Doing Life was just Hard

Doing Life was just Hard

I started drinking at a young age, about twelve or thirteen. I had a drink up the park and drank uncontrollably and to blackout. That’s the story of my drinking.

This experience was not nice and I didn’t think: I’m going to do this as much as I can. I actually thought: I won’t want that again. I didn’t like the way I was in myself. So drinking and changing the way I felt about myself and the world felt the right way to go in life. Alcohol changed my perception of how I felt about the world and myself. Now I look back and have a better understanding of my illness and myself thanks to the Road to Recovery group of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have now learnt that not drinking was just a small part of my problem, life was my big problem.

Doing life was just hard, tough. Wrong and boring. Like everyone in it too. I didn’t feel like I belonged in the world like I saw others slotting into life. I was a pain at home, I was a pain at school, I was a pain in jobs, I was a pain in relationships and I was a pain when drinking. I couldn’t walk the right way in life. I’d always take the bad road and I’d always be in trouble with the police etc. I couldn’t get a grasp of any sort of future in a work environment. I’d get sacked every time. Again, I just couldn’t do the right thing. This was right the way through my life up until I reached Alcoholics Anonymous and got involved with the fellowship.

I didn’t think I was an Alcoholic the day I arrived in 2005 but I felt like I belonged with these people. Yes, I drank every day the majority of the time. Yes, I switched drinks. Yes, I couldn’t stop when I started drinking. Yes, I did disastrous things while drinking. Yes, I stole for alcohol. Most importantly, I felt how these people felt but I just thought I was different. I didn’t give in to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I kept on drinking and not getting any long term sobriety under my belt. I guess I wasn’t ready. I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous depressed, suicidal, anxious, lost, lonely, baffled and bemused by my drinking and myself. I didn’t want to drink but didn’t see a life without it. I didn’t think I’d ever be presented with a solution. I was confined to the idea I’d be the way I was as that was just how I was programmed to be. I felt I would never change I’d only get worse. I thought I’d grow out of it in my teens. In my mid – late twenties I was getting worse. I just didn’t have a clue and was lost, so I drank. No wonder I drank, life was tough and I felt like crap. Restless, irritable and discontented about everything.

Today I know it as selfish and self-centred. I have tools to work around that and how great it is: works if I work it. Meeting A.A. and the group that I call my home group has changed my life more than words can describe. The twelve steps and the program of action that Alcoholics Anonymous have shown me has changed how I view the world and the people in it, most of all, how I view my actions and myself. Today I’ve worked through the twelve steps, got a strong sponsor and am actively a member of my home group. Today my life has turned around; I’m not the same person. I feel great. I’m aware of myself, I know what I must do to keep myself sober today but most of all alive, and that’s to keep doing what people showed me when I first turned up to AA.

I have a sponsor who I respect and I am in a home group, which is the heart of Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m so happy I turned up to the Road to Recovery group in 2005 and heard a strong message. That I was told precisely what I needed to do if I wanted a new life and, most importantly, to stay sober a day at a time. That’s what I’ve done and I have found a new life that is better than I’ve ever known. I feel good within and don’t feel the need to jump to a drink to change how I feel.

AA is more than stopping drinking – it’s a fellowship. I have had the best times I could’ve imagined; I’ve met my best friends and great examples. There are promises in the book Alcoholics Anonymous and I’ve certainly received a lot of promises, which is a understatement. My imagination has been fired and life means something at last. Most of all the obsession with alcohol has been removed as if it were never there in the first place. Thank you to Alcoholics Anonymous and especially the Road to Recovery group.