- Alcohol
- Mental Health
My name is Douglas, and I am a recovering alcoholic. My sobriety date is September 9, 2003. I have a sponsor, and I am also a sponsor. I am a proud and active member of 12-step meetings.
As long I can remember, I always felt uncomfortable and different from and less than other people. I am a first generation Colombian American, born in the United States and given the opportunities my parents never had to be successful in life.
My story isn’t about what I did out there. It’s where I ended up. I ended up alone with nowhere to go, and a feeling that I had a giant emptiness in my soul. A drink or drugs weren’t working anymore. As long I can remember, a drink and a drug was how I dealt with life on a daily basis. If you’re reading this, and you have a sense of hopelessness and you feel that you have no solution for life, you’re not alone. I felt like this too, and I thought my solution was suicide, before I found sobriety. You don’t have to feel like this anymore. There is a solution and a better life waiting for you. That’s a promise!
I never made the right decisions. I learned through good sponsorship that I suffered from a mental obsession, an alcohol allergy and a spiritual malady. I hit bottoms such as homelessness, institutionalization and incarceration. You don’t have to follow my footsteps to find a solution for a better life. I am a product of rehab programs and therapeutic communities for behavioral modification. I respect these establishments, but my saving grace was finding a spiritual 12-step program for daily living, when I release from these establishments. I thought my problem was alcohol and other substances and that, as long as I didn’t use these things, my life was going to transform miraculously. My idea of recovery was to go to meetings, not drink and hang out with people like myself. I found myself in the same dark place I was in before I got sober. I realized my recovery wasn’t a matter of using or not using. I fell to my knees and cried out for help. My life was to change in a way I never imagined.
A gentleman changed my life forever. He sat down with me and explained the basic text of the 12-step fellowship. He paved a road of action that gave me a spiritual solution to the obsessive, hopeless state of mind I once had. I learned that I cannot rest on my achievements of yesterday. I wake up as a self-centered and fearful person every day, but there is a power greater than myself that I can rely on and who will do for me what I cannot do for myself. My recovery was like waves of an ocean with ups and downs but always crashing. The most important action I failed to take was to help someone through a similar experience. It took me a long time to finally receive that true 12-step experience. My problem is not a drink or a drug. It’s myself. My solution is working with people who suffer from the same malady I once had. I have one primary purpose in life today, and that is to carry this message to the next suffering alcoholic: You don’t have to suffer anymore. The road of recovery is a rediscovery of who you really are. Your self and your loved ones are waiting for you.