{"id":26504,"date":"2025-02-19T09:00:40","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T17:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/?p=26504"},"modified":"2025-02-14T11:51:41","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T19:51:41","slug":"reflections-in-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2025\/02\/19\/reflections-in-recovery\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections in recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a weird feeling, being 22 years old and two years sober. I never thought I would get this far, but I\u2019m very grateful I have.<\/p>\n

My drinking started young, but really picked up in high school. I still managed to do well in all my classes, so I wasn\u2019t too worried at first. However, I had this nagging feeling that something about my relationship with alcohol just wasn\u2019t right. That maybe I shouldn\u2019t need vodka in my morning coffee to make my hands stop shaking or be hungover every other day of the week.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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This story originally appeared in our February 19, 2025 issue.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My friends knew I had a problem long before I did. I was hurt when they started calling me out, but I\u2019m grateful now that they cared so much.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I first sought help with my drinking when I was 17. I did counselling, tried out meetings; all the usual things. I still didn\u2019t think alcohol was the problem\u2014I thought my mental health was the thing that made my drinking worse. Turns out I needed help with both.<\/p>\n

I was stuck in a cycle for a few years before I managed to seek proper help. I would drink too much for months, quit for two or three months, think I could manage it, and start drinking again. Eventually I realized I was running in circles and I wanted to finally quit for good, but it took about a year until I could do that.<\/p>\n

When I was 20, I had an apartment that I shared with a roommate and I was spending all my spare money on alcohol; it wasn\u2019t long until I had to dip into my savings to keep up my habit. That\u2019s when I knew I needed help and I couldn\u2019t do this on my own.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I finally told my therapist that I thought I had a problem and she gave me some extra resources to reach out to. That was the jumpstart my recovery journey needed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The first year was, to put it gently, rough. My main coping skill was gone and I had to learn how to deal with all the feelings I had been avoiding over the past few years. It felt like my mental-health issues got worse, but those feelings were always there. All that changed was that I wasn\u2019t burying them anymore. The cravings were intense those first few months, but I learned how to resist those urges. I stayed in my little recovery bubble\u2014all I went to was work, therapy, and meetings. I learned a lot of skills to help me cope with everything going on in my life and I slowly began putting myself back together.<\/p>\n

During my second year sober, life got busy: I started school, I was still working. I didn\u2019t put as much time or effort into my recovery as I did at the start. It was a big change for me and I was really scared at first. In college, I was surrounded by all kinds of people; I wasn\u2019t in my cozy recovery bubble anymore. I had to relearn how to socialize with people and manage the new stresses in my life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m open about my recovery journey and I hope that my experiences can help others reach out for help if they are also struggling. And I\u2019m grateful to all the people who\u2019ve helped me get to this point; they helped me realize that I couldn\u2019t do this alone. I\u2019ve worked hard to get where I am now. I\u2019ve just passed the two-year mark and I\u2019ve never been as happy as I am today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a weird feeling, being 22 years old and two years sober. I never thought I would get this far, but I\u2019m very grateful I have. My drinking started young, but really picked up in high school. I still managed to do well in all my classes, so I wasn\u2019t too worried at first. However, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26488,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,238,327],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","category-life-sports","category-february-19-2025"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26504"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26505,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26504\/revisions\/26505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}