Recovery Month 2022

September is National Recovery Month. Twelve years ago I was still working toward pulling together 30 days. I had done that twice before, once in 2007 and once in 2010 before my current recovery date. The longest I had made it was 65 days after my first inpatient treatment in 2010. It seems so weird to think I am sitting on 12 years now. I really wasn't convinced that sobriety was for me. I did know, however, that being a raging addict wasn't doing much for me either. From the outside, the decision was so clear. In the fogginess of my mind, the decision wasn't so clear. It's a hard concept to describe. I say I want it. I think I want it. Then I go do the exact opposite and get mad about the decision I made. And the added "bonus" of seeing what else I wrecked with that decision. Was it a friend this time? Was it a job? Was it the trust of a family? And the cycle continues. 

It was a long process to find recovery for myself. I was sober for about a year before I finally started to let go of the idea of drinking every day. That is a pretty miserable existence. I am hyper focused on the one thing I need to give up. The one thing that keeps me trapped and unhappy. The one thing that increases my mental health symptoms. The one thing that I was convinced was my best friend. Meanwhile, life is going on while I am sitting being mad at the accountability factors that were at least helping me to make the right decision even if I didn't feel like making that specific decision. I was just mad. All the time. That is being abstinent from alcohol. Recovery was something else entirely.

Recovery for me was a combination of stopping the alcohol consumption and getting my thinking and mental health in order. I know that in retrospect now. During those first few years of early recovery I wasn't sure what I needed. I was in a really good treatment program for me at the time which really did make a huge difference. My treatment program was a dual diagnosis program. My inpatient had a small mental health component but probably not quite enough for me. For many years, I struggled with anxiety and depression. Those symptoms were there long before I started drinking. When I started drinking, I felt my first instant symptom relief along with a freeness I hadn't experienced anymore. I didn't care! It was SO nice! What a relief. 

I spent the next 18 years struggling to find that peace again. Little did I know that as I drank more in an attempt to find it, I was making all of those symptoms worse. At the very end, when I was start to go through withdrawal, my anxiety would go through the roof and the drink was the only thing that started to make be feel "normal". I use the term normal loosely here. My normal at that point was not puking first thing in the morning and having the shakes stop. Compared to my current normal, that normal was more of a circling the drain time. I hadn't quite hit rock bottom but I was working on it!

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