4 years sober

This guest post was first published as an update in the Members Feed by long time member @pollyrue. It is reprinted here with her permission.. because it's so good! The photo is the view from her home office.

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@ Pollyrue 

Hello old friends!

It’s been a long minute, but I had to circle back here to mark my four years of sobriety. 

For people who are lurking, I lurked for YEARS before making the commitment to myself. That commitment — no alcohol, no matter what — changed my life and this group helped me to stand firm on that commitment even when it was hard and awful and painful at first.

Sobriety wasn’t ever hard or awful or painful, but drinking allowed me to perpetually defer and numb the pain and complexities of reality, of my own life. Those realities inevitably emerged once the booze was gone and I was forced to work with the realities I was trying to ignore or deny.

Much to my surprise, I was indeed able to do everything that needed to be done, feel all the feels, and survive.

Much has changed in my life over the past four years. The minute-by-minute experiential texture of my life is unrecognizable today from the fabric of my days four-plus years go. It’s hard to describe this experience of being-in-the-body-and-world differently.

It’s about being present, but also about reclaiming sensory capacities lost to booze—the pleasure of movement, temperature, air, touch, smell; the solidity of the earth and my feet on it; the daily pleasures and awe of simply being alive.

Isn’t all that reason enough for sobriety? Yes! The answer is yes.

Even when my social and emotional worlds are in upheaval and tumult, being grounded in a well-cared for and carefully tended body and mind changes everything.

Don’t despair. Stay the sober course. Stay alive and awake enough to enjoy this.

To everyone who has been here for me over these years: thank you!!! Your time and presence here have mattered deeply in my life.

XO XO Polly