So Ive blogged about what it's like for me now. I guess I should blog some about my recovery.

I'm a fifth generation alcoholic. My great and great great grandfathers died drinking. My grandfather turned 70 this year and is still drinking. My dad has 25 years sober. He didn't use any "recovery program" he just put it down when I came around so we'd have a better life. He's a hell of a man.

A little bit of personal history, I'm the oldest birth child of my parents, I had an older half sister, she passed away in March from a pseudo-overdose. She'd been doing drugs for so long that her body couldn't handle the prescription meds she was on and she had a bad reaction and drowned in her own vomit. She was on so much shit I probably can't even name it all. I got sent home from this deployment for 2 weeks to go to her funeral and spend time with the family. I had an older adopted brother as well. He commited suicide on my 19th birthday while serving two life sentences in a federal prison in Texas. One night he and some friends got fucked up on shrooms and robbed a couple of houses. My brother stole a gun. They called up a fellow they knew who had, er, "special needs". He had a car. That's all they wanted. So, my bro, still jacked on shrooms took the kid out and shot him in the back of the head.

The car broke down 30 miles down the road and they were all arrested.

So this is a family pattern, no doubt. I'm blessed to have found a solution at the time in my life that I did. It only took the loss of a marriage for me. It was still a hard bottom to hit, I didn't see it coming. Partially because I was sloshed all the time and partially because she cut out FAST. I came home from work on a Friday night and she was already two states away. Sudden shock. That'll do it.

I spent three weeks in inpatient detox. Three months in outpatiant rehab. I got a sponsor and made a home group the first week out of detox. I went to the meeting with the mindset "I am going to get a sponsor tonight!". There were two fellows in there who identified themselves as eligible sponsors and I listened to them both speak. I liked them both, one was a younger fellow, hip and cool, the other was a middle aged man who I could tell had come straight from work. They both had comparable sobriety, so that wasn't really a deciding factor. The latter was my choice. Sixteen months later I'm SO glad I chose who I chose. I didn't know at the time, but he's a Marine. Not still enlisted, of course, but once a Marine always a Marine. He was in maintenance, his first marriage ended like mine, lots of similarities that I never would have even THOUGHT to ask, and I pretty much picked him at random. Well, not at random, he seemed like a no-nonsense kind of guy and I know that's what I need. So, yea. Best sponsor ever.

He put me on 90 meetings in 90 days. I had to call him every day for the first month. I had to write a report on every step before I worked it. I told him every fucked up thing I did, and believe me, in the first sixty days (also being the first sixty days after my wife left) I did some pretty fucked up shit.

I hear a lot of people come into the rooms and say they don't have time for a lot of the suggestions that are handed to them. Sometimes they suck. Sometimes they take up a lot of your time, but I'm here, sixteen months later, still taking the suggestions gven to me by my sponsor, still reading the big book, still praying, still going to meetings (when they're available to me, lol this is pretty much my meeting right now!) and you know what? I'm still keeping the plug in the jug. Life is not perfect, but now my problems are of a noticeably higher class. All I really do is don't drink. God does the rest. That's something I knew once and somehow managed to forget.

I Don't know where I'm going with this. Am I supposed to have a point? Experience, strength and hope. That's the point. Whether it works for anyone else I may never know. People go out and never come back. It happens. People go out and come back. Sometimes for good, sometimes to go back out again. All I know is that so far it's worked for me. Since I quit drinking to control how I felt, I feel a hell of a lot better a lot more of the time.

Peace~

Kelsey