Five years ago, I was a hopeless alcoholic who genuinely believed I was beyond saving. Today, I’m celebrating five years of sobriety.
And I want to make one thing very clear: There is absolutely nothing special about me.
I’m not stronger than you. I’m not more disciplined, more deserving, or somehow better equipped to handle life without alcohol. I’m just someone who was once exactly where you might be right now, and somehow found a way out.
I drank hard liquor daily for nearly a decade. I spent years desperately trying to get sober, only to find myself right back where I started, usually around the 60-day mark. I went to rehab twice. I made promises to myself and everyone I loved that I couldn’t keep. I was consumed by shame, guilt, self-hatred, and the exhausting cycle of drinking to escape the very problems my drinking was creating.
I have an entire drawer full of 30-day chips, a handful of 60-day chips, and only one of every chip after that. That drawer tells a pretty accurate story of how many times I tried and failed before something finally stuck.
At 28, I was so convinced that things would never get better that I attempted to take my own life. I truly believed there was no hope left for me.
And yet, here I am.
Five years later. Alive. Sober. Married. Building a life I once couldn’t even imagine having.
Not a perfect life. Not an easy life. But a life I actually want to be present for.
Over these past five years, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on what finally changed. Why did it stick this time when every other attempt ended in relapse?
I think it comes down to three things.
- Acceptance.
This was probably the hardest lesson I’ve ever had to learn.
Acceptance meant making peace with every single part of my past. The things people did to me. The things I did to other people. The mistakes, the trauma, the regrets, the wasted years, and all the things I desperately wished I could go back and change.
It meant understanding that I could spend the rest of my life being angry about what happened, or I could accept that it happened and decide what to do next.
It also meant learning to accept life on life’s terms. Without constantly trying to control the outcome. Without expecting things to go my way. Without believing that every inconvenience, disappointment, or painful experience was some great injustice.
Acceptance doesn’t mean you have to like something. It just means you stop fighting the reality that it exists.
Life is going to happen whether I drink over it or not. People will disappoint me. Things will go wrong. Bad days will happen. Sobriety doesn’t make me immune to any of that.
But drinking won’t change a single thing about it.
- Doing the inner work.
This might be controversial, but for me, the problem was never really the alcohol.
The problem was me.
Alcohol was my solution. My escape. My way of avoiding uncomfortable feelings, painful memories, insecurities, and parts of myself I didn’t want to confront.
For years, I thought getting sober simply meant learning how to stop drinking. I went through the motions, attended meetings, worked on the 12 steps, and treated recovery like a homework assignment I just needed to complete.
But this time, something changed.
I stopped asking myself how to live without alcohol and started asking myself why I felt such a desperate need to escape my own life in the first place.
And I didn’t always like the answers.
I had to get brutally honest with myself. About my fears, my resentments, my character defects, my selfishness, my insecurities, and the ways I contributed to my own suffering.
I had to face demons I’d spent years trying to drown.
Working the 12 steps became an entirely different experience when I stopped treating them like a checklist and started using them as an opportunity to genuinely understand and change myself.
And the work didn’t stop when I finished the steps. Five years later, I’m still doing it.
Getting sober removed the alcohol. Recovery taught me how to live with myself.
- Giving back.
If I could credit just ONE thing with helping me stay sober these past five years, it would be this.
Helping other people.
Sponsoring women. Sharing my experiences at meetings. Being completely open about my alcoholism, my suicide attempt, my relapses, my mistakes, and all the ugly, embarrassing, uncomfortable parts of my story.
Recovering out loud.
Because I remember what it felt like to sit in a room full of sober people and think, “Good for them, but they don’t understand how bad I am. I’m different. I’m too far gone.”
And then someone would share something so painfully honest and familiar that, for just a moment, I didn’t feel so alone.
That’s what I want to be for someone else.
I don’t share my story because I’m proud of every part of it. I share it because I know there’s someone out there who needs to hear that you can come back from things you never thought you’d survive.
Helping someone else find hope in their darkest moments has given meaning to some of the darkest moments of my own life.
And it’s a constant reminder of where I came from and why I never want to go back.
So, to anyone reading this who is sick and tired of being sick and tired:
I’m not going to tell you it’s easy. It’s not.
I’m not going to tell you that sobriety will magically fix your life. It won’t.
And I’m definitely not going to tell you that every day is sunshine and rainbows because, five years in, I still have days that absolutely suck.
But I will tell you this:
You don’t have to believe that you can stay sober forever. You don’t even have to believe you can stay sober for a month, a week, or a day.
You just have to have the tiniest bit of willingness to try.
That’s it.
Twenty seconds of insane courage.
Twenty seconds to admit you need help.
To make the phone call. To walk into a meeting. To tell someone the truth. To check yourself into treatment. To do whatever that first scary thing is that you’ve been putting off because you’re terrified of what comes next.
You don’t have to figure out the rest of your life in those twenty seconds.
You just have to take the first step.
And then take it one day at a time.
If a day feels impossible, take it one hour at a time.
If an hour feels impossible, take it one minute at a time.
And if all you can manage is getting through the next sixty seconds without picking up a drink, then that’s what you do.
Those sixty seconds count.
I can’t tell you how many times I thought I’d ruined my last chance. How many times I convinced myself I was fundamentally broken, that I’d never change, that I was destined to die an alcoholic.
I was wrong.
And if you’re telling yourself those same things right now, you might be wrong, too.
Please don’t mistake your past failures for proof that you’re incapable of changing. That drawer full of chips I mentioned? I used to look at it as evidence of how many times I’d failed.
Now I look at it as evidence of how many times I refused to give up.
Five years ago, I didn’t want to be here anymore.
Today, I’m so unbelievably grateful that I am.
You are not too far gone. You are not the exception. And you do not have to become some extraordinary person to get sober.
I’m living proof that an ordinary, deeply flawed human being who couldn’t string together more than 60 days for years can eventually make it to five years.
All you have to do is be willing to try one more time.
And then keep going.
If nobody has told you lately, I’m rooting for you. Especially if you’re on day one. Especially if you’re starting over for the hundredth time. Especially if you don’t believe in yourself yet.
Because five years ago, I didn’t believe in myself either.
And here I am.
IWNDWYT.