Being only 25 years old, I sometimes feel like an under-achieving drunk.  Sitting next to other alcoholics, I’m usually the youngest one in the building during the meetings.  I feel that my story isn’t as interesting, or as sad, and that my bottom isn’t nearly as low as the others around me have hit.  There is some truth in this thought, but another truth is that the only requirement needed to become part of AA is a desire to quit drinking, which I do have.

I have only been sober for two months, almost to the day.  And before that relapse I was sober for over nine months.  I started going to AA because someone brought me there, not because I really felt I needed it.  My guess is that most people come into the meeting for the first time under similar circumstances.  For those first nine months I didn’t feel like I have actually recovered from anything.  I only put half an effort into the meetings, and I barely glanced at the steps.  The only reason I lasted as long as I did without a drink wasn’t because I didn’t want to drink, but I felt that I wasn’t allowed to.

When I made my drinking career known to my family and close friends, they were partly surprised.  I imagine the other feelings they had were something along the lines of “Oh, now I understand what has been going on with him. It makes sense now.”  Everyone knew I drank, but no one had any grasp on just how much I was drinking.

So, once the cat was out of the bag, and I had let people know I was drinking insane amounts of liquor nearly every day, I felt I was to be held accountable to these people.  Not to myself, just others around me.  This was a mistake, I realized, because a person can only stay sober if he or she does it for themselves first. It’s like the idea of taking care of yourself so that you can take care of others.

But no, I just felt that I had an image to maintain, and that image was that I’ll never drink again, and I was very sorry about drinking in the first place.  It worked for awhile, but once my reasons for staying sober weren’t around anymore, neither was my sobriety.  In other words, once those people I cared about and wanted to show that I wasn’t going to drink again were gone (such as out of town) I felt that it was time to treat myself.