Happy for you 
1 Like
Well done, Christophe! Congratulations 
1 Like
Wind of change
Bring a wind of sobriety and create happiness for others so that your life regains its meaning.
1 Like
I am pleased to have undertaken this hiking project and to be carrying it out according to plan. I could camp anywhere, but I am probably afraid to stray from the āsafeā plan I made before leaving. I could opt for adventure and walk without a GPS, relying on luck, but with a plan, I am sure to be satisfied with each stage I complete.
2 Likes
These pins are for all of you, dear members of the Talking Sober Community. Like guardians on my path, you surround me and help me walk tall and proud.
3 Likes
Today is the 4th day of my hike. I feel really good. I love drawing parallels between what Iām going through hiking and what Iām experiencing in my journey to sobriety.
For example, there was a storm. This is a challenge for a hiker, just as dark thoughts can be a challenge for someone trying to stay sober. I looked for shelter. There were no buildings nearby, I saw a pile of logs covered with a tarp. I lifted it and used my hiking poles to make a small tent with the tarp. Sheltered, I enjoyed the moment, listening to the rain fall. A recovering alcoholic will also use his/her tricks to block out dark thoughts and is fully aware that itĀ“s not what he or she wants. With patience, calm returns, just as the sun returns after the rain.
5 Likes
Day 13
I try to remember how long itās been since I was sober for 13 consecutive days. At least 2.5 years. But letās leave the past where it is. What a relief to wake up sober. I feel great!
Today Iām going home after a week of hiking. I hope to keep up the good energy: wake up early, be disciplined, and MOVE FORWARDāthe thing Iām capable of, right? I hope to find a new project soon. I canāt wait to take on a new challenge!
Have a great sober day, everyone!
1 Like
Day 18
Today, like yesterday, is going to be an important day for me. I read a post by @Jeanine that spoke to me
Regain my taste for life, take care of myself. It will take work, courage, and determination. One day at a time. I can do it. IĀ“ll do it!
1 Like
Day 24
On vacation with my family, I donāt really want to take the time to analyze the alcohol problem in depth, as I did at length during my many years of addictive drinking. Itās a bit selfish to want to be far away from what concerns us all, far from the responsibility of sharing my story, my contribution to the foundation we are building together so that everyone has the tools they require to remain sober.
I feel it is important to write this to you. An alcoholic going through recovery can be an open book to everyone. These days, I am grateful to be able to live without gritting my teeth, without craving, without having to fight. And what I have read here, what I continue to read, helps me a lot. And I hope that I will be able to help others in some way.
Science has made so much progress in understanding this disease, or as some call it, the alcoholic experience, that I advise everyone to read up on the subject. It is useful and even necessary, essential for becoming and staying sober.
Once again, I am happy to be part of this community.
Thank you all.
2 Likes
Tonight I shared so many laughs with my wife and daughtersā¦ I havenāt laughed so freely and genuinely in years. It is wonderful to be sober and connected to reality, connected to others!
3 Likes
Iām starting my journal again because I clearly canāt stay sober. I think keeping a personal journal will help me persevere. You can read it, of course, but the difference is that this is my topic. Nothing is forcing me to prove my consistency. I have to write for myself, to recommit to my choice. Itās a personal decision to stop drinking.
As I wrote my posts, I did it for the community and forgot about my problem. Alcohol crept back into my life. Today, Iām saying STOP 
. And that will be my only priority for the day.
I will continue to write in English because sharing my experience is important.
So, day one without alcohol. But I donāt care about the numbers. What matters is being sober. I have no regrets, just the conviction that I am a good person and that abstaining from alcohol will make me happy.
3 Likes
Rereading my journal has restored my composure and strengthened my conviction. Drinking alcohol is serious because it is something I deeply do not want to do. Itās not that I regret my mistakes. Itās just letting go, losing my discipline, forgetting myself. Itās not losing my pride, itās losing meaning in my existence.
Today, my plan is NOT TO DRINK ALCOHOL.
I really like the metaphor of the wrinkled beach at low tide, which expresses the eternity of a moment. The furrows in the sand are solid. They have just appeared and will soon be submerged again, but we discover them. It is my soul that suddenly appears to me. Is it desolate, empty? No. In reality, everything is in motion. The wind erodes the beach and the landscape changes very quickly. It all depends on how you look at the landscape. If you are optimistic and curious, it is beautiful, it changes, it is rich, it is alive. If you are suffering, this landscape is empty, lifeless, uninteresting.
I have the power to choose how I see myself from within. And I choose to be curious and constructive.
2 Likes
I would like to develop a positive visualization technique. The idea is to choose a photo I have taken and imagine calming situations or personal successes to reduce stress and strengthen my motivation to continue on the path of sobriety. I will express what I feel or what makes me happy, what strengthens me.
You can certainly do it with me, Iād be delighted! Hereās a photo. Iāll write about it tomorrow. Good night.
Plants have extraordinary resilience. Many decades have been abruptly halted by the violence of nature. Lightning, no doubt. This stump remains anchored to the ground, powerful, useful to other organisms, essential to the richness of the forest ecosystem.
I believe that nothing is useless. Even a bad habit that we break has a new, very different story that is worth nurturing and watching evolve.
Here is an ordinary photo.
A fenced vegetable garden. But a large pumpkin has grown outside the property. āItās in the public domain! Itās for the first person to pick it!ā Well, no. Respect above all else. Itās called common sense.
We often lock away the things we care about for fear of them being stolen.
Seeing this pumpkin overflowing makes me smile. Itās like happiness: itās just beautiful, you shouldnāt keep it to yourself. 
3 Likes
Tomorrow I will be 50 years old and I will wake up without a hangover and with a few plans. Apart from my little slip-up a few days ago. It has been two months since I discovered the TS community and I have spent 54 days sober with you.
This is just the beginning and I am very motivated.
Thank you for your help so far.
Have a good evening! 
1 Like
Just a photo tonight. Itās the entrance to Neptuneās Caves near Couvain in Belgium, which I visited during my hike this summer. Iāll think about it and write down what it inspires me to say tomorrow.
Iām feeling really down. It just hits me and I donāt have the energy to explain why.
But whatās the point of writing this if Iām not expressing the thought process that led me to this conclusion or giving an honest description of my current situation?
I donāt like to rant about my days. Doing so is like an ineffective anchor to the shores of my sobriety.
Because, and this is what matters, it is not an effective technique for staying sober, regardless of the person. This subject, my sobriety, is personal to me. And at the same time, the more I interact with other people who share this same desire to recover, the more I find we have something in common. Yet I remain alone in my conviction that being sober, and staying sober day after day, recovering like each of us, will bring me peace. Or at least spare me my torments and obsessions.
What seems effective to me, and I repeat myself, is to write in the first person and at the same time be read and commented on, to belong to a community, and to read and comment on other people, you, who are seeking to build their balance or evolve in their recovery.
I am interested in brain chemistry. What happens when we stop being dependent on a substance? On a behavior? Twenty years ago, I donāt think any specialist would have dared to say, āI have the answer!ā Today, thanks to the multitude of testimonials and media evidence that addictions can be found everywhere, the scientific community tends to agree on the mechanisms that create addiction: the effect and lack of dopamine create a vicious cycle of dependence.
Okay. But what interests us is how to get out of it? I mean rationally, clinically. Personally, I donāt believe for a second that some people receive the Holy Spirit and others donāt. Itās a vicious chemical process in which both our own cells and the bacteria in our gut flora seek to restore a healthy balance so that our living organism can hold out longer.
Psychologically, it is a matter of awareness, of a need to be happy. Because the realization hits like a ton of bricks: by remaining addicted, I am destroying myself. So I have a fundamental choice to make: to live or to die.
There is only one truly serious philosophical problem, as Albert Camus writes: suicide. Judging whether life is worth living or not is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy. The rest comes after that.
My experience as an alcoholic has brought me to the shores of recovery. Having been so sea-worthy for so long, when I step onto dry land, I fall. And I long to return to the ocean. More than once.
But it is such loneliness, such distress, such a sense of lost purpose that I must stay on the shore to seek, discover, and encounter.
For me, it is these convictions that my voyages at sea can be beneficial to others and to myself that keep me tied to the shore.
2 Likes