What brought me to Soberistas, Part II

This second part of what brought me to Soberistas turns out to be the most difficult to write.  I had assembled all of the ingredients for the life I hadn’t even dreamt of yet, the makings of a dream that was still in gestation.  At the point when I met my husband (of 33 years …

Be gentle with yourself

We say this often to people who have had a relapse and are back to day one, we say “be gentle with yourself”.  One of the reasons for this piece of advice is that, if you beat yourself up and focus your energy on how ashamed you feel, what a weak person you are, a …

No-one Escapes the Wilderness …

"No-one escapes the wilderness on their way to the promised land." [Annie Dillard]   I have been seeking for a long time now to speak (write) in my "authentic voice" . This is something I picked up from listening to talks aimed at discovering your "real self" and I took my authentic voice to be …

Learning to love yourself …

"Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all." (Michael Hasser, performed by George Benson, 1977 and Whitney Houston (1985).     “There’s nothing you can do than can’t be done, Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung, Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game, It’s easy …

Digging around in the Basement

I am working on Part 2 of the story, as promised.  It's more difficult to write than Part 1, which is unexpected.  So here's something to be thinking about in the meantime.    “You may not want to go into that basement, but if you really don’t go into that basement, it’s at your own …

What brought me to Soberistas? Part I

This is a long story, which I will split into two parts.  I had been drinking for a very long time – 44 years – before I reached the point where I accepted that I had to stop and then before I was ready to actually stop.  I knew it for a few years beforehand, …

Don’t stop me now …

My journey into AF living began with a decision to live the remainder of this life free of alcohol.  I was approaching my 60th birthday and considered myself to be living in the last trimester of my life on earth.  The decision was made from a very dark place where existence had become so miserable …

Waiting

When I “came out” on Facebook about living AF I was 100 days sober.  I had a comment from a man I used to work with who said “when you stop drinking you stop waiting” (Caroline Knapp, Drinking: A Love Story).  I’ve come across this saying a few times and it took me until about …

I am no better, and neither are you …

Addiction is a leveller.  It makes no distinction along the lines we construct to distinguish ourselves one from the other.  Rich, poor, male, female, celebrity, unknown, and regardless of ethnicity or sexuality, addiction does not discriminate.    We share stories about celebrities going into rehab, “coming out” as having an addiction, cutting back for fear that …

It’s the way you tell them!

The language you use is very important, much more so than I could have imagined.  The words “I’ve given up drinking” are loaded with symbolism for the recipient of this news and for you yourself.  Let’s face it, this only matters if you were a regular high-end user of alcohol.  If you were a “normal” …