My Journey Through Recovery to Sobriety (Prologue)

Hello and welcome to the story of my journey. My name is Brian and I'm a recovering alcoholic. I have spent the past 15 years making mistakes, lying, stealing, and allowing alcohol to completely consume my life and control my emotions. I am proud to say that I am currently sober and have every intention of staying that way. It's a horrible feeling, not having control of your own life. Everything seems so dark when that's happening. But like every obstacle, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, you just have to push through and clear that tunnel. (Trust me when I say, that's easier said than done).

This is my story, but from the beginning when my alcohol problem 1st took root, through all the hard ships, all the ups and downs, all the months of sobriety only to fall and relapse. This is a long story, so it will be a multi-blog series. I will be completely transparent in telling this. I will not hide any detail, I will tell it exactly as it happened to the best of my memory. I will be hiding the names of people who were involved to protect their privacy though. And I will be vague on some details that could legally complicate my life, such as admitting guilt to a crime lol. But I will still be as transparent as I can. Because it has been a crazy adventure through the dark times of my life and into where I am now. Life and the world is so much more beautiful when you're sober. I believe I have truly found peace in my mind, body and soul. And this will be my story.

Addiction of any kind is extremely hard to overcome and can rarely be done alone. I tried for many years to give up drinking entirely and remain sober. And I would do awesome for about 4 months. I would be happy, my friends would tell me they noticed positive change in my appearance and behavior. It was great, but there would always be something that happened, and it would trigger something. I would convince myself that 1 drink would help calm me down. I would tell myself things along the lines of "You've been sober for 4 months, you haven't drank anything since then. You can control it now. You can have a drink and wind down from this crazy day and be fine". And before I knew it, that 1 drink turned to 10, those 10 turned a solid month of binge drinking from the time I woke up to the time I passed out. I couldn't control it. I would wake up with a massive hang over from the amount I drank the day before, vomiting and miserable. And I would convince myself again, "You need to take a quick drink. It will temporarily stop the hang over, stop the vomiting. Then when it stops, start drinking a lot of water and fluids to re-hydrate so you can sober up without a hangover". And I would believe that, knowing that every single time I told myself that in the past, it was never the case. It was a repetition. That 1 drink to "temporarily" relieve the hangover would turn to 10 again.



It would take something happening, losing a friendship, or my job, or not being able to complete a responsibility that had a lot of meaning before I snapped out of it and started to sober up again. Then I'd spend the next 2 days in bed, vomiting and miserable. But I'd eventually sober up and tell myself, "That was the last time, this can't go on. You have to make serious changes right now". And I would sober up, I would vow to sobriety and admit to recovery. Only to repeat the process 4 months later when something else would happen. And that cycle went on for years. I can proudly say I am handling this differently this time. I'm taking a different approach, and above all, I'm not doing it alone this time! So stick around, follow my blog, leave me comments, tell me your story! But above all, HOLD ME ACCOUNTABLE. I am sober, I have taken a vow of sobriety, I have taken measures to ensure I remain sober. That includes rehab and attending an awesome AA based program called Celebrate Recovery. I hope you come back. Because this was just the prologue. My story begins when I was in high school, and it's still writing itself with every day I wake up.