My name is … and I’m an alcoholic, 12 years have gone by and I’m basking in the joys that a clean and sober life has given me. I struggled for years when I was first sober, but I held on, now I don’t know myself! I am who I always wanted to be. I have what I’ve always wanted to have. I’m not lying in bed in the weekends hung-over. I have a peace and love for life that I couldn’t ever find in drinking, but I’ have found through sobriety.
I have hard times, I have hard days, alcoholism pops up all over the place, in places, in moments, in occasions when I don’t want it to but I deal with it at the time – it may not be easy, I might be sensitive or ‘down’ or feeling strange but I get through and get to a meeting and nothing ever seems as bad as it is in my head. That’s life, we all have our strange moments, but nothing could ever be as strange as drinking myself to poison, drinking to blackout, to vomit, to destroy myself, nothing. Nothing could ever be as bad as that, and I hope i never forget that. I can look life in the eyes, I can see straight; I can reach out and be involved – with love, with friendship, as a mother, and as someone who respects themselves more now than ever before. I’m alive today.