would say that these changes really started to take root after 3 months, after the pang of withdrawal subsided.
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I feel that I am still changing. Well, I hope I will continue changing and developing in the sense of learning more about myself and how to react healthy in my life challenges, struggles and problems.
What I think changed a lot is how I react. Well, just today I reacted very impulsively which I struggle to control. But I won’t handle the situation with alcohol which resulted in hanging on the couch in my poor me, I am stupid, I am a victim, noone will ever understand me, poor me. So, I can actually reflect on how I react. Admit: well, this was maybe not a wise move. I can say sorry to others when I am wrong and mean it. I think there is still so much to learn. I think most people wouldn’t see me changing from the outside so much.
Also I am now more self-compassionate allowing myself to rest, to listen to my body and not forcing myself to go on and on and on. Change in progress is also how to deal with my mother. See what I contribute to our relationship, where I need to accept how things are.
I guess I am more flexible and less rigid emotionally and in my behaviour. Well more than before anyway.
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So much wisdom in this thread, everyone here contributes a piece to the puzzle, while you yourself will be the one who will finish it by adding your own pieces. Personally I’m happy to have found back my one year sober post from three years ago. Reminds me how it was, that first year. And how far I’ve come since, but also how far I came in that first year as compared to when I was in active addiction.
My sober journey is a process. A slow one. I’ve been in active addiction for 40 years and I never learned that living a good life, a life worth living, a happy life even (not quite there but working on it 
), takes work. Quite a lot of it. That’s not unique to us addicts, it goes for every human being. I didn’t know that.
Literally always hiding in booze and drugs for decades stalled my life, my growth, my learning, my development. I sort of stayed the same, a hurt unsatisfied angry kid that had erected huge walls around himself and didn’t have the capacity to scale those walls or break them down.
Quitting boozing and drugging gave me the possibility to start the work of breaking down those walls, of finally becoming an adult. I knew I needed therapy. That first year I got myself thoroughly diagnosed and got into group schema therapy. It was a struggle. And I didn’t see much progress. But I’m stubborn and completed the full 60 sessions.
After that I am now In more therapy dealing more directly with the traumas I lived through in my youth. Turns out the schema therapy gave me a good foundation for what I am doing now, understanding of myself making it possible to work on myself now.
Four years in sobriety I am now truly beginning to see, feel and know the difference. And don’t let that scare you. We (should) spend our whole life learning, about ourselves, about those around us, about society, about the world. That’s life. That’s growth. It’s a life long process. I love it. I work in addiction care now and love to try and facilitate some positive change in the folks still in active addiction I work for and with.
Still a long way to go I hope. One day at a time. Becoming sober changed my life and it’s still changing every day. For the better. Never going back to the black hole of addiction. I’m glad you’re here with us Petzam. We’re in this together. I always was alone and I finally am beginning to feel I am not. I knew it already, now I am feeling it too. It’s the best. Thanks for being here friend 
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Holy shit, I re read mine as well from 2019. Never gets old waking up hangover free and being so proud of crawling out of that hole. 40+ years is a lifetime to spend drinking and using. And such a long time to stay a child and hidden from my emotions. Thanks for the revival @RosaCanDo and reminder of how hard we fought to get to where we are. It isn’t perfect, our journeys aren’t over, life still holds challenges and we have so much glorious change and growth ahead…clear headed at last. Grateful to share this path with so many others. Never give up, never surrender.
Edited to add…and for all my history with @forged, grateful for this thread he started and hope he is well. Hopefully time has brought us both some healthy growth.
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I didn’t post my one year on this thread but I did on my personal thread:
I remember feeling some uneasy feelings leading up to it but then when I reached it it was like my brain kind of exploded with all these thoughts and more and more posts on that thread. Milestones can be tricky but they can also be such an opportunity for reflection and self evaluation, looking back on lessons learned and also looking forward to the future. Even though I am very focused on taking a day at a time, I still am a planner at heart and I think it’s important to build some vision for the future, however specific or nebulous that might be.
I’m glad to have read through these recent posts here and I am beginning to understand some of the sort of “stuck” feelings as I head toward my two year milestone. Such a helpful exercise to look back on old posts of my and others and gain some awareness!
I was kind of looking at this differently for myself. I see my recovery journey truly beginning before a year of consecutive days sober. I’m sure others will see this differently, but that’s when I started to see differences in myself. When I started to make real changes toward the goal of living a sober life but also working actively on my mental wellness is when I see my “year” starting, in a sense, because even though I had some short stints of drinking in a codependent way with my husband, I had put behind me the binging, the lying, the hiding, and shame. I could feel my confidence growing, I was learning more tools for emotional regulation, self care, and my depression and anxiety were less severe, I was seeing progress. i mostly saw my progress through daily journaling in a notebook that I would go back and read, same with posts on here, and through some short stints in therapy.
I was also understanding that no matter what my husband chooses to do, that’s his business, not mine, and I make my own choices. And I don’t want to drink. His drinking is not problematic to me when I let go of whatever I am feeling about it because it’s not about me (and he is a normie, as they say, most of the time). So on October 1, 2021 I reset my clock even though I had not had a drink with him in a while because it felt like a good date to me. This involved setting solid boundaries with him, asking him not to offer me tastes of his home brews or pints and explaining that this is for me, it is not to hurt him or be disparaging of his hobby. I had to let go of feeling like I was disappointing him by not sharing in it. It took a few reminders but things are all good now.
Anyway that’s a piece of my story.
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Hello!
Wow, it is lovely that so many people took the time to write an answer, and I am happy when I see that some of you are almost nostalgic (maybe not the correct word here) about this thread!
@Jwfletcher4792 I can identify with what I would word as a particular research of the self here. I guess that when you spend a long time using, addiction becomes part of your identity, and when one manages to quit for a certain period, it feels like a void is left. Thank you for sharing!
@HoofHearted This answer is precisely what I was looking for. I also notice physical changes right now. Nevertheless, a terribly angry, bitter, unforgetful and paranoid part of me keeps returning. I hope I will also start experiencing the same after around 3 months. I am still aware that we are different people and that it might look different to me. Nevertheless, your answer gives me motivation!
@anon74766472, I feel that yesterday was a hard day, and I congratulate you for not giving in! I have a question; what do you mean by “more flexible and less rigid emotionally”? How were you before, and how did you evolve on your journey?
@Mno, I really like your writing. I wish I could write as clearly as you. I identify with your words, especially about the hurt, unsatisfied, and angry kid with huge walls around himself. How did you start breaking those walls? In my case, I also recognize that I have erected a very thick barrier of secrecy, distrust, and almost a fake persona in order not to show myself as I am (to the point where, now, I am unsure of who I actually am)
How did you proceed in this direction, through this uncomfortable feeling of vulnerability?
What is it, for you, to be an adult? I have read a nice book about this, it’s called “how to be an adult” (I like the straightforward title) by David Richo. Nevertheless, it’s a blurry concept and I’d like to have food for thought:slight_smile:
I’m also glad to be here. Thank you for such a warm welcome
@SassyRocks What changed, and in which way, since you stopped hiding from emotions?
@RosaCanDo Thank you for directing me here! What kind of lying, hiding, and shame did you put behind, and how?
I ask a lot of questions, it’s definitely okay not to answer if it’s not comfortable and/or nosy 
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I encourage you to find previous posts from the folks that responded (some here on this thread and some elsewhere) so you can read about our journeys a bit more. I think you’ll find a lot of insight. I can link some for you here, and if you need help with how to use the search function, you are welcome to PM me or any of the moderators for assistance.
That being said, I linked to my thread in my response and you can read more about my story there. Generally, what I was referring to was my pattern of binge drinking alone, hiding my drinking from my partner, thinking I had it well hidden but deep down knowing I was kidding myself and the shame I felt about this “secret.” The series of confrontations and ways my husband tried to help me but I wasn’t in the frame of mind to change. Hiding my empties and having him find them. All that madness. I drank heavily with him, too, on top of all that. So glad that’s long in the past now. The change for me began when I went through the scariest withdrawals I’d ever had and ended up in the ER in detox, though they didn’t keep me there and I went home with some medication to assist me. That shook me up enough to have a wake up call and decide I wanted to change. It wasn’t an overnight change, though. I became a constant relapser at that point and a year later it was Halloween, my favorite holiday, and I was too hungover and drinking too much to self medicate to even participate. I started googling sobriety topics and searching for apps and I found Talking Sober. I joined and read constantly and finally worked up the courage to start participating the following March after I was able to string more days sober together than I had in a decade and I never looked back, I got really active here. I had a couple of breaks from this community and more relapses but TS is what really started to make the difference for me. Realizing I wasn’t alone and building some really meaningful relationships tipped the scale for me to help me commit to sobriety and self improvement and as Menno says, self discovery. Learning who I am as a sober person.
Here are some other links:
From @HoofHearted
From @SassyRocks
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Maybe emotionally isn’t the best word. I was thinking about what to answer. I think when I was drinking I was stuck. All problems I had were nails as I only had a hammer to solve them. I was not forgiving people. They were potentially hurting me. I needed to protect myself from being hurt. I isolated a lot. I was passive aggressive a lot. Now, I learn everyday to integrate different aspects into my reality. There is no black and white. People can hurt me unintentionally for example as it is my blind spot. I still struggle with reacting impulsively rather than take a breath, step back. Let the initial feeling rush through. Think. Things like this.
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@petzam For me therapy has been the key so far. And I needed to be sober to start that. I tried therapy a couple of times before, but when I was still under the influence that got me absolutely nowhere. Once I was sober for a bit (6 months or so) I first got diagnosed properly, and based on that diagnosis I started a fitting form of therapy, schema therapy based on a diagnosis of mixed personality disorder, part avoidant, part borderline.
Schema therapy gave me a lot of insight. I didn’t like it and it was hard work. I had a goal though. I wanted to change my life. My life had developed in the direction of an early grave. I learned here and in face to face meetings that Recovery takes work. So I kept pushing because I understood without that work I would be stuck where I was for 40 years. Or worse. In the last phase of active addiction my suicidal ideations grew pretty strong.
Like I said schema therapy gave me insight into why I function like I function, namely like a kid. A kid who trusts no one, believes no one, and that included myself. What I mean by becoming an adult is learning to understand myself, why this happened and how I function. My parents neglected me emotionally, maybe not through a fault of their own but very true nonetheless. That fucked me up.
I was sexually abused by a teacher in elementary school which fucked me up even worse. I learned in schema therapy what those things -and how I reacted to it- formed me into the dysfunctional addict I was. I never could feel anything but shit inside. Which I buried under a layer of alcohol and drugs so I didn’t have to feel.
And now I am doing trauma focused therapy, and trying to actually process what happened and give a new direction to my life. It’s hard to explain but it’s working. It’s finally growing up. By understanding myself. By learning to feel my feelings. By re-establishing the connection between my brain and my body I learn to trust myself. By learning to trust myself I’m learning to trust others. By trusting myself and others I am learning to form relationships with others that are actually open and equal, which is something I was never able to do.
A phrase that is not from myself but that is fundamental to my journey through sobriety and life in general now: the opposite of addiction is connection. Healthy adults are able to connect. With themselves and with others. Real connections. Hope that answers your questions a bit.
PS. Here’s the link to my one year post. Quite a difference with today. What it was like then and what it's like for us now. For those with a year of sobriety - #123 by Mno
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Now I wanted to add something which is very important to me. I changed a lot how I manage my diabetes. It used to be like a stubborn little child and I answered aggressive leading to a rollercoaster of my sugars which made me so frustrated.
Very early I made the equation: alcohol prevents glucose liberation by liver. How cool is that. Well, never worked out.
Hormones play such a huge role also which I never wanted to accept. So in what I changed is better accepting my conditions. And by accepting them managing it better.
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