Alcohol Recovery Without 12 Steps Community Group
This group was created to explore various recovery paths for Alcoholism. We generally chose to explore paths outside of the AA model, or ones which incorporate, but are not limited to AA. Anyone wanting to learn and explore how to become free from alcohol addiction are welcome. Our main goal is to support each other with compassion and decency, while remaining open minded...
As I'm sure many of you did, I spent most of my time drinking, thinking about drinking, fantasizing about drinking, doing things to facilitate drinking and recovering from drinking bouts. In all of that, I didn't get much done in any other areas of my life. I became over weight, neglected my health, failed out of several colleges, lost jobs, put myself in a financial crisis, lost friends, and the list goes on.
Now that I am sober, I find myself struggling to pick up of the pieces and put things back together again, and I become very frustrated. Part of me says to just accept things the way they are, and have faith that God will work all of these things out. Another part of me begins to struggle to try and fix and regain all that was lost. I also often ponder how what I am doing is going to affect me spiritual, mentally, and emotionally. I want things in life, and I often lose site of all that I do have. Despite all of the disarray, I am happy to be sober. I would love to hear everyone's experience.
Now that I am sober, I find myself struggling to pick up of the pieces and put things back together again, and I become very frustrated. Part of me says to just accept things the way they are, and have faith that God will work all of these things out. Another part of me begins to struggle to try and fix and regain all that was lost. I also often ponder how what I am doing is going to affect me spiritual, mentally, and emotionally. I want things in life, and I often lose site of all that I do have. Despite all of the disarray, I am happy to be sober. I would love to hear everyone's experience.
I decided what I wanted my life to be like and began working toward that one thing at a time. I made goals and worked on one or two at a time. That helped me to stay focused and empowered me to keep improving things in my life after being able to reach some of those goals.
I will tell you that my son has a criminal record, lost everything but his record collection, which I went and saved, and had to start from scratch in a homeless center for addicted...then they sent him to a halfway house, and then a sober living house. he had to work piecemeal for guys in AA that had day labor jobs...then he got a job cleaning toilets at a gym. last year he moved up from that to instructing and then assistant manager, and this last year he is a manager of one gym and got promotions to a big gym- which means more money. He has made friends..gotten back afew old friends. He has a nice place to live now.
He says he just "does the next right thing" that is all he can do. He does AA. I do not.
I learned to put a lot into God's hands tho. I couldn't deal otherwise. When I get really down, I try to do something for someone else. If I am stuck at home, I knit for babies in the nicu. If I can get out, I volunteer at the SPCA, and sometimes it is just a card or letter or email to a relative to send some love. doing for others really helps me when I am at my worst.
I know my son is terribly disappointed he can't get back to school right now, and he will never be a teacher, because of his felony record...but he is a man I can be proud of...and I think he feels pretty good. People not addicted struggle in life too..maybe we all have to just find one thing to be happy about every day. Give one smile to someone and be grateful for every small accomplishment. I am happy you are sober, and I think we all have to learn to let go of "might have beens" because ultimately the journey leads us to where we needed to go. Be well.
That's exactly how I view the journey that I had to go through Violet. My drinking lead to my being divorced by the woman I considered my soul mate. I got sober and started making changes in my life to win her back. In the beginning I know I was doing it more for her than for me but the longer I worked on me the more it became for me. After two years of her rejecting me I finally realized that she wasn't coming back. I took a hard look at myself and decided that I liked the person I had become and wasn't going back to being a drunk. That was when I really started recovering and I became happy with my life and with me. I was able to accept what life had handed me and realized that I could have a good life even if things weren't how I would have chosen them to be.
I guess God had been waiting for me to reach that point because that's when everything started getting better. I had a new job that I loved after losing one that I hated. I was making a ton of new friends. I was getting healthy and problems that came up which in the past would have sent me straight to the bottle had no effect on me other than having to take the time to deal with them. Life was good and for the first time in my adult life I was actually looking forward to the future.
That's when something happened that I never expected to happen. My ex and I put our house up for sale and we had a contract on it 4 hours after it went on the market. I hadn't had any contact with her for about 6 months but I had to be around her to sign papers and get my things that were still a the house. We closed on the house and we said our goodbyes for what I thought was the last time. What I didn't know was that during the time that I spent with her she had noticed that the man she had married was back with some improvements to boot. One month later she contacted me and we have been back together for almost 6 months now and are happier than we have ever been. We will be getting married again in the next month or two but we already consider ourselves and refer to ourselves as husband and wife.
Getting to my point. My wife has told me on several occasions that she was sorry that she divorced me and my answer is always that she did what she needed to do at the time. Although it wasn't pleasant at the time it was a journey that I had to go through in order to get to where I am now.