Me and my brother were talking over New Years about how we both first got sober. I can remember this like it was yesterday and it was twenty years ago.

I pretty much knew when I was 18 that I was an alcoholic and someday I would have to do something about it. I had no desire to do anything about it. Then in my late twenties my tolerance fell of the cliff and it was causing lots of problems. I tried so hard for years to quit under my own will power. I just couldn't do it. I got into coke and meth and things got ugly. My wife at the time and my Mom had been telling be for a long time that I needed to go to treatment.

The absolute scariest thought in my life was imagining life without alcohol. It was totally beyond my comprehension. I just couldn't see it. Then I was laying in bed very depressed one day (at my bottom) and I made the decision I was going to go to treatment. I got out the phone book and started calling. It was in that exact moment that I made that decision that it dropped from my head to my heart. I lost all my fear. I knew it was going to be ok. I can honestly say that at that moment the desire to drink and use left me. I can't explain it. I went to treatment. I have been to thousands of AA meetings since then. It has never been hard to stay sober since then. Not that I haven't thought about it. I have even experimented with pot for anxiety and depression, so you could call those a slip or some people would call it relapse. The obsession, craving, desire was gone though. It baffles me how it could be so out of control and the obsession so overwhelming one minute and then admitting I needed help and knowing it in my bones took it away.

Now living sober is a whole other thing. That has not been easy.