It’s a weird feeling, being 22 years old and two years sober. I never thought I would get this far, but I’m very grateful I have.
My drinking started young, but really picked up in high school. I still managed to do well in all my classes, so I wasn’t too worried at first. However, I had this nagging feeling that something about my relationship with alcohol just wasn’t right. That maybe I shouldn’t need vodka in my morning coffee to make my hands stop shaking or be hungover every other day of the week.
My friends knew I had a problem long before I did. I was hurt when they started calling me out, but I’m grateful now that they cared so much.
I first sought help with my drinking when I was 17. I did counselling, tried out meetings; all the usual things. I still didn’t think alcohol was the problem—I thought my mental health was the thing that made my drinking worse. Turns out I needed help with both.
I was stuck in a cycle for a few years before I managed to seek proper help. I would drink too much for months, quit for two or three months, think I could manage it, and start drinking again. Eventually I realized I was running in circles and I wanted to finally quit for good, but it took about a year until I could do that.
When I was 20, I had an apartment that I shared with a roommate and I was spending all my spare money on alcohol; it wasn’t long until I had to dip into my savings to keep up my habit. That’s when I knew I needed help and I couldn’t do this on my own.
I finally told my therapist that I thought I had a problem and she gave me some extra resources to reach out to. That was the jumpstart my recovery journey needed.
The first year was, to put it gently, rough. My main coping skill was gone and I had to learn how to deal with all the feelings I had been avoiding over the past few years. It felt like my mental-health issues got worse, but those feelings were always there. All that changed was that I wasn’t burying them anymore. The cravings were intense those first few months, but I learned how to resist those urges. I stayed in my little recovery bubble—all I went to was work, therapy, and meetings. I learned a lot of skills to help me cope with everything going on in my life and I slowly began putting myself back together.
During my second year sober, life got busy: I started school, I was still working. I didn’t put as much time or effort into my recovery as I did at the start. It was a big change for me and I was really scared at first. In college, I was surrounded by all kinds of people; I wasn’t in my cozy recovery bubble anymore. I had to relearn how to socialize with people and manage the new stresses in my life.
I’m open about my recovery journey and I hope that my experiences can help others reach out for help if they are also struggling. And I’m grateful to all the people who’ve helped me get to this point; they helped me realize that I couldn’t do this alone. I’ve worked hard to get where I am now. I’ve just passed the two-year mark and I’ve never been as happy as I am today.