My 6-month soberversary
Recently, I celebrated being alcohol-free for 6 months. What is interesting is that the date – April 12th – was my dad’s heavenly birthday. He would have been 71. Also interesting is that it was alcohol that killed my father. He had a terrible drinking habit and it got out of hand during his last days. He was binge drinking a lot and on that night that he died, he had been drinking several beers until he ended up having what was probably his sixth and final heart attack. He had recently had heart surgery and while he was warned to cut back on alcohol, he didn’t listen. And in the end, his drinking is what killed him.
That fact was not lost on me when I was in the hospital a little over 6 months ago and I was recovering from alcohol-induced pancreatitis. I was forced to take a good hard look at just how badly my desire to destroy myself had gotten. Up until then, I had lost my passion for life, and my desire to live. But when I was in that hospital, I made one decision: I want to live. I want another chance to live this life and make it a damn good one.
Thankfully, I got that second chance. I recovered from my illness and eventually regained my health. And I have not had a drop of beer ever since.
And the fact that it was my 6-month soberversary on what would have been my dad’s birthday, and that alcohol is what killed him, was a huge reminder for me that I made the right choice to stop drinking for good.
It has not been an easy journey, believe me. I don’t want to go back to my old life and I don’t want to live the way I was living before, but the cravings for alcohol have not gone away. Even still, I crave having “just one beer” every once in a while. I try to analyze why I crave it so much. Was it the habit of drinking several beers every day? Was it the taste? Was it how alcohol made me numb to the pain I carried around inside every single day – as well as numb to the bullshit in life? Was it the sensation of being relaxed and not so hyped-up that alcohol made me feel? Was it the false sense of not having a single care for the world? Was it the blissful escape from reality that I was after? Or the “fun” I thought I was having when I was drinking?
The reality is that I can have all of those things I was craving and that I thought alcohol would give to me WITHOUT actually drinking the alcohol. Well, sure, I can’t exactly have the taste anymore, but that’s okay. I can live with that. Too many good things have happened in my life since I stopped drinking – and a lot of good people have come into it, too. The best part is that these new people in my life support my desire NOT to drink. They’re all about being healthy and living a healthy lifestyle. And that is just so awesome. Those are the kind of people that I need to have in my life.
The reality was that I was just embarrassing myself when I drank, acting like a bitch and making myself look like an ass because of how drinking too much made me behave around others. And drinking too much changed my judgment. It made me make poor choices and believe bad things. It also made me extremely sensitive and short-tempered. I had “twisted logic” because of how misguided being a drunk changed my way of thinking. I have read a lot about the effects alcohol has on the brain and how it changes our critical thinking skills and alters the physiology of our brains. I truly believe that all those years I spent drinking warped my way of thinking and prevented me from having good judgment of my actions.
The bottom line is, the drinking was not good for me. It made a lot of bad things happen in my life. Sometimes I wonder if maybe my father had not been such a heavy drinker then maybe he wouldn’t have been so violent. I am glad that being an alcoholic did not turn me into a violent person, but it sure made me stupid.
But I have also noticed some other good things happen for me, too. Mostly, personal things.
Ever since I stopped drinking, these things have happened:
I sleep better. I used to constantly wake up at night, feeling nervous or jittery. Or sick. Now I sleep through the night and wake up feeling great! Except for that ONE night the cat kept jumping up on the bed and waking me up. Grr!
I feel healthier. I definitely feel like I am healthier now – and stronger! I am taking vitamins every day and eating better and I feel like I am a healthy person. Oh yeah, I am exercising more too!
I have lost weight. The weight loss did not happen right away, but it DID happen. I exercise a lot and eat a healthy diet (with my weekends being cheat days!). After 6 months, I had lost 10 pounds.
I have more energy. This is especially true when I wake up in the morning. In the past, after a night of heavy drinking, I would wake up feeling like I got ran over by a truck. Now I wake up with lots of energy. And I keep that energy going through my busy day.
My skin looks better. Seriously, it does. I had a picture of me taken a couple of months after I stopped drinking and someone complimented that I looked like I was “glowing” in the picture. I can tell that my skin is stronger and clearer and that’s just awesome!
I am happier and more positive. I still have my bad days and episodes of extreme sadness, but mostly I am happy and positive. I am grateful for this second chance at life and I feel so blessed!
I love myself. Let me rephrase that: I TRULY love myself now. I have learned how to appreciate and love the awesome and strong person that I am. I know I have survived so much in life and had to take a lot of beatings. I have had to overcome a lot and face so many fears. And I have learned that I may not be how I want to be now, but I am on the right path to getting there. I love myself for being so strong, for beating temptation and getting this far in life. I take better care of myself now and see to my needs. And I no longer hold past mistakes against myself, either. That was part of the reason I hated myself so much. I accept that I have made mistakes in my past and I have learned from those mistakes. My past mistakes are not meant to be a burden I must carry for the rest of my life and they sure as hell have no right to be my death sentence. They are mistakes I made and mistakes that I must learn from. Nothing more. I love myself DESPITE those mistakes, because I didn’t know better and I was still learning. I was still growing. I can’t fault myself for that. I love myself despite everything because all that matters now is the life I live right now.
I love my life. I love the life I have NOW. I didn’t love my life before, but I love my life now because I finally made some good things happen. I finally “got my shit together” and have found my true path in life. The old life won’t have any place in the new one. That was the old me living the old life. I am a new me living a new life, and I love every minute of it, struggles and all! And what I love best about my life is that I now know just how important it is to keep on living it.
I embrace each new day. Each new day is a new adventure, a new chance to do awesome and amazing things. In the past, I would get so angry each morning I woke up. It was a whole “time to deal with more shit” attitude. I don’t have that attitude anymore! Now I wake up wondering just what this new day has in store for me. And it’s never a dull moment, either!
I care more about my health and taking care of myself. In the past, I was trying to destroy myself and I didn’t give a shit about myself. I wore clothes with holes in them. I ate shitty food and didn’t really care what happened to me. But now I DO care. My health is now a bigger priority in my life. I WANT to take care of myself and keep myself healthy. And I want to take care of my needs, too. No more going without! One HUGE thing I needed? Love. I needed to be loved. I give myself that love every single day.
I am learning to love myself again. I am starting to love myself again. I am becoming the me that I was meant to be, and I really like this new me too. I used to look in the mirror and hate what I saw. Now I look in the mirror and I LIKE what I see. I see someone who is a fighter, a survivor, and with a beautiful soul that is worth the love that other people would not give to me. I am worth fighting for and I am going to fight for myself every single day. I don’t reject myself anymore. I no longer see myself as the fat, poor, ugly, stupid and unworthy human that everybody else saw. I know I am a worthy human, and I deserve to be loved. I no longer need anybody else to give me that love or tell me that I have value; I have given all of that to myself now. I give myself that love and I am so much happier now. I used to rely on others to give me that kind of love, but not anymore. I no longer look to others for love or validation; I give love and validation to myself by myself every day now. A lot of other people in my life liked me better as a target for their bullying or as someone they could use as a scapegoat or someone they could blame or play their emotional mind games with. They did not accept me as someone worthy of their love. But I no longer need them to. I now see myself as worthy and lovable, and I give myself that kind of love and value every single day.
I am happy now, and I am healthy. And I know I am on the right path.
The drinking is what held me prisoner for a long time. I was blinded into thinking it gave me the escape and numbness that I craved, when I needed something else much more important than that. I am glad that I finally crawled out of that pit. I am PROUD of myself for climbing out of that pit and finally breaking free of those chains. And I did that all on my own. I had to find the strength to rescue myself from the hell I had put myself into and I did finally get that strength on the day that my drinking almost claimed my life, too. It got my father but it didn’t get me. I came out of that fire as a brand new person. I had to fight for the person that I was meant to be. Nobody else did that. I had to find the power to do that myself. And I did. And I thank God for helping me to find that power so that I could be free of my addiction.
I am glad that I made the decision to fight this beast one last time. I fought it, and won. The old me went into that hospital at Death’s door, and the new me emerged grateful to embrace the second chance at life she was given. I love this person that I am now, and I love the person that I am becoming. I am not there yet, but I am at least still on this journey. I have the choice of continuing on this path or going back to the old ways, the old me that hated herself and didn’t want to live anymore. I have a new appreciation of life and I DO want to keep living it. So I think this is the path that I will stay on.
That fact was not lost on me when I was in the hospital a little over 6 months ago and I was recovering from alcohol-induced pancreatitis. I was forced to take a good hard look at just how badly my desire to destroy myself had gotten. Up until then, I had lost my passion for life, and my desire to live. But when I was in that hospital, I made one decision: I want to live. I want another chance to live this life and make it a damn good one.
Thankfully, I got that second chance. I recovered from my illness and eventually regained my health. And I have not had a drop of beer ever since.
And the fact that it was my 6-month soberversary on what would have been my dad’s birthday, and that alcohol is what killed him, was a huge reminder for me that I made the right choice to stop drinking for good.
It has not been an easy journey, believe me. I don’t want to go back to my old life and I don’t want to live the way I was living before, but the cravings for alcohol have not gone away. Even still, I crave having “just one beer” every once in a while. I try to analyze why I crave it so much. Was it the habit of drinking several beers every day? Was it the taste? Was it how alcohol made me numb to the pain I carried around inside every single day – as well as numb to the bullshit in life? Was it the sensation of being relaxed and not so hyped-up that alcohol made me feel? Was it the false sense of not having a single care for the world? Was it the blissful escape from reality that I was after? Or the “fun” I thought I was having when I was drinking?
The reality is that I can have all of those things I was craving and that I thought alcohol would give to me WITHOUT actually drinking the alcohol. Well, sure, I can’t exactly have the taste anymore, but that’s okay. I can live with that. Too many good things have happened in my life since I stopped drinking – and a lot of good people have come into it, too. The best part is that these new people in my life support my desire NOT to drink. They’re all about being healthy and living a healthy lifestyle. And that is just so awesome. Those are the kind of people that I need to have in my life.
The reality was that I was just embarrassing myself when I drank, acting like a bitch and making myself look like an ass because of how drinking too much made me behave around others. And drinking too much changed my judgment. It made me make poor choices and believe bad things. It also made me extremely sensitive and short-tempered. I had “twisted logic” because of how misguided being a drunk changed my way of thinking. I have read a lot about the effects alcohol has on the brain and how it changes our critical thinking skills and alters the physiology of our brains. I truly believe that all those years I spent drinking warped my way of thinking and prevented me from having good judgment of my actions.
The bottom line is, the drinking was not good for me. It made a lot of bad things happen in my life. Sometimes I wonder if maybe my father had not been such a heavy drinker then maybe he wouldn’t have been so violent. I am glad that being an alcoholic did not turn me into a violent person, but it sure made me stupid.
But I have also noticed some other good things happen for me, too. Mostly, personal things.
Ever since I stopped drinking, these things have happened:
I sleep better. I used to constantly wake up at night, feeling nervous or jittery. Or sick. Now I sleep through the night and wake up feeling great! Except for that ONE night the cat kept jumping up on the bed and waking me up. Grr!
I feel healthier. I definitely feel like I am healthier now – and stronger! I am taking vitamins every day and eating better and I feel like I am a healthy person. Oh yeah, I am exercising more too!
I have lost weight. The weight loss did not happen right away, but it DID happen. I exercise a lot and eat a healthy diet (with my weekends being cheat days!). After 6 months, I had lost 10 pounds.
I have more energy. This is especially true when I wake up in the morning. In the past, after a night of heavy drinking, I would wake up feeling like I got ran over by a truck. Now I wake up with lots of energy. And I keep that energy going through my busy day.
My skin looks better. Seriously, it does. I had a picture of me taken a couple of months after I stopped drinking and someone complimented that I looked like I was “glowing” in the picture. I can tell that my skin is stronger and clearer and that’s just awesome!
I am happier and more positive. I still have my bad days and episodes of extreme sadness, but mostly I am happy and positive. I am grateful for this second chance at life and I feel so blessed!
I love myself. Let me rephrase that: I TRULY love myself now. I have learned how to appreciate and love the awesome and strong person that I am. I know I have survived so much in life and had to take a lot of beatings. I have had to overcome a lot and face so many fears. And I have learned that I may not be how I want to be now, but I am on the right path to getting there. I love myself for being so strong, for beating temptation and getting this far in life. I take better care of myself now and see to my needs. And I no longer hold past mistakes against myself, either. That was part of the reason I hated myself so much. I accept that I have made mistakes in my past and I have learned from those mistakes. My past mistakes are not meant to be a burden I must carry for the rest of my life and they sure as hell have no right to be my death sentence. They are mistakes I made and mistakes that I must learn from. Nothing more. I love myself DESPITE those mistakes, because I didn’t know better and I was still learning. I was still growing. I can’t fault myself for that. I love myself despite everything because all that matters now is the life I live right now.
I love my life. I love the life I have NOW. I didn’t love my life before, but I love my life now because I finally made some good things happen. I finally “got my shit together” and have found my true path in life. The old life won’t have any place in the new one. That was the old me living the old life. I am a new me living a new life, and I love every minute of it, struggles and all! And what I love best about my life is that I now know just how important it is to keep on living it.
I embrace each new day. Each new day is a new adventure, a new chance to do awesome and amazing things. In the past, I would get so angry each morning I woke up. It was a whole “time to deal with more shit” attitude. I don’t have that attitude anymore! Now I wake up wondering just what this new day has in store for me. And it’s never a dull moment, either!
I care more about my health and taking care of myself. In the past, I was trying to destroy myself and I didn’t give a shit about myself. I wore clothes with holes in them. I ate shitty food and didn’t really care what happened to me. But now I DO care. My health is now a bigger priority in my life. I WANT to take care of myself and keep myself healthy. And I want to take care of my needs, too. No more going without! One HUGE thing I needed? Love. I needed to be loved. I give myself that love every single day.
I am learning to love myself again. I am starting to love myself again. I am becoming the me that I was meant to be, and I really like this new me too. I used to look in the mirror and hate what I saw. Now I look in the mirror and I LIKE what I see. I see someone who is a fighter, a survivor, and with a beautiful soul that is worth the love that other people would not give to me. I am worth fighting for and I am going to fight for myself every single day. I don’t reject myself anymore. I no longer see myself as the fat, poor, ugly, stupid and unworthy human that everybody else saw. I know I am a worthy human, and I deserve to be loved. I no longer need anybody else to give me that love or tell me that I have value; I have given all of that to myself now. I give myself that love and I am so much happier now. I used to rely on others to give me that kind of love, but not anymore. I no longer look to others for love or validation; I give love and validation to myself by myself every day now. A lot of other people in my life liked me better as a target for their bullying or as someone they could use as a scapegoat or someone they could blame or play their emotional mind games with. They did not accept me as someone worthy of their love. But I no longer need them to. I now see myself as worthy and lovable, and I give myself that kind of love and value every single day.
I am happy now, and I am healthy. And I know I am on the right path.
The drinking is what held me prisoner for a long time. I was blinded into thinking it gave me the escape and numbness that I craved, when I needed something else much more important than that. I am glad that I finally crawled out of that pit. I am PROUD of myself for climbing out of that pit and finally breaking free of those chains. And I did that all on my own. I had to find the strength to rescue myself from the hell I had put myself into and I did finally get that strength on the day that my drinking almost claimed my life, too. It got my father but it didn’t get me. I came out of that fire as a brand new person. I had to fight for the person that I was meant to be. Nobody else did that. I had to find the power to do that myself. And I did. And I thank God for helping me to find that power so that I could be free of my addiction.
I am glad that I made the decision to fight this beast one last time. I fought it, and won. The old me went into that hospital at Death’s door, and the new me emerged grateful to embrace the second chance at life she was given. I love this person that I am now, and I love the person that I am becoming. I am not there yet, but I am at least still on this journey. I have the choice of continuing on this path or going back to the old ways, the old me that hated herself and didn’t want to live anymore. I have a new appreciation of life and I DO want to keep living it. So I think this is the path that I will stay on.
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