{"id":10421,"date":"2023-03-22T17:46:52","date_gmt":"2023-03-22T17:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skardova.com\/?p=10421"},"modified":"2023-11-10T11:28:43","modified_gmt":"2023-11-10T11:28:43","slug":"stories-of-sobriety-how-5-women-made-the-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skardova.com\/stories-of-sobriety-how-5-women-made-the-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"Stories of Sobriety: How 5 Women Made the Decision to Ditch Drinking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I sit here writing this story, a counter on my <a title=\"computer\" href=\"https:\/\/skardova.com\/tag\/computer\/\">computer<\/a> desktop indicates that I have been sober 2,105 days, one day at a time. However, what amazes me about this time is that it is 25,000 times the duration I could go at the end of my drinking career without having the need or the craving to have alcohol. <a href=\"https:\/\/ecosoberhouse.com\/\">https:\/\/ecosoberhouse.com\/<\/a> These days, my most difficult parts have more to do with what some people refer to as emotional sobriety. Dealing with my feelings can still be very challenging. Am I bottling something up then raging at another driver on the road, or worse, losing my temper with my daughter or nagging my husband?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There were many times after getting together with another couple that I drove home in a blackout.<\/li>\n<li>Simpson said in the <a title=\"post\" href=\"https:\/\/skardova.com\/tag\/post\/\">post<\/a> alcohol was one of the things standing in her way, and that stopping would help her &#8220;break cycles.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s a thing where you\u2019ll say, \u201cI\u2019m a month sober,\u201d and people will be like, Congratulations!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I did a month-long \u201cdry January\u201d in both 2018 and 2019. A personally turbulent 2019 left me wondering if I should quit alcohol altogether, so I challenged myself to cut it for an entire year. (Little did I know a global pandemic was afoot\u2014yikes.) I didn\u2019t have a single sip in 2020. I had alcohol a few times earlier this year, but I consider myself a non-drinker now. &#8220;Nobody recovered from addiction dead. My feeling is if we can keep people alive long  enough, we know eventually the majority get recovery,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<h2>Sober Story: Charmaine<\/h2>\n<p>I\u2019ve made so many lifelong friends, but I\u2019ve also lost some friends to overdoses. If you feel you have a problem with drink or drugs and that the time is ripe to follow in the footsteps of these stories of sobriety, you don\u2019t need to make the journey alone. You need a contingency plan in place to strengthen your resolve if life in recovery ever gets tough.<\/p>\n<p>These interviews give me hope and for that I\u2019m thankful. The second part of this is how it affects the people around me, notably in worrying about how I perceive them since I\u2019m often the only sober one. The simplest explanation is <a href=\"https:\/\/ecosoberhouse.com\/article\/6-successfull-and-motivational-sobriety-stories\/\">sobriety stories<\/a> that I\u2019m happy when everyone around me is enjoying themselves however is best for them. I do know that some people worry I\u2019m judging them for their drinking, or that I won\u2019t still be \u201cfun\u201d to hang out with, and that\u2019s unfortunate.<\/p>\n<h2>Sober Story: Helen<\/h2>\n<p>I\u2019m five months sober and I\u2019m also transitioning. I am coming out to family members and really re-creating myself in the fullest extent possible. When a person transitions, it\u2019s like rebirthing a human. And my relationship with myself has gotten so much deeper, there\u2019s so much more to me.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Or maybe you just don\u2019t like the way you feel after an extra glass of wine to take the edge off the day.<\/li>\n<li>I began to drink at home, frequently wondering the next morning how there could be so many empty beer cans on the counter.<\/li>\n<li>After a brief job search, certainly hindered by my alcohol consumption, I returned to the large academic practice where I trained.<\/li>\n<li>My wife, who I believe was also unhappy, frequently left the young children with me for me to supervise while she went shopping or got together with her neighborhood friends.<\/li>\n<li>This scary but necessary step catapulted her into a journey of long-term recovery.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Tune in each week as we tell these good, sober stories. Inspired by National Recovery Month, people are sharing the power of sobriety through a collection of diverse, inspiring recovery stories. The project,&nbsp;Voices of Hope,&nbsp;chronicles the recovery journeys of Valley Hope alumni, while offering hope and healing to loved ones and families seeking help. Voices of Hope leverages the personal stories of those living in recovery to help educate communities about the disease of addiction, effective treatment and the power of recovery. Landmark Recovery was founded with a determination to make addiction treatment accessible for all.<\/p>\n<h2>Sober Story: Olivia<\/h2>\n<p>Simpson confessed in the caption, \u201cThe drinking wasn\u2019t the issue. I didn\u2019t respect my own power.\u201d Four years into her journey, she celebrated how she was able to make \u201cnice with the fears.&#8221; I\u2019d only begun drinking about a year and a half prior to this experience. I got drunk for the first time during&nbsp;my first week of college&nbsp;and quickly spiraled out of control. It&nbsp;made my anxiety quiet down, which was something I\u2019d failed to figure out how to do for the majority of my life.<\/p>\n<div style='text-align:center'><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Sometimes I don\u2019t have strength in a moment but I recognize that if I continue to behave the way I  had, then nothing\u2019s going to change. And I didn\u2019t stop drinking to act the same way I was when I was drinking. I realize that I don\u2019t give myself enough credit.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I sit here writing this story, a counter on my computer desktop indicates that I have been sober 2,105 days, one day at a time. However, what amazes me about this time is that it is 25,000 times the duration I could go at the end of my drinking career without having the need [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skardova.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10421"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skardova.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skardova.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skardova.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skardova.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10421"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/skardova.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10422,"href":"https:\/\/skardova.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10421\/revisions\/10422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skardova.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skardova.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skardova.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}