Experience, Strength, Hope & Other Citrus Fruits

Hi, I’m Alex, and I’m an alcoholic and an addict.

I think sometimes recovery feels a lot like being handed a lemon.

You don't necessarily get to choose the lemon. You don't get to choose how sour it is. But eventually, you get to decide what you're going to do with it.

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My experience with addiction isn't a particularly short or tidy story.

There were periods where I genuinely believed I had things under control. There were periods where I was convinced I could manage my drinking, manage my consequences, and manage myself.

And then there were the periods where I couldn't.

I experienced the kind of consequences that make it increasingly difficult to maintain the story that everything is fine. I hurt myself and other people. I made choices I wouldn't have made sober. I experienced the shame, the isolation, the broken promises, and the exhausting cycle of believing that this time would be different - even though I was caught in a self destructive cycle, lacking the tools to stop it. &Not wanting to stop it in the first place.

Because sometimes it was different for a little while,& it felt manageable.

But that was part of the problem.

I learned that I could string together some sober time and still eventually convince myself that I was different enough, strong enough, or far enough removed from the problem that I could go back.

Eventually, I had to stop negotiating with that reality.

And I had to start learning what recovery actually meant.

For me, that has been much bigger than simply not drinking.

Because sobriety gave me the opportunity to start figuring out who I actually am when I'm not constantly trying to escape myself.

I don't want to make my suffering the star of the show here, but things that I experienced in my journey included;

Being expelled from middle school for drinking alcohol on the school bus, having a seizure in high school from ODing on pills and having my stomach pumped.

In college, partying, doing mdma cocaine and any drug available.

Eventually,

Drinking in the morning, blacking out every night, being an asshole, being violent, being rude, showing up to work hungover or still drunk, falling asleep in meetings.

Alcohol dropped my inhibitions and opened the gateway to other drugs.

I put myself in very dangerous situations, picking up strangers in front of the gas station and taking them back to my home because they had meth. Getting in the car with strangers to go get crack, going to the crack house and putting my dog in danger. I wouldn't still be here without my dog.

At this point my friends realized they couldn't do anything else to help me, it's not that they gave up on me but they saw that I had given up on myself.

I also struggle with mental health, I am bipolar and adhd, and I was told that if I drank, my meds wouldn't work, I said I guess they just won't work then.

I did suffer going into psychosis and running away from life, I survived because my family never gave up on me. But still, I kept drinking.

My second DUI and facing jail time was when I had my wake up call. Not the first DUI when I crashed into another car and woke up handcuffed to the hospital bed. The second one, when my freedom, all my freedom was about to be taken away. I was given the choice of a month in jail or two months in rehab, I took the rehab.

I loved alcohol, but I hated jail more.

And then the moment of clarity happen: I realized, if I keep drinking and I'm allowed to drive, this is going to happen again and I'll have a felony or kill someone, or kill myself. The ONLY way to not drive drunk was for me to not drink.

This is the first time I ever told myself "I need to quit drinking."

Currently, No I'm not allowed to drive either, but I'm working on getting my hardship license. Get my Jeep back. Get that type of freedom back.

Let me tell you, I've come a long way from smoking crack behind a dumpster.

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NOW as far as mental health goes, I see a psychiatrist and a therapist and I'm more stable than I've ever been. Still working on it, still experiencing highs and lows, depressive episodes and mania, but the lows are not so low anymore and the highs are not so high anymore.

I am following a health professionals advice and tapering off certain meds and making changes that are scary, but worth it.

In the past, my mental illnesses have made me feel weak.

One of the biggest things I've learned in recovery is that strength doesn't always look like feeling strong.

Sometimes strength is saying, "I don't know what to do," and asking somebody.

Sometimes it's going to a meeting when I don't particularly feel like going.

Sometimes it's picking up the phone.

Sometimes it's admitting that the thing I've been telling myself isn't working.

And sometimes strength is incredibly boring.

It's doing the next right thing.

Then doing it again tomorrow and the next day.

Whether that's picking up litter on the side of the street to help take care of the world or just getting up the nerve to shower and brush my teeth and take care of myself.

I've had to learn that recovery isn't something I accomplish once. It's something I practice.

I've also learned that I don't have to wait until I'm completely falling apart to reach for support.

That was a big one for me.

When I came into this program I was absolutely hopeless and desperate and proud. Miss independent, Miss I can handle this myself, Miss I need to be self-sustaining without help because I can't depend on anyone.

I came into recovery saying that I didn't have an ego, boy was I wrong. Doing the step work helped me examine that. And speaking of practicing my recovery and living it: In terms of the program I'm doing the steps for the third time start to finish. First was when I came into the traditional program, second was after I had a big huge mega relapse and worked Jeffrey muns steps staying sober without God the practical 12 steps, third now that I am guiding my sponsee and doing the steps again myself with them.

I used to think asking for help meant I wasn't capable of handling my own life. Now I increasingly see it as one of the ways I handle my life.

Freedom isn't getting to do what I want all the time, freedom is NOT having to do what I don't want, and living and building a life, becoming the person who I want to be. And by saying, what would I do if I was that person? By answering myself and doing it, I've become that person. I've become a person that I love. It took me a long time to get there, when I came in I didn't like myself much less love myself. I treated my body like crap. I like to say I'm like The velveteen rabbit, I was loved so much by others until I became real.

Now I have people I can call. I have people who know me well enough to recognize when I'm struggling. I've made amends and rebuilt relationships that I thought were lost forever. I have people who will listen to me without needing me to make everything sound okay.

I've learned how important community is, in the fellowship I draw strength. Meetings and steps are important, but the fellowship is really where it's at for me. Reaching out, giving, receiving, sharing, listening. Learning to let go and that a burden shared is burden halfed. As my friend Paul says, abandon all hope that the past could be any different.

I've learned that I don't have to agree with every person's understanding of recovery in order to learn something from them.

My recovery doesn't look exactly like anybody else's recovery.

But I can sit in a room with people who have completely different beliefs, backgrounds, and experiences and still recognize something deeply familiar in their stories.

We're all trying to figure out how to live differently. But at the end of the day I know that I'm responsible for the hand of AA always to be there. Each person's journey is their own, but the hand of help is always there. When I first walked into the doors of AA in person, all I got was people wanting to help me, for no reason.

And I've learned that I can take what helps me and keep moving, to look for the similarities and not the differences. To focus on the solution rather than the problem.

I've also learned that recovery has given me something I didn't realize I was missing:

the ability to build a life instead of constantly putting out fires.

I just got married to the love of my life in April. I have so many people I love in my life. I've rebuilt relationships with those friends who saw me when I was hopeless, with the family I pushed away countless times. I have relationships that matter to me. I have the most handsome dog. I have hobbies and things I'm excited about. I make plans for the future.

Quick list, my hobbies now include;

Painting

Crocheting

Performing Stand-up comedy

Twitch streaming

Hiking

Candle making

Swimming

Kayaking

Whitewater rafting

I get to think about things like where I want to travel, what I want to create, what kind of person I want to become, and what kind of life I want to build.

Those things might sound ordinary.

To me, they're extraordinary.

Because addiction can make your world very, very small.

Recovery has been teaching me how to make mine bigger again.

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And that's where my hope comes from.

My hope isn't that everything is going to be easy from here.

I don't believe recovery means I'm never going to struggle again.

I don't believe I'll never have a bad day, never want to escape, never make a mistake, or never question myself. And I can't promise I will never drink again. But I can promise that I will always get back up and keep coming back to these rooms. To keep trying to keep my life on track, because it is worth living now.

My hope comes from knowing that I have more options than I used to have. I closed the door on alcohol and every damn window in the house opened for me.

I can have a terrible day without turning it into a terrible life.

I can screw something up without deciding that I've screwed everything up.

I can experience a craving without automatically obeying it.

Because cravings are not instructions.

I can be uncomfortable without immediately needing to make the discomfort disappear.

I can ask for help.

I can start over.

And I've started over a few times. I came into the program four years ago, got about 18 months then went back out. It did not go well, I landed myself in the psych ward, a traumatizing experience that I never want to have to live again. And I don't have to, because the only times that I have been suicidal and staring down the wrong end of a barrel, I was drunk.

I came back and got another year, then that voice told me I could have just one and I listened.

Got half a year, relapsed alone at the airport June 20th 2026. Now I will have 4 months in 4 days of consecutive sobriety. And there's something to be said about relapse, I didn't lose all of the experience and strength from the past 4 years. If you walk a mile into the forest and you stumble, you get back up and you're still a mile into the forest.

I've learned something really important about starting over:

Starting over isn't the same thing as starting from nothing.

Every time I've had to begin again, I've brought something with me.

I've brought the lessons.

The people.

The experience.

I've brought the knowledge of what happens when I go back to the things that weren't working.

And I've brought proof that change is possible.

That's probably the biggest source of hope I have.

I don't have to believe that everything will magically work out.

I just have to look at my own life and recognize that things have already changed. And for me to keep changing, keep growing, keep improving. Being proud but never satisfied.

The person I am today is not the person who walked into recovery.

But I didn't become that person overnight.

It happened one decision at a time.

One meeting at a time.

One honest conversation at a time.

One day at a time.

So, back to the lemon.

I've had some pretty damn sour lemons.

But recovery hasn't required me to pretend they weren't sour.

It has taught me that I can take those experiences and make something out of them.

Maybe I make lemonade.

Maybe I make a lemon pie.

Maybe I just throw the lemon at the wall once in a while and then pick it back up.

But I'm learning that the lemon doesn't get to decide what happens next.

I do.

And that's what gives me hope.