The Struggle Is Real
It’s been awhile since my last post and to be honest for awhile there I didn’t want my entire world to be about my sobriety, I just wanted to live my life. It makes complete sense that in my first year of sobriety, my entire world would change and that would be the topic of most of my conversations. It’s a big change, not only for me but for everyone else I choose to keep or let into my life. Once I had settled into this new way of living and started to make steps towards a brighter future, I wanted to start living my life without sobriety being in the forefront of my every day life. I didn’t see a problem in doing this, but what I didn’t realize was that writing about my feelings and experiences during this journey was my version of therapy.
The mind of an addict is a tricky thing. The only people that can truly understand it are other addicts. In my first year of sobriety I spent a great deal of time learning how to navigate my emotions, thoughts, and trying to better understand how an addict’s brain functioned. I knew in the early stages of recovery I would think about drinking and partying more often than not. That made sense to me because I had completely cut it out of my life one day and that was a huge shock to my system. As the months went on, my body and mind slowly adjusted. I went through my major depression stage, reached the pink cloud stage, and then near the end of my first year I hit a stage where sobriety just felt normal. I thought I had come out the other side of the constant cravings, the nightmares where I woke up and had to question if I actually had been out drinking or if it was all a dream. I had been told from day one that I need to take my recovery one day at a time and that it was a process, but I thought certain things would get easier and move further into the back of my mind or even disappear altogether.
Today I am 851 Days Sober and I am here to tell you that the struggle is real. I thought as the months added up in my sobriety, the thoughts of alcohol and drugs would slowly diminish from my brain. If a normal person cuts something out of their life, in time they no longer crave it or think about it. I thought this would be the same thing for someone like me, but I have been sadly mistaken. At this stage in my recovery, I still think about drinking and doing drugs daily. A bad day, stress piles up, the negative thoughts creep in, life doesn’t turn out how you expect. The easy thing would be to give in to the addict voice inside my head that says why don’t you drink to quiet the noise and numb yourself. I live with that voice in my head constantly and I’m starting to realize that she will never go away. She’s a part of me whether I like it or not. But here’s the thing… my willpower, strength, and determination should be the things that scare the voice inside of me. Some days her voice screams louder than my own thoughts but at the end of every day, I remind myself that I have way too much to lose if I let her win.
I have navigated my way through so many milestones, life events, and struggles while managing to stay sober. I thought certain events such as weddings, bachelorette parties, birthdays, Christmas parties, and so on would be my trigger points. I have not been tempted by any FOMO moment or by everyone having a fun time drinking around me. Although I admit, that voice in my head did pipe up saying ‘you would have made this a lot more fun if you were drinking like the old days’. But I never once gave in because I knew it wasn’t worth it.
I have grown to learn that my biggest triggers are the difficult moments in life. I drank to numb the tough times, to forget about the raw emotions, and because I was just overall sad or stressed out. The fun and happy times were never the triggering moments, they were just excuses to start the drinking. It was in those moments when I had had just enough to drink that the negative thoughts or emotions would surface and the addict in me would keep the party going so I wouldn’t have to deal with said emotions. I need to be cautious when life starts to feel hard and recognize when I’m bottling up emotions or isolating myself because those are the moments when I could let my guard down and let her win. You and I both know that I have come too far to let that happen.
