Share your experience, strength, and hope about living with sobriety
September’s topic is, “Share your experience, strength, and hope about living with sobriety.”
As always, you can also write about Al‑Anon’s three Legacies. This month features Step Nine, Tradition Nine, and Concept Nine.
Sharings on the Member Blog may be used in future Al‑Anon publications.
New topics are being added each month!
My partner of 15 years moved out due to his addiction and through rehab is now 3 months sober. He is like a new person and he loves his positive sober self. I, though even through practicing Al-Anon, am at a different level and pace. There is no right or wrong of how long it will take when on your own journey to recovery. The addict feels empowered as they have given up but the family feel tense and scared waiting for the relapse which is always out of our control. It’s hard to give up worrying and focusing on… Read more »
My husband of 23 years is 4 months sober. He is such a different person. I’ve never known him like this. He is a good person, always has been. My trouble is adjusting to his constant talking about anything and everything.
When my loved one was newly sober, I was on a constant emotional rollercoaster. I’d get excited and hopeful when he’d come home from an AA meeting saying, “I like that meeting. I’m going to go to that one regularly,” and then I’d fly into the pit of despair a few weeks later when he’d decide he hated that meeting and was never going back. I’m grateful I had Al-Anon, where I could share my tears, fears and worries and receive the encouragement to “keep coming back.” The sentence in our meeting welcome that says, “we can find contentment, and… Read more »
Thank you all for your shares! I just read Courage to Change and it talked about people pleasing. I see this as being relevant for this blog and living with sobriety. Both are quite a challenging balance. Lived with alcoholism throughout my teens and twenties. It molded my coping mechanisms to be a people pleaser. The extent of this character quality reaches to levels of great resentment when I don’t get my way, a state of hopelessness, and terrible life choices. So I hope that sobriety will be something I get to live with; but in the meantime, I must live one… Read more »
When I first came to the program I was living with sobriety, I had lived with active drinking of loved ones around me for years, so sobriety was «a guarantee of happiness». However, this is not always what sobriety brings to the table. I met my husband when he was new in AA and I didn’t have Al-Anon. Our three-year marriage was difficult, as there were verbal and physical abuse. The blessing in all of this is that my husband sent me to Al-Anon. My being in the program definitely helped me to survive very difficult situations. I gained strength… Read more »
My mother became sober over 30 years ago. I was a young person, and the rehab center and my mother encouraged me to attend Al-Anon. My expectation was that now she was sober, she might become what a considered a “normal” mother. What I found was that although our relationship was much better because she was conscious all of the time (no more drunken phone calls), she still was incredibly self-absorbed and expressed no remorse for the verbal abuse and neglect that I was raised with. In the early days of her sobriety, and also with the help of Al-Anon,… Read more »
Sobriety was not the answer to all my problems. In fact, it created a few new ones because my newly sober husband insisted on being involved in household discussions and decisions he used to be passed out for. When I realized that I didn’t know how to live with a sober person, and that he didn’t know how to live sober, it was an eye-opener. We made a commitment to practicing recovery in our home to see if we could both break our respective family cycle of the disease of alcoholism. It took a lot of work for both of… Read more »
Both my sons are sober now. That is to say they are not drinking. The question I must ask myself is am I working my own program? I often think about how easy it is to get into their choices, their decisions, their lifestyles. In Al-Anon I have learned and continue to learn that my focus and responsibility should always be on me. My power lies in living the best life I can live, and to be true and honest when I look at my thoughts and actions. I find if I look inward rather than outward it is the… Read more »
All of the problems don’t go away as soon as the alcoholic stops drinking. I had to keep reminding myself that just as I was going through (am going through) recovery from the effects of someone else’s drinking, the alcoholic is going through their own journey through recovery. The journey begins for both of us with the acceptance that there is a problem that involves both of us. Thankfully, the tools that Al-Anon has given me – acceptance, responsibility for my own actions and behavior, action instead of reaction, being supportive without being controlling, and minding my own business have… Read more »