What are the biggest benefits or gifts of sobriety?

The greatest benefit, to me, is the ability to handle adversity and joy with the same heart. To know that despair and bliss are feelings and not states of being, and that my feelings won’t make me or break me. The greatest gifts have been my spiritual life and having true relationships

I am who I am today because of relying on a power greater than myself, attempting rigorous honesty, having sponsors, taking responsibility for my shit, and trying to be of service to others.

“A.A. REGENERATION”

Such is the paradox of A.A. regeneration: strength arising out of complete defeat and weakness, the loss of one’s old life as a condition for finding a new one.

— ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS COMES OF AGE, p. 46

A thousand beatings by John Barleycorn did not encourage me to admit defeat. I believed it was my moral obligation to conquer my... See more

I can see that I’m lot kinder to myself in the aftermath of these moments. There’s a lot less judgment, and I'm a lot quicker to apologize and try to repair. I can objectively say that my life is one thousand percent better sober, yet I can’t stop imagining the other lives that I want or obsessing over the lives I haven’t had. And then all of my... See more

"True acceptance is very, very, very had; but true acceptance has been the key to my recovery, to my tranquility and happiness. I needed to accept that things, at this particular moment, are exactly as they should be—including me. I had to let go of the idea that it was up to me to traverse the chasm between what I was and what I should have been.... See more