“Wow so you don’t drink at all, that must be like really hard”

This is a question I’m faced with all the time. “What about your wedding?” “You really don’t think you can have just one?” Lolol no sis, I don’t. And no it isn’t hard. There is something about not drinking in your 20’s that scares people who don’t understand. Maybe they can’t have fun without a drink, maybe they don’t comprehend that if I have one drink it will turn into a potential second stint in the local jail, and maybe it just isn’t for them to understand. I know I stay true to myself, my beliefs, and the fact that a very long time ago I conceded to my inner most self that I am absolutely an alcoholic. But, by all means, have a drink for me if you feel so badly for me that I “can’t” drink. I use the word can’t very haphazardly because, I totally can drink. Today I just have a choice, and I choose not to.

Most of my friends are sober, some are not. I am not afraid of a “normal” person, I am not afraid to be around them while they are drinking, and I am not uncomfortable around people who drink. My life is for all accounts relatively normal. I celebrated my 21^st birthday, six months sober, in a club in New York City and I had an absolute blast. I drank red bull and danced my behind off with one of my closest friends at the time. I’m about to get married, sober. I have buried friends and family, sober. I got engaged, sober. I’m buying my first house with my fiancé, sober. I have traveled parts of the world I never thought I would see, sober. The list goes on and on. I can do anything the average drinking 26 year old can do, I just choose to do it without destroying my life now.

The choice didn’t come easy. I didn’t wake up cured from alcoholism, and I am in fact still not cured from alcoholism or addiction. I just have done the work that was suggested to do in a 12 step fellowship, with the promise of freedom on the other side. That freedom I have today is nothing like anything I have ever experienced. There are no words to describe the gratitude I have when I wake up and no longer have to put a substance in my body to function. (Besides my anti-depressant, lol)

It’s all possible and the choice can be found for anyone, but I’m not here to sell you on that. I’m just here to share my experience. So to answer your questions, “Is it hard?”. The answer is, it was but now it isn’t. My first 30, if not 90 days, sober were terrifying. They were hard, they involved a lot of tears, and a lot of feelings I had not felt in years. I chose early on to open up about those feelings to other women who have had the same trials I have had and was having. I opened up, I talked, I cried, I screamed, and I laid on the floor of my therapists office in the fetal position more times than I can count in those first 90 days. (Love you Tree) I was told very early on what is born in the dark dies in the light of exposure, and that holds true for me still to this day. Secrets do in fact keep you sick, and mine would have killed me if I didn’t open up about them.

It got easier, the pain went away, and it stopped being so trying. I continued to do what was suggested for me, and my life internally and externally improved in a very short amount of time. The thing about us addicts and alcoholics, we can bounce back from it all. We survived the very thing set out to kill us, and it lives right inside of us on a daily basis. We learn to play well with our demons, and we learn how to become the best versions of ourselves. Our lives improve and we very well may become whatever we set ourselves out to be.. So long as we do the work. Talk soon.