So it’s 106 days today and wow it’s been a roller coaster ride. The highs have been extreme, ‘head in the cloud’ moments and the lows have been treacherous. I never wanted to admit my problem was alcohol, rather than the long list of problems that my delusional mind had conjured. Now I realize that all my relationship, financial, personality, insecurity issues were the reactions to my actions.

Alcoholic! “Me!!! Never!!!” I would exclaim to myself through all the obvious signs – everything and everybody else were the cause of my problems. It’s like that beautiful Missy Higgin’s song, Scar, “a triangle trying to squeeze through a circle, he tried to cut me so I’d fit”. It is just like the big book states, “and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.” (BB p. 417) Rather than trying to, “run the whole show”. (BB p.60)

I came into AA with the realization that my life “had become unmanageable”, that I am “powerless over alcohol”. I was left with no other options, no job, no money, a string of abusive relationships and yet I was deemed, “most likely to succeed” at university. I tried all the ruses to escape AA: I ran away from my problems, but they followed me; I attempted convincing myself that I could drink just wine or maybe only beer and if I didn’t mix, I could handle it. How could I not drink? Surely that would mean I would remember all the terrible things that had happened to me?

At the time of my last ‘drunk’, I was so utterly and completely alone, and if it weren’t for these rooms and the men and women who have guided me in and out of the rooms, I still would be.

AA, the rooms, the shares, the people, the literature and without a shadow of a doubt, the 12 steps, have each made me realize that I am far from alone. In 3 months, 2 weeks and 3 days, I have come “to believe that a Power greater than” myself can restore me to sanity, so long as I really want it.

All you have to do is work the program of recovery that is laid out in the Big Book, in the 12 and 12, and on the walls, the way it works best for you. You don’t have to be religious or refuse the program due to the religious tone. All you need to do is be open minded, non-judgmental, willing and remove all the things that are blocking you from recovery. I have had ten solid years of denial; I thought that I was so different, so unique, that there was no one that was like this, like me! And now, I meet rooms full of people, just like me, on a daily basis.

Currently, I am working on Step 4; it’s incredible how the steps just kind of fall into place. I ask my sponsor: but what ifs and how cans and how does and she’ll smile and say, “you are exactly where you are meant to be”. It all fits, all the pieces of my mixed up, lost jigsaw puzzle, are very slowly and sometimes excruciatingly painfully, connecting. If this magic is happening after 3 ½ months in the program, then I can’t wait to see what’s round the corner. I have learnt more in the last three months than I have in the last ten years of my drunken stupor. I have been afraid, petrified, sick with anxiety and congealed in my depression, but it is worth every bout to get to where I can see I am going.

Don’t get me wrong, I have achieved, but I hadn’t done the one thing that I needed to do in order to be me, to succeed, to fully commit and figure out who I am, and that is, to be rigorously honest… with myself!