I was able to enter the marijuana group through a side door - not directly but through another members post.  I really need to be here. Today I went to AA and had a feeling I'd be asked to lead, and I was.  I am so grateful I qualify for that program, and I am coming up on 4 years of sobriety!  Wow. I went to see the lady who sells vitamins and natural remedies.  I go to her and give her my symptoms and she always gives me great stuff.  She said with the cold viruses these days if you don't catch them when they start as a tickle when they get a hold of you they stay a long time because they are so mutated.  After a week I didn't know I'd still be sick.  I am so grateful to have her and to have money to buy stuff and that she is still in business.  Yes I am still sick with a cold but able to work. I shared about my AA story today.  Maybe I'll give some details here now. I drank alcoholically as a teen and used to drink till I threw up on the weekends for several years. I was a club kid.  When I was 15 I found a liquor store that used to sell to me - we were going to the rock clubs - I also figured out I could transfer the hand stamp to the other hand which meant you were over 21, and buy people drinks inside!  I was 15 and 16.  I figured out I could use cough syrup with codeine to sleep off the hangovers from staying up drunk all night.  I used drugs and alcohol to manage my life from a very young age and didn't mature.  I was smoking and drinking and lying to my parents, and had gone astray from my belief in God, as I was being a "bad girl". I went through college and went to Mardi Gras my last quarter, took 2 weeks off to take the train and party it up.  After college I worked in bars for about a decade - I have a degree in psychology so I liked to try to help people with their problems over drinks.  I got tipped and got bought for me basically as much as I could drink.  It's amazing I never got a DUI.   When a fiance turned to crack I realized I was an addict and I had turned away from my belief in a higher power.  I was still in denial alcohol was a problem.  After about a year I'd quit the bar job, moved home with my parents and started attending church, and came to 12 step meetings, and learned about sobriety including alcohol, so I was eligible for AA, but I didn't qualify as "alcoholic" right away - I realized by listening to the similarities I couldn't say no to alcohol, couldn't stop when I thought I should, and did demoralizing things when drunk, so I could finally say I'm an "alcoholic" - so identifying the problem became what I needed to solve it. Now I don't have to worry about not drinking or drugging on a daily basis, because I've stayed in 12 step meetings for nearly 4 years clean and sober, but I need to learn to live life with serenity and acceptance.  I have an alcoholic mind and I tend to magnify the negative.  I get to use the 12 steps to help me look at my part in things.  I get to live with acceptance and look at how I can change myself instead of looking at what's wrong in the world (see the Alcoholics Anonymous book on the chapter "Acceptance is the answer"). A thought of an old friend in town and being tempted to drink came up, and another thought replaced it of someone in a 12 step room who cares, and how if I stay connected to people with common goal of sobriety, I'm stronger to weather those temptations. I have a sponsor and a higher power and meetings and the 12 steps and the big book of AA and many other books of literature including MA's life with hope.  I am glad to be clean and sober today and wouldn't trade my life for getting high or drunk.  I'm blessed.