My first few weeks back from treatment…no one would answer my phone calls besides my family who was worried sick about me.  Everyone had written me off, it wasn’t their fault I would have done the same thing with what I had done to all my friends.  I used, abused, lied, degraded, deceived and tore others down around me because I didn’t want to focus on the real problem.  I knew I was sick with the disease of addiction but hell if I was going to talk about it, admit it or ask for help! What did I do instead?  I burned all my bridges.

When I first started working with my sponsor I wanted to skip right to step 9 where making all my amends in 20 minutes and getting this “saying sorry” thing over with.  My sponsor said because you want to do them now, you get to wait.  Her reasons were sound but I didn’t like them…you are too early in recovery, you need to get to know yourself a little, you need to learn humility, you are emotionally all over the place and my head still wasn’t clear after so much time of using.  Looking back I am so grateful my sponsor knew what she was doing.  My sorry’s and apologies would have been empty and not nearly has heartfelt.

My sponsor saw me for what I was and habits I had learned while using…lying, cheating and deceiving…those aren’t character defects you get rid of overnight.  I was 6 months into recovery and we were still on step 4, I was getting anxious in my recovery and wanting to do so much but she held me back.  I couldn’t see at the time what she was doing but I do now.  I was putting myself back together brick- by- brick, I was building a foundation, a life that showed of service and humility.

I was told once if you fix what’s right inside you mend relationships better, for me that was so true. One year I left a friend in a foreign country because I told her I would meet her there and I never got on the plane…how do you apologize for that?  I started to see the shame and guilt I was caring around with me as I got further into recovery.

One year later I was on step 8 and writing down all my amends. I got to look back on a year of recovery with my sponsor, she looked at me and said are the bricks starting to come together, can you get over the bridge to meet your friends again?  She saw what I could not early in sobriety…the bricks needed to be rebuilt for me to meet my friends.  Talk is cheap and my sponsor knew that but actions…that was the key to a good amend. They got to see the product that came after a year in recovery which was much more impactful than “I’m sorry”.  While I did say I’m sorry, I meant it and you could see that with the way I was living my life, putting it back together brick-by-brick! Written by a Volunteer of Myrecovery

 

If you spend time in recovery circles you will hear these same clichés over and over again. Some make you want to run to the nearest bar just for spite, others may become mantra.

If you have spent any time in a 12-step meeting of any sort, or if you have spent time in rehab, chances are that you are more than familiar with recovery clichés. They are often spouted by the old timers in a meeting, or if you are in rehab, by your group counselor.

When you first hear them, you might not quite know what just happened. Did that person just make that up? And if so, why did he say it with such confidence? You usually think to yourself one of two things: “Gee, that was an interesting thing to say, that really resonated with me, how clever that person is.” Or “What? Why the hell would anyone say something like that out loud?”

But then you start hearing those same phrases over and over from other people as well. You soon realize that they are all clichés, well-worn phrases used to keep you on the right track, which of course is clean and sober.

If you frequent recovery circles, you will hear these same clichés over and over again. Some will make you feel angry in a way you simply cannot explain and make you want to run to the nearest bar just for spite, while others will resonate with you in a way that you might say them to yourself when you are alone. They may even help you through a tough time.

Here are what I consider to be the five worst and five best recovery clichés. Use them wisely.

The Worst

“My Worst Day Sober is Better Than My Best Day Drinking.”

Really? I kind of tend to doubt that. Now, I get the point of what this is trying to say of course, but I really doubt that sober day you had when you got fired from your job and found out that your wife was having an affair with your brother was better than that day that you had an appletini at the hotel bar in Disney World when you were on vacation with your family. Here is the thing, some days on booze and drugs were fun. We all get that. It’s just that that kind of fun is not sustainable.

“Let Go and Let God.”

It’s not just that this is archaic and will probably insult a good percentage of the people you say it to who don’t do that whole “God” thing, it’s also just way too simplistic. Personally I know some people who are doing some things that are pretty crazy and are in some very dark places. Just “letting go and letting God” is not going to do a whole heck of a lot for them at this point. They actually need some sort of a plan, you know? Being the person who says this phrase probably feels really good, especially if you have a nice warm place to go home to at night. But if you are trying to have a positive effect on someone else, then pick another cliché.

“Have an Attitude of Gratitude.”

Okay, so this rhymes. Here is a pro tip. Don’t say words that rhyme to people in bad places. When you are right in the midst of a hardcore withdrawal, or are attending your first court-ordered AA meeting because of your fourth DWI, the last thing you want someone to say to you is something that rhymes. Trust me on this one.

“Keep it Simple, Stupid.”

The thought behind this well-worn cliché is that most things, your recovery included, work better when they are kept simple, as opposed to making them complicated. This actually makes sense, and if you leave it at “Keep it Simple,” I will leave it off this list. It’s really just the insult at the end that makes it so awful. I know that “Keep it Simple Stupid” becomes the acronym KISS, but is that really worth it? I truly doubt that “Keep it Simple You Enormous Moron” would catch on, but who knows, maybe next time I hit a meeting I will try it out.

“Easy Does It.”

Okay, so this one is really not so bad. While not that catchy, it is benign for the most part. But here is the thing. Some people accuse 12-step recovery groups of being a bit like a cult, and nothing plays into that more than a room full of people repeating the same pointless phrases to each other. While there is nothing inherently irritating about “Easy Does It,” it needs to die a quick death just simply because it is so overused that it has become trite.

The Five Best

“If Nothing Changes, Then Nothing Changes.”

Just like the rest, at first this one can be a tad irritating because it just seems so simplistic. But then if you let it rattle around in your mind for a bit, you realize it is a bit like a Zen koan, something that is meant to unravel a greater truth, not just about yourself but about your world. You can sit and stew in your life choices or in your addiction for years if you want to, but if you make some changes, no matter how difficult those may be, sooner or later some sort of change in your life will come as a result.  Read more “the fix”..

Funny how anticipating a sip of champagne on my theoretical wedding day had been one of those things that initially kept me from getting sober.

When my fiancé and I sat down with the restaurant we had chosen as our wedding venue, I expected to talk kale salad and crudité, but the manager had something else in mind. First, he touted the restaurant’s full bar and creative cocktail menu. Next came a promise of a champagne toast. It was after the fourth or fifth time he tried to hard sell a special mixed drink in our honor that my husband-to-be all but shouted: “she’s a recovering alcoholic!”

Funny how anticipating a sip of champagne on my theoretical wedding day had been one of those things that initially kept me from getting sober. Nearly 10 years later, when I was planning my actual wedding—thanks, in great part, to sobriety—alcohol had been barely a thought.

For many brides and grooms-to-be—particularly those in early recovery—I know this isn’t the case. From the engagement party to stag nights and showers galore, getting married is the Russian doll of momentous (read: stressful) occasions. All this culminates into the “big day,” with everyone from your fourth step there in the same room, watching you make one of the biggest decisions of your lifetime. (No pressure!) Also in attendance, possibly, your old best friend, Booze.

Considering the trend of signature cocktails, and when an average couple’s bar bill comes in around $3,500, alcohol is an integral part of most weddings—much to a sober alcoholic’s dismay. According to one study, guests drink a week’s worth of alcohol in a single night. So, just how do we sober folks make it through without one drop?

“I smoked like a million cigarettes that day and probably gained 20 pounds from stress-eating the weeks before,” says Matt, a grad student, who got married two days after his fifth sober anniversary. He and his wife had a destination wedding in a small town in northern Italy, where he says “wine was almost cheaper than water.”

Matt says he stayed sober on his wedding day by focusing on others. “[I tried] to be of service to my wife,” he said, “and make sure everyone was having a fun time.”

For Matt, watching his intoxicated relatives’ “tomfoolery” was an incentive to stay sober. But other couples aren’t having it.

Amanda, 28, who works in the fashion industry, says she made a very difficult decision to not invite one of her closest childhood friends because he’d gotten drunk and made a scene some months before at a mutual friend’s wedding.

“It might seem somewhat drastic,” Amanda said, “but I had an intimate dinner party and I wanted the atmosphere to be really calm and safe, without the threat of someone throwing me off balance.”

The desire for a calm space is just one reason why some couples opt for a dry wedding.

Both my husband and I are sober,” said Rebecca, 35, who works in criminal justice, “so when it came time to whether or not to serve alcohol, we decided against it.” For Rebecca, the decision to have a dry wedding was less a fear of temptation than it was an issue of cost. “I wasn’t going to shell out 5K for something I didn’t drink!”

Cade, 36, works at a property management company. She and her partner, Max, are also choosing to host a sober wedding.

“I initially thought, oh, of course we would have booze at the wedding because I don’t care and my fiancé loves champagne,” Cade says. “but it was actually he who insisted [we didn’t]. Max said, I want you to be able to eat and drink everything at our wedding.’”

Cade says the decision was made easier because most of her friends are also sober. “His friends are younger and I think they might need convincing,” she said, “but he knows how important my sobriety is to me and really to us.”

Alyssa Mooney, from A Practical Wedding, reminds couples considering sober receptions that it’s their wedding. She says, “Even if the reason is monetary or just personal beliefs, there’s no reason you have to have alcohol.”

One way around the awkwardness of throwing a sober wedding may be to choose a venue that prohibits alcohol. Religious institutions and public parks, for example, generally don’t permit alcohol to be served. Sometimes venues prohibit alcohol for liability reasons. Others disallow drinking because they just don’t have a liquor license.

If you’re not drinking and don’t really expect many of your guests to drink much either, you might go with a cash bar or limited service. Otherwise, be prepared to pay—whether you (and your guests) drink or not.

“The restaurant I chose had a requirement that we pay for a ‘drinks’ package per person per hour,” Amanda said. “This really annoyed me because half my guests were sober, too, and wouldn’t be drinking anything nearly as expensive as the per hour fee.”

Kelly, 31, a writer, is getting married in February. At three-and-a-half years sober, her big concern, she says, is “making everyone happy”— drinkers and non-drinkers alike. Her solution is to have a variety of options for everyone, including mocktails and non-alcoholic beer.

Kelly informed her wedding planner that there’d be both drinkers and non-drinkers in attendance, and that she specifically doesn’t drink. “I don’t want to be given a glass of champagne on accident or drink a regular beer instead of an non-alcoholic beer by mistake,” she says.

That’s exactly what happened to Katherine, 29, surgical coordinator, who says she was offered a champagne cocktail straight after walking off the aisle. “I basically shouted ‘I’m pregnant.’” Which she was. “[It was] the most legit excuse ever!”

So what if you’re not pregnant, and you don’t necessarily want to out yourself as an alcoholic? When it comes to weddings, you can get away with just saying you’re not drinking that day. Most people (except, uh, maybe alcoholics) won’t think twice.

Randi Newton, who authors a column all about being divorced and dating sober, said she and her now-ex deliberated over whether or not to have booze at their very small ceremony, ultimately deciding to have a bartender with a small bar. “I drink La Croix likes it’s going out of style, so I always have one of those in my hand,” Randi said.

Randi says it helped that both she and her partner, who was also sober, had a lot of time in recovery. (She had five years, he had over 10.)

Having time helped me, too. As with any ‘big day,’ I knew to keep it simple and lower expectations. When it came to our wedding, my fiancé and I envisioned a festive dinner and chose a restaurant based on its location and menu. Our priority was that everyone had an enjoyable and memorable night.

With nearly a decade of recovery, I know how to ride out uncomfortable feelings. I know how to keep myself busy and be of service. Interestingly, I learned that weddings trigger all sorts of complicated feelings—not just for the couple getting married, but also for the guests. Just because I was the bride didn’t mean I couldn’t also be a good daughter, sister, cousin, and friend.

Even if people know you’re sober, chances are someone won’t, and you’ll receive at least one celebratory bottle. Read more “the fix”…

“One of the biggest barriers to success for people who have had felonies was to check a box on a job application that you’ve been convicted of a felony. We took that off our employment applications for the state of Oklahoma.”

As communities throughout the country struggle to find solutions for prescription drug misuse and growing opioid-related overdoses, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin has been one of the most proactive Republican leaders to address the crisis in her state. Governor Fallin has consistently championed drug courts and alternative sentencing for nonviolent drug offenders, such as “Women in Recovery,” a diversion program that provides services and treatment for Tulsa women with alcohol and drug addictions. She has also worked to repeal mandatory minimum sentences for first and second drug offenses and reduce maximum sentences, earning her praise from groups such as Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

In your 2015 State of the State, you pointed out, “Oklahoma ranks at the top of the nation for prescription drug abuse.” Why do you think this is the case, and how can this problem be effectively addressed?

Oklahoma has had a high rate of prescription drug abuse, and the rate of people in Oklahoma who die from overdoses from prescription pain pills stands at about 12 deaths per 100,000 people. Between the years 2007 and 2013, we know that 3 out of 4 unintentional poisoning deaths happened because of prescription drugs. As governor, I saw that as a problem facing the state, and I wanted to bring more public education attention to the issue. I also wanted to encourage the state legislature, along with our substance abuse and mental health agency, to try to address unintentional poisoning deaths from prescription pain pills.

Frankly, we want to encourage people to come forward that need help with addiction issues. A key part of such encouragement is education programs that raise awareness in the general public. Oklahomans need to see that there not only is a problem, but a solution as well.

Your latest state budgets are highlighted by what you describe as “performance informed budgeting” that focuses on dedicating funds to properly address the real problems of Oklahomans, like prescription drug abuse and the overdose epidemic. Are you breaking ranks with conservatives by dealing with these problems in a manner that focuses on treatment and recovery as opposed to enforcement?

There’s a great movement going on throughout our nation within both political parties, and I am very proud of Republican efforts to work on the substance abuse and addiction issue. I had the opportunity to speak with two of my fellow Republican governors on a panel about the great work being done in Kentucky and Georgia, along with Oklahoma, on how to effectively address prescription drug abuse and recovery efforts, particularly the use of drug courts and mental health courts. We are also working on prescription drug monitoring programs to help stop what we call “doctor shopping” in our various states.

I believe it’s a bipartisan issue that all people are interested in addressing. Addiction is not an issue that strikes one political party or persuasion. Of course, it has no boundaries as it relates to income, race, or socioeconomic standards of living because it can affect everyone. It’s an issue I believe the whole nation needs to be talking about because it can ruin lives, it can keep people out of employment, and it leads to terrible outcomes for people like a fall into criminal behavior and prison.

One of the reasons why I highlighted this problem when presenting my performance informed budgeting was to set goals; specific measurable things that we could accomplish in the state. We needed to be able to determine if the money that we were spending on certain programs actually achieve the outcomes that we want, as opposed to the outcomes that we hope we might get. Read more “the fix”…

I got a lot better by getting a little better – a little at a time.

Five years of slowly diminishing anger.

On October 10, I celebrated five years of sobriety through the program and fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.

In AA, five years is a milestone associated with “getting your marbles back” – meaning that, after a half-decade of personal growth through the 12 steps, a recovering drunk like me can expect a vastly improved mental state to complement his physical sobriety. As another saying goes, we came to AA for our drinking, but stayed for our thinking.

Five years is seen as a benchmark in this process, a point at which those earnestly practicing their recovery should react and respond to the chaotic world around them with more calm, maturity and thoughtfulness. We should, per our expressed belief in Step 2, have been restored to some semblance of sanity.

A person with five years of recovery shouldn’t just act better, he should be better. Character defects, especially those earmarked as urgent at sobriety’s outset, should be significantly subdued.

Anyone who knew me five years ago could easily diagnose my most pressing problem: seething, consuming anger. An outsized subset of my recovery from alcoholism, then, is an ongoing – and sometimes faltering – recovery from rage-aholism (some, including my wife, would say assholeism). And in five years of sobriety, I’m delighted to report that I’ve progressed from a persistently insufferable, incorrigible hothead…

… to a less predictable, more tolerable semi-curmudgeon with an excitable streak.

Hey, we claim progress, not perfection. And what agonizing, snail’s pace progress it has been. But that, I think, is the spirit behind the five-year mark: We don’t simply wipe away our most glaring of character defects all at once. It takes years of trial and error – of negative reinforcement and recurrent attrition – to chip away at these boulder-sized barriers to true sobriety.

For me and my belligerent anger, this has meant a repetitive yet gradually (very gradually) diminishing cycle of (a) finding myself in a situation where I’m prone to anger – traffic, for example; (b) eruptive anger; (c) realizing how silly and useless this anger was… and then getting slightly less angry the next time I find myself in “park” on the highway.

In short: I got a lot better by getting a little better – a little at a time.  Read more “the fix”…

“Parents think the disease of addiction is about them: what kind of parent they are, where they live, how much money they make. They see their kids with their hearts, not their eyes.”

Poway, California calls itself “the city in the country,” nestled inside low rolling hills that surround the warm weathered town. With fewer than 50,000 residents and a median household income of $96,000, it is a religiously curated suburban town, infamous among its residences for the book length of guidelines and rules that have to be followed when building or adding a structure. Even something as simple as a shed in a backyard can require half a year of red tape and expensive fees.

The word Poway is taken from the Diegueño and Luiseño Indians who lived in the area before the Spaniards encroached. The structures of Poway are built according to rules meant to keep an old-time feel to the buildings; the largest veterinarian building in Poway is styled as a farm and barn, blue with white edging. Horses chortle and sling hay in large, fenced backyards, a train runs through a sleepy loop in a local park where children flock all summer long for the cheap rides, Civil War reenactments take place on the stretches of grass that grow next to a quiet stream.

A few blocks down from that stream, on a nearby street, Jackie Thomas struggled in the middle of the night to keep her son Thomas alive. She had driven through the neighborhoods looking for him, and found his car pulled haphazardly to the side of the road. It was past midnight. When she jumped out and opened his door, David lay slumped over the steering wheel, unresponsive. Jackie pulled on him desperately, and David vomited. He was overdosing.

Between the years 2000 and 2007, seven people overdosed and died from opioids in Poway; in the next seven-year span, up until 2015, 24 died. Almost all were white and male, and many were young. Those are only the deaths from opioid overdose—not including those near-death, or those seriously brain injured.

Aaron Rubin was a Poway High football player who became addicted to opioids after treating his football injuries. After trying and dropping out of community college in Chico, Aaron started taking OxyContin. In 2004, Aaron returned home and told his parents that he had a drug problem. They didn’t ask what drugs, but immediately set him up with a psychologist and therapist, and his father began taking him to Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings.

Aaron’s mother, Sherrie, told me over the phone about Aaron’s original Poway supplier: the father of Aaron’s good friend, a Pop Warner coach who was an addict himself. Aaron, said Sherrie, “is of the first generation of kids to grow up with pharmaceutical ads. They had no perception of the harm.“

After eight months of sobriety, on October 9, 2005, Aaron took one, then two 160 milligram pills of time-released OxyContin—”Oxy”—at a friend’s home. He went to sleep, and had a heart attack and two strokes.

As Aaron lay in the hospital ICU, his friends approached Sherrie, wanting to understand why Aaron had overdosed. They were all using the same pills, weren’t they? Why did this happen?

After a year in a Pomona brain injury treatment center, Aaron came home. Quadriplegic, permanently in a wheelchair, he no longer can speak or care for himself. His mother, Sherrie, is his full-time caregiver. Sherrie formed theHope2Gether Foundation for the prevention of drug overdose. Sherrie and Aaron together visit Poway High (among other schools) once a year, and give a presentation on Aaron’s story.

Anthony Tafola started using opiates in Poway when a friend of his took a full bottle of 10 mg Norcos—60 pills—from his grandma. He and Anthony took the entire bottle over the course of a weekend. “In Poway the majority of supply was from kids who were taking it from their parents, who had surgeries, tooth surgery, diseases. A lot of kids in Poway have older parents who have this kind of stuff going on,” Anthony told me. When I asked about people noticing that the pills were gone, Anthony verbally shrugged. “I guess people just don’t notice.” Read more “the fix”…

 

When you’re on the extreme end of the spectrum like I was, it can feel like sober people are aliens. I was appalled by sober people before I became one. I honestly didn’t know one, or care to know one. I didn’t realize recovery was a thing. Sure, I had heard of Alcoholics Anonymous, but I didn’t know there were happy recovering alcoholics. I didn’t know they come in all shapes, sizes, ages, genders, and races. Once I became one, I realized sober people aren’t as “alien” as we think. But there are a lot of differences between sober people and “normies,” besides the obvious: we don’t drink and they do. Here are the biggest differences between sober people and drinkers.

1. We are wired differently.

I think this is the whole reason normies and sober people have different relationships with alcohol. I truly believe we are wired differently. But what does this mean? It can mean different things to different types of drinkers. In my case, drinking alcohol was never fun for me when having just one. I was wired to drink as many drinks as I could as fast as I could. Not only that, alcohol affected me differently. I suffered severe blackouts where I could remember almost nothing about an entire night. I never knew when these blackouts would come on. It could be after three drinks or ten. Non-alcoholics are not affected by alcohol in this way and don’t have a destructive relationship with this dangerous substance.

2. We see the world in a different way.

There’s something to be said for sobriety and awareness, they kind of go hand-in-hand. Many of us who have been drinking heavily do so to numb our feelings. Once we are no longer numbing them, we become much more self-aware. It’s not to say that normies can’t be self-aware, but people in recovery view the world differently. The trials and tribulations we have been through in our drinking days and in our recovery are much different than normies. Getting through the darkest days of our life and seeing the other side changes us in a significant way.

3. Sober people view their recovery in a before/after sense.

Another way we are different from normies is that we view our lives in a before and after sense as it pertains to our recovery. Getting sober can be the hardest and most important decision we ever make it. Personally, I now view my life as before I got sober and after I got sober. Life is just different now. There are a ton of memories that are blurry and unclear to me from my drinking days and today I am much more in tune with myself and my life. When I talk about my life and events there is a before/after sense to it, an experience most normies might not relate to.

4. Our gratitude levels are different.

An attitude of gratitude is something sober people are very familiar with. I feel like gratitude is an automatic byproduct of sobriety. Gratitude isn’t something I ever experienced in my life before I got sober.  Read more “the fix”…

Grief hits you like a tsunami. The force with which it strikes is formidable and it just keeps on coming, in tidal waves. Incessant.

Yesterday I buried my brother. He took his life just three weeks ago.

I write this as I am sitting on a plane on my way back from Australia, the return leg of a trip I made just two days ago. I am heartbroken.To me, life in recovery is one of authenticity and truth; and that means that I share all of me in the hope that it might help someone. I want to share my experience of grief, how I have coped, and that, despite being shaken to the core, it has strengthened my resolve and my recovery.

As an adult, I haven’t experienced the grief of losing a family member. I recall the death of my grandparents as a child; whilst I felt sadness and some sense of loss, I was more concerned by my mother’s sorrow. Children are so resilient, and I was able to move on relatively quickly. The grief I experience as an adult is a different beast altogether.

Grief hits you like a tsunami. The force with which it strikes is formidable and it just keeps on coming, in tidal waves. Incessant. I cannot fathom what has happened. I feel like I have lost my mind. Small tasks seem overwhelming. Decisions impossible. And all sense of time and purpose is gone, washed away. It is like walking upstairs for something, getting there and not knowing why. Over and over again.

As I twirl his ring around my thumb and look over at his hat sitting on the seat next to me—mementos I took from his house—tears roll down my face. I feel his loss. This is the end point. I’ve said my goodbyes. I have paid my respects, and I am on my way home. Sadness, guilt, and anger wash over me. I cannot believe he is gone.

I should’ve made more of an effort.

I wish I knew he was feeling this way.

I am a terrible sister. Read more “the fix”…

A biotech company says it has a new DNA test that can identify patients who are genetically predisposed to opioid addiction. The company is Proove Bioscience in Irvine, California. They’ve developed a DNA test that accesses samples via cheek-swab, then compares the data from the results to a the patient’s answers on a questionnaire. The results, Proove says, will identify the patients’ risk of become addicted to the opioids prescribed to them, according to CBS News.

Opioid addiction has grown to epidemic proportions. Nearly 2 million people were addicted to pain medication in 2014. Nearly 19,000 people died from overdoses of narcotic pain medications, says the American Society of Addiction Medicine. The U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, sent a letter to 2.3 million healthcare providers outlining the problem and soliciting their help in gaining control over the problem. More people are dying from drug overdoses than ever before and 60 percent of those deaths are from opioids. Due to accidents, injuries and serious illnesses, there are times when the prescription of opioid pain medications are required. Unfortunately, however, physicians are unable to determine which of their patients are more at risk for addiction. The patients have no way of knowing whether they themselves are genetically predisposed to addiction.

Enter Proove Bioscience and its new technology. Their new testing is promising in that it could have a significant impact on the numbers of addicted patients and overdoses. CBS Los Angeles spoke with a patient who was recently tested at a doctor’s appointment. Su Henriquez was eager to receive her results. The findings indicated she has a low pain tolerance and is at moderate risk of becoming dependent on opioid pain medications. She was disappointed in her results because she has seen her mother’s addiction issues firsthand. Now she knows that because she is predisposed to addiction, her mother’s history could easily be her future. Read more…

Number 3: I can clearly remember all the pivotal times in my life, whether happy, sad, celebratory, or anything else.

At age 20, most people are in college, eagerly awaiting to turn 21 and be able to go to bars with their friends. For the first part of year 20, this was me. I was always searching for a party, always willing to start drinking early and often.

Then, after a string of events unfolded during my sophomore year of college and I ended up hospitalized, I suddenly found myself forced into treatment for alcoholism. At the time I thought I was too young to be an alcoholic. I hadn’t even reached the legal drinking age yet. How could I have already developed a problematic relationship with alcohol? But as time progressed, it became crystal clear that sobriety was the right choice for me.

I was 20 years old when I took my last drink of alcohol, something that many people are surprised to hear. I never thought I would be glad that I got sober at such a young age, but in the three and a half years since, I’ve been reminded time and time again that getting sober young has been a blessing. These are just a few of the reasons why:

1. I was able to repair what my drinking had broken. Though I only drank for two years before stopping, my drinking still put a strain on some relationships and my overall performance in life. Though I still did well in class and played sports, I felt lethargic and not up to my normal standards. I was sluggish and had an overall unhealthy appearance, always looking bloated and having a yellow tint to my skin. That was the toll drinking took on my mind and body. However, due to my short drinking career, I’ve been able to fix the majority of my relationships and redeem myself when it comes to the standards I set for myself. I often think I am lucky that my drinking career was not longer than it was, because I have no doubt I would have continued to harm myself and those around me, which would have resulted in me having a more difficult time repairing these things once I did get sober.

2. I’ve been able to be a resource for others who have gotten or are getting sober young. Initially when I stopped drinking, I never dreamt of even telling one person. I was embarrassed and ashamed that at only 20 years old, I had already had a problematic relationship with alcohol. All my peers were going to bars and having a good time, while I was sitting in a treatment facility. I was devastated and pretty sure my life was over, especially any social aspect of it. However, as I slowly started telling people about my sobriety, I was met only with positivity. I realized that maybe I could start speaking out about being young and sober, and in the process, I could potentially help someone who was going through what I had gone through in early sobriety. The last three and a half years of being an open book about my struggles has brought many people into my life, many of whom are other young women who are attempting sobriety. It feels good to be in a state of mind where I am able to offer advice and say, “Here’s what worked for me, here’s what didn’t.” Sometimes I never hear from people again, and sometimes they continue to check in with me. Either way it feels good to know I’ve done what I can to try and help others realize the full potential of sobriety and everything it has to offer.

3. I can clearly remember all the pivotal times in my life, whether they be happy, sad, celebratory, or anything else. The 20s are an important period in life, as many milestones take place. For many, being in this part of life means studying abroad, graduating college, getting engaged, having a wedding, having children, and more. I know that if I were still drinking, many of these milestones would be foggy memories. But because I am sober, I have clear recollections of my five months abroad, of the day I graduated from college, of all the moments I have spent with my boyfriend. And I know that in the coming years, when I do get engaged and married, I’ll have vivid memories of those times as well. It’s a rewarding feeling to be able to look back and know that I was in a present state of mind for some of the biggest days of my life.  Read more ‘the fix”…