- Alcohol
Ann has been on her recovery journey for 13 years now, but the road has been anything but a straight line.
She first sought treatment in 1999, after her family organized an intervention for Ann and her husband. Pressured by loved ones, the couple went to treatment together. They didn’t stay clean, though.
“I didn’t think I really had a problem because I wasn’t homeless or anything,” she recalls now. “I was a middle-class housewife in the PTA.”
The denial couldn’t last forever, though.
“When my kids were teenagers, I realized I needed to change something,” Ann explains. “It was getting worse. My last daughter went off to college and I was going through that empty nest syndrome. I realized I needed to do something for me and succumb to the program. My way wasn’t working.”
That was her turning point. She finally took the time to focus on who she is, her own identity separate from her children and her ex-husband. It was hard work, but that decision and the effort to stay sober since has changed everything.
Two years later, she’s still clean and she says “everything is totally different. First of all, I have a relationship with myself. I never really liked myself because I was always trying to fit in with my in-laws and their status. I’m very honest now about what I can and can’t do, and I no longer run myself ragged trying to be everything and please everyone. Just being honest with myself that’s the most important thing.”
This reformed people pleaser now focuses on what she CAN do and reaching her goals in reasonable ways. Ann says she was always a healer in a sense, and she wanted to go back to school to do something with that gift. In the past, she never made time for herself, but today she’s a Reiki master and holistic healer. She also just finished massage therapy school.
These are goals she knows she couldn’t have achieved without a program, using the 12 steps as a guideline for success.
“Nobody said it was going to be easy for me to accomplish the things I want to accomplish. There are many times I felt like quitting. Nothing comes easy, but you can see it through.”
It’s a lesson she hopes anyone at the beginning of his or her recovery journey will learn. Ann didn’t think she could do it – and she admits there were days she needed to take her sobriety one minute at a time – but it IS possible.
“Every single person has the ability to achieve what they want to achieve but they need guidelines and support. If you follow the program. you will definitely get what you want and more.”