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OK, Here goes.Ive tried to shorten this thing so as not to bore to tears.It is any wonder this alcoholic obsesses about things?I have to leave it as it stands for today and hope you all understand.Later on, I can always write a different version when I cringe-right?Plus I hope this AA story doesnt end here.Tobegin and take the plunge:

In a few weeks Ill celebrate my first anniversary as a sober human.My jaw drops in amazement when I contemplate the changes in me and my life that have taken place in this time.How about the fact that I will not have had a drink in 365 days!Wonder of wonders, how did I manage to find this rabbit hole?

Recently I discovered a link to a website that shows brain scans and the difference between the brains of a non-drinker, an active alcoholic, and a brain of a person with one continuous year of sobriety.I havent even looked yet.And I dont really need to.First of all, I am grateful I am not dead, which was my fervent desire in the days nearly a year ago.After 11 months without drinking, I feel and know these changes in myself.Many things small and large, wonderful and mundane have happened.

When I first came to meetings of AA, I listened intently to The Promises, which are read at the end of meetings. Teared-up every time; they were all the things I wanted for my life and couldnt imagine in it.From the early get-go my sponsor told me that the benefits were legitimate and guaranteed to come true for me too. I was good at buts and ready for word of the impossible hurdle.She told me with assertion that people who work through the twelve step of AA see these changes materialize.She told me I could do it if I was willing to try.I chose to trust her and have continued to hold onto faith in her experience and wisdom.I think if I have to break it down this trust is one of the primary reasons I have experienced a transformed life.I feel great gratitude for this gift.

Here is my story as I understand it today.My perspective on my self continually grows and changes as a result of throwing off the weighty chains that bound me.I offer it here as declaration to the power of the design of AA.May someone else relate to something here and find a reason to either begin a new chapter for themselves or keep resolve to continue this path.

How I began life:My earliest memories of my self in relation to others outside of my family were characterized by fear and confusion.My brother had Leukemia and I hated the many kids who would pick on him for being bald from radiation treatment; they would grab his cowboy hat and throw it around the school yard.I remember seeing two kids beating each other up in the street.I was upset and sad after witnessing the anger and violence.I was scared of other kids in a group.I didnt get picked for teams.I wanted to go home at the sleepovers.I preferred to be at home reading or playing fantasy.My favorites were Wonder Woman who had the go-go boots and golden lasso that made people tell the truth, and Nancy Drew who relentlessly sought the answers and was smart.This is how I have told my story, the things I have often chosen to remember.Some other details:my parents left the rat race of LA, CA when I was five and we moved to northern California along with many others relocating to find a new life.My parents split up when I was 10, but didnt put my brother and me in the middle of it.My brother took it worse, perhaps because he was younger and didnt understand.I felt it was explained to me, and I was looking forward to an end of arguments and negativity in our small house in the woods.I was excited to move to a beach town and go to a new school.

How I got started:In adolescence, the social thing hit me harder.I felt there were definite rules about cool and not.I worked hard in order to buy clothes and food my mom couldnt afford. I smoked pot at 13 with out even thinking about it.It was there so I tried it.It made me paranoid and I didnt enjoy it.A year later I was hanging out with an older girl from work and we drank Bud bottles.I had one, remember feeling the disorienting effects, and was almost molested by an older man.The work girl saved me and took me home to recover.I did well in school and was truly interested in learning.I saw socializing, home life, and school work as separate things.We shoulder-tapped for wine coolers when we could get away with it, and drank them on the beach with bonfires.Even drinking I still felt nervous about being around others at the beach or at a kegger.But I liked something about drinking.When I look back, I cant recall why I did it.I knew I would do well in school.I had read books like Go Ask Alice so I knew what could happen to teens that start using.Maybe this is why I always drew the line at the hard stuff, which I considered to be heroin and angel dust, neither of which I ever actually came across.

After I moved to the East Coast with mom while she went to graduate school, I got hooked up with the burnout crowd.I stood out like a lone cat.I was called C.K. for California Kid in high school.You had to have an identity - Italian, Irish, Catholic, Black, Hispanic, Punk, Poor, Athletic, Student Government Geeks, etc.So I was the outsider from Cali.I met my friends through the boyfriend I sought out after watching him in the hallways of our inner-city school.At first I thoughtId never meet anyone-these guys wore nargly butt rock outfits with tight jeans, painted jackets, and ugly high top sneakers for tennis shoes. This guy was god-like though; style ceased to matter.I was hooked, and consequently began to run with a crowd who smoked cigs and pot daily, drank as much beer as possible on weekends-no stopping till the keg (1/2 barrel, amongst friends) kicked.I still got great grades, never skipped, and was on track to apply to college.By junior year, we did whatever drugs were around.First a lot of A, on down the line to lines of white and smoking various white stuffs.But I never did the heroin or the PCP, so I thought I wasnt so bad.I got a 4.0 my senior year.

I felt my boyfriend and love and sex was the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to me.He was my first for everything good and bad.Senior year he developed a coke connection that combined available quantity with a wealthy dealer.I got whatever was thrown my way.I recognized that I would talk to and say whatever while high, to get just one more line. This made me hate myself.

Thank God! I often said afterwards, that I soon went to a state university where few of us could afford the good stuff.So we drank instead.My best guy friend and I noticed that we never did anything recreational with out substances.It seemed to me that everyone drank.Well, I was in the nerd study dorms and easily hung with everyone. But ultimately did what I thought all the other people did-drink mass quantity whenever possible.

How it was:Forever, my story about the following years has been about the specter of depression, which I felt hovered around me since early childhood, and began to rear its head in earnest at this time.Panic attacks and anxiety caused me to fail to take final exams or write final papers in classes I had perfect attendance and an A until then.I felt there was something deeply wrong with me as a person.I felt I could not find anyone to truly relate to.I did seek therapy and tried Prozac.After five and a half years and many incomplete grades, I left school when offered a management job with company who had originally employed me as holiday help.

Things only got worse after an employment relocation to Florida (Geographic cure anyone?).I spent 7 years with a really messed up abused and abusive guy who smoked and drank constantly to keep himself sane.I did the same and felt myself ever more depressed.I stayed with this violent fellow because he needed help.It is during this period I feel I hit bottom.I now think I spent the next thirteen yeas working on Step One, although I continued to drink regularly (strictly no drugs anymore!), to deal with stress and because in my world, everyone drank, in fact way more than me.

I moved to the place where I now live, clear across the country, to be near the support of my mother and try a healthy life.I crawled my way out of massive debt and credit problems.I sought multiple therapies, including talk type, family therapy, body work, yoga, martial arts, self-help seminars, church, inspirational reading and on.All of it helped and I learned a lot, but I still had the feeling that my life was meaningless.I was depressed that all I was doing was continue to work in the same restaurant bartending.

I continued to work there so I could get the loan to buy my own place.I stopped accepting abusive and brutal relationships and married a good man who drank with me.We got married.I felt I should be hearing the bell that announces arrival to the station of relax and enjoy.I often cried myself to sleep and loathed my pathetic self-pity.I imagined I would soon need to finally write my good-bye memoir, illuminating the shame of a brilliant light snuffed out by the misery of life.

How I arrived:Several things led to my aha moment:Pre-martial counseling about families(his, not mine) and alcohol, trying to quit drinking because I couldnt stop smoking cigarettes when I drank(didnt quit either one), failure to stop drinking even when pursuingexpensive fertility treatment and then openly lying about how long I could quit for(maybe a week, with only a few light beers), my second commitment to the Atkins nutritional plan, which specifies absolutely no alcohol in the first two weeks(switched to carb-free vodka), and a neck injury, during which I began to drink nearly a liter a day of Jagermeister plus beer, and then continued to do the same even after the immediate pain of the physical problem lessened.I was living with constant anxiety, stressed and depressed to the max.

On the night of May 29, 2009, days after finally getting a degree in something, I read some poetry by an author we had examined in my editing classes.I remembered the mention of his drinking.I found the words profound and haunting and filled with gratitude for a sober life.I immediately picked up a book that had been in my pile of bedside books for year or more.It was written by a woman who worked as an editor and identified herself as an alcoholic.She wrote about her love affair with drinking.In the back, it listed under resources, AA.

I recognized right that same night, overwhelmingly and also with relief, that despite my constant effort to better myself, the problem wasnt that I was so special- bound to be eternally depressed and misunderstood.It was the alcoholic drinking that was destroying me.I already had faith in spirit, but felt totally disconnected from it, lost and empty.I felt I would be seriously forced by the constant anxiety and misery to end it by my own hand shortly.Trying to keep it all together demanded all I had and felt pointless.My new hope, although seemingly bizarre, was that I was now certain I had a drinking problem.

The next day I did not drink.I found MIP, and you told me to go to a meeting.I went back to work at the bar and talked to a gal eating in the restaurant about wanting to meet non-drinking women.She turned out to be AA (Angel Action) and ran across the street to the Alano club and got me a schedule.I went to the next womans meeting.I listened intently, said nothing, and shortly e-mailed a woman I remembered.This great lady has become my ultimate amazing sponsor.

As awful as it was in the early days of recovery, I welcomed the obsession and cravings, because they reminded me that this was real, not a horrible nightmare to shove under the bed.I checked yes mentally when I heard people share about the insidious insanity.I heard there was an answer, I did what was suggested because I recognized that are only two paths for me: not sober or sober; horrible death or fulfilling life.I accept fully who I am right now.I still have much to discover, but one thing is certain, Im alcoholic.By striving I have discovered and accepted that I dont have all the answers.Through faith in my creator and sobriety I can delight in mystery, while I work towards recovery.It is continuous growth.Ive been able to laugh, and not just to pretend to get the joke. Real belly laughs.

Where I am now:I love AA and think that it is an amazing living breathing gift to all who want it.Threaded through the program are wise concepts that stretch back through time in all sorts of cultural precedents.It all came together brilliantly in our AA literature, designed so carefully by Bill W. and the first few, for the alcoholic mind.I see it working, and I have witnessed and already known amazing things.I feel and grasp, tap into the ever elastic unity of the group.For someone who believed in the good of all human spirits but couldnt fully embrace the human whole, this program has shown me how to love and be loved.The best high cannot even compare to living my feelings instead of numbing out.For a paranoid, anxiety behavior-washed person this is extremely scary.Im so glad I finally jumped in the AA bed.Its lumpy at times but very cozy and comforting nonetheless.Sharing the covers is great too.I fully believe that by remaining open, willing, and accepting, the entire universe and its revelations wait.I look forward to every experience, good or bad.I can handle it because I believe and pray, Thy will be done.

I was told and am now convinced that working the steps of AA to the best of my ability today is central to maintaining a sober life that is fulfilling and satisfying.I began by contacting my sponsor everyday through e-mail or by phone.We meet regularly and I commit and follow through with assignments-reading and writing that works the steps.We move forward and backward as feels right for me, always asking for spiritual guidance.Early on I decided on a minimum of three regular meetings per week, with two that are literature studies.I go to more at times.I started in on service work pretty early.This has helped me stay connected to AA and people.Its good because its easy for me to resort to self-isolation.Also important was the day I agreed to my sponsor and myself that I would call her or someone in the program first, if I ever seriously contemplated drinking.I also allowed myself to leave my job bartending mid-shift with out question, if it was going to lead to drinking.These allowances have given me a great freedom.

Its hard as hell sometimes.I often cannot see the forest for the trees.The tools of the program especially, HALT, have been invaluable in right sizing the day.A gratitude list is beautiful thing. I have a tendency to shift into thinking that says, I wasnt that bad, my bottom, my story isnt like others.I thank god for MIP, where I get to see anytime I need that Im the as alcoholic as anyone in AA.In fact recently, there was a post by a newcomer that was followed by concern for a need for formal detox, and I noted that I drank daily far more than he at the end.Who knows why I was able to manage to keep a job, home and a family despite my drinking. The insanity was the desire for death over life and living with extreme anxiety.I always remember I have a choice.I choose to keep my version of spirituality front and center.I use daily prayer and contemplation.Even when it feels silly, I get the sense that it works.

Formerly, I felt like I was trapped inside my personal Poseidon Adventure, crawling my way through an upside down ship.By working the steps, some where in the swirl the ship turned over and now Im floating more right-sided on the world-wide ocean, whether the seas be rough or smooth.

With Love and Gratitude,

Angela