“got sucked into a bottle every night”

Happy Day 100 to Pam 🙂

From my inbox:

Kelly (day 10): “Getting sober this time around is completely different than my previous attempts. With AA I felt that if I didn’t do my steps absolutely properly and attend those meetings with an open mind, I would slip.  Despite my best efforts to be a good AAer, I slipped and fell and was never able to return.  I then tried going to a addiction support group run through the local hospital, but even being accountable with a urine test every week and some very good intended counsellors, it did not fit the bill of what I needed.

And then 9 days ago I found your website and it’s been a different journey all together.  I believe I was finally ready and because I was, it helped me find you and all my other kindred spirits.  What lit a spark in me was that I was to email you every day … checking in so to speak, but also, it was the extension of friendship and support to a total stranger that put me here at day 10.  I was stunned that within minutes of writing you to say I wanted to do the 100 day challenge, you wrote back!  If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought it was an auto reply! LOL  From that moment on, I knew someone out there gave a damn about me getting sober.

All I had to do was stay sober and write you every day to say I was…nothing more.  No smoothies, no exercise routine, no recommended reading, no telling the world that I was a drunk…the only thing you did was suggest I treat myself…WOW..what a fucking concept!  I have spent so much of my life (as have so many women) beating myself up and doing for everyone else, but me, no, I somehow never made the short list or the long list for that matter.  Today, I am the only one on the list and I treat daily with the simple pleasure of Tim Hortons cappuccino mix in my nightly coffee and an new African violet for my office.

You gave me permission to be kind to myself during a veryyyyyyyyyy difficult time in my life.  So as per your “dry drunk” audio, I couldn’t agree more.  As you said, my only job is to stay sober and whatever methods one uses to achieve that, then fine.  But the last thing we need is a list of “gotta dos” and feeling like we’ve failed in doing sober correctly!

The thing that has contributed to moving from day 1 to day 10, is that I finally feel that I am with others that I can finally relate to.  Not just the “oh I drank wine every day”, but moreover, the down and out humiliating shit that I did or did not do because of booze.  I have been reading the blogs (yours and others) and I am finding such solace knowing that I am not the only intelligent, self sufficient, loving, generous, etc. woman who got sucked into a bottle every night…not the only woman who regrets the years of memories lost, or who behaved in ways that still feels humiliating to remember.  You and these other women have given me the strength to slowly forgive myself, put the past behind me and greet each day with gratefulness and see it as an opportunity to live my life with grace and kindness. Hugs xo.” (she’s now on day 12)

Team 100 update: Welcome to MayaRose (8), Hazeleyes (3), KnxGrl (7), mkstafford (18), Carol Anne (44), Laurel (2), Davena (2), Maria (14), SR (4), and Christmas (6).