We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life

I could not connect the person who hid alcohol in closets to who I imagined I was.

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you; if you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

To me, this was the most painful reality of drinking: the deadness, the flattening of my spirit — although I had never articulated it that way.

Forget forever. It doesn’t exist, anyway. As Eckhart Tolle also said, “It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living,” and that’s exactly what you’re doing when now is swallowed by projections of forever. Nothing in the future exists yet. But anything is possible right now. Including the thing you think you cannot

Life will present itself to them.

Things like approval seeking, people-pleasing, not voicing my opinions, and avoiding conflict at any cost — these were all dishonesty masked as something sweeter and more socially acceptable.

Most of my life up to that point had been a series of small or large acts of pretending, which made the ground I was standing on shaky and unstable. I was never going to feel whole standing on that ground, even when it appeared to be attractive, solid, and right, because it was built on falsities and my soul knew it.

I am the only one responsible for my experience.

sobriety is about freeing yourself from any behavior, relationship, or way of thinking that enslaves you and keeps you from being present to life.