Please do, and one thing that always strikes me...


When people ask me "but how did you DO it" ... I find it's impossible to summarize in a few words. I bet people get frustrated when they hear "be humble, open, look for, and accept help." It sounds like snake oil, right? One of these bloody motivational posters that are all over the internet. "You are a star, like the sun" or some such utterly useless BS.



But it is exactly what helped me. I'm not a patient person. I'm an "instant gratification" one. I'm not someone who doggedly keeps trying. I get bored and move on to the next thing. I had no real true reasons to feel "bad", and yet I started drinking like a fish. I had given up diets, or stopping smoking, hundreds of times. No willpower to speak of there... I struggle with how cruel the world can be, and my empathy was killing me. I'm a master in finding excuses. So now you want this type of person to get sober? Good luck!


Unless.. yeah, you accept your intelligence or status plays no role. Knowing stuff doesn't help you. But listening to other folks - both those who are in the same boat, and those who can give you a hand and give some nuggets of info, some survival strategies, some little tricks to get over that first year, the first weeks...


And like you, I also started to listen to people who had made the "journey" to sobriety.



I often think I made it because I felt I was nothing more or less than the worst people I found in rehab. I didn't drink & drive ... yet. I didn't beat up my wife ... yet. I didn't steal ... yet. But the edge was much closer than I liked to think. The "never before 8"s that became "never before 4"s... I think my death was planned for about 2014, maybe 2015. Before that there would only be hell on earth. And I wanted to live.



So don't be disappointed if we don't seem to have the "ultimate" quick answers. We try to describe what we did, how we felt, how we opened up to listen. How we slowly built our bodies & minds up with a healthier lifestyle. I could measure my sobriety in how well I started playing table tennis again. I found the little things that got me going - which may be different from yours. It's an active process too, you need to want to see the help that is offered. When someone asked me to make a drawing depicting how I saw sobriety, I could have said "Dude, are you nuts or something? Do I look like I'm 5?" Or just sit down, and let my inner kid (the one who never needed a drink to be happy BTW) do its thing.


My happiest moment was when I could put on my pants while standing up again. There. That was the real progress. A benchmark.



Anyway, hijacking OAF's reply. Over to you.