Today marks 999 days sober for me. It’s bittersweet, because while I’m very proud of my accomplishment, it reminds me of my actions that started this.

In hindsight, I think I’ve always been ‘that’ guy. I drank at every social function, I needed it to dance, at family events, and hanging out with friends. I was never the DD. I was always a little drunker than the next guy. I always said i love drinking too much to be an alcoholic. I tried to prove I could control myself by taking drinking ‘breaks’. When Covid happened, I drank more, I was isolated, and I would argue with my wife more. I hid bottles so she wouldn’t know how much I had. Well one night, 999 days ago we got into a heated argument while I was drunk, which turned physical. Took me about 10 seconds to realize I fucked up, and I immediately stopped, packed my shit, since she was kicking me out anyways.

I stayed in a hotel room that night and hardly slept wondering what my life would be like the next day, week, month, or year. The next morning, in my self-loathing, I decided to change, regardless of the outcome of my actions. I realized what happened was not one bad decision, but many over the course of my life, that I allowed to lead me to what had happened. I refused to allow what occurred to happen again.

I started a ‘back to basics’ program with AA the next day. Not drinking wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be because I knew I owed it to my family. There were also activities that I associated with drinking, like BBQing that were hard get used to. I found other peoples stories at AA insightful and inspiring. AA itself was not for me. I didnt like the ‘put your trust in a higher power’, or ‘if i could have done it myself i would have done it already’. I stopped attending meets after a few months. I think it’s great for many people, just not for me.

I’ve thought about drinking again, but the truth is I will never be a ‘normal’ drinker. I would need a set of rules to follow, for various situations and the process of coming up with these rules and then actually sticking to them is daunting. It’s easier for me to just not think about that, and not drink.

I don’t want to glaze over the abuse part of this. My wife and I did reconcile, but it’s been a hard, long road. I attended personal therapy for my anger issues, we attended couples therapy, and many changes have been made. In some ways, our relationship is better than before, but there’s also a scar in it now, which will never fully heal. I own and regret that. While I’m proud of my accomplishments I’m also ashamed that I needed to hit rock bottom before I did anything about it.