A Drunks Tale from a Living Hell to Freedom

The Abyss I have stood at the gates of a personal hell, lost in a downward spiral. I looked up from the abyss at what was seemingly an insurmountable climb to a place that I wasn’t sure existed. I was gazing at a strange world with normal, happy, well-adjusted people, a foreign world in which I didn’t fit. I was a drunk, an alcoholic who drank to live and lived to drink. Drinking was my only means to function, and drinking was the only way not to get sick. Drinking was killing me, and yet every ounce of my being told me I had to drink. I was alone in my disease and thought no one understood what I was going through. I surrounded myself with other drunks like me. It was in this world that I was dying, wrapped in a chemical sense of comfort. These fellow drunks didn’t judge me. They liked who I was, even though I hated who I was. I needed them, and they needed me. Still, I was miserable, embarrassed, and scared. I didn’t realize until much later that they were lost too. Cloaking myself in a mask of normalcy, I hid my suffering and eased the pain with more alcohol. With all of that spinning around my brain in a tornado of confusion, I did the only thing I knew how to do. I did the only thing I thought made me feel normal and content: I drank. One fateful day, I hit bottom. This wasn’t the first but it was the worst yet. I looked in the mirror and hated what I saw. I had to make a choice. I could continue to drink, and die, or stop drinking and live. I could try to climb out of the abyss to an uncertain fate, or accept my current fate and drink myself to death. I could numb myself and await death, or throw away everything I knew and expose myself to the world and walk toward a place I wasn’t sure existed. That day I decided I had to somehow, some way, try to quit drinking. This is my story. A story of a drunk who decided to quit drinking. I am not special or unique. I am your brother, father, cousin, or co-worker. I exist in every family, race, creed, and social status. I’m not famous, nor do I wish to be. I am just a drunk who found a way to stop drinking. This is my journey, both physical and spiritual, to the world of sobriety.