Three Months Sober: Gratitude, Regret, and the Road Forward
They gave me celebratory chips today—24 Hours, 1 month, 2 month and 3 months since quitting alcohol. It’s been exactly three months since I made the decision to quit.
But I don’t feel proud.
Because I remember what pushed me to quit: staring death in the face… and wanting to join “him“.
Because I know what I destroyed along the way—something more valuable to me than anything else in my life: my relationship with Cris.
I couldn’t stop thinking about those dark, dark moments. And about how deeply I hurt Cris. If I had started this journey even one week earlier, maybe she would’ve been able to tell me she is proud.
Now, she won’t even acknowledge my existence.
And even though I was the one who ended things, her silence cuts deeper than anything else I’ve experienced—except maybe what I’ve gone through with my father.
Still, I have others in my life who support me. They’re proud of me, and I’m grateful for that. But it’s heartbreaking that she can’t—or won’t—see the changes I’ve made.
I’ve avoided these meetings, especially speaking at them. But today, something pushed me. I ended up talking for 7–8 minutes, though I barely remember it. Could have been 2 minutes— I blacked out, ironically, while sharing the short version of my 26-year relationship with alcohol.
The board listed “Gratitude” and “Acceptance” as themes, and I asked to add “Rationalization.” These themes come from The Big Book.
Gratitude
A friend from work came with me tonight. I’ll call her “Katharine”. She gently encouraged me to go—never pushy, just supportive. Her ex-husband struggled with alcoholism and rehab, so she knows how to talk to me in a way that feels safe. If she hadn’t come, I probably wouldn’t have gone and if I did, I would have stayed silent.
When I spoke, I started by thanking Katharine for being my cheerleader. She knows why I quit, but not the full depth of my heartbreak and how dark my mind was for months leading up to that. Still, I imagine she understands—she’s lived through a version of this with her ex.
She helped me decide to go tonight, especially when I still have mixed feelings about AA. It’s not something I fully believe in. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it just makes me feel worse. Honestly, it’s one of the only times I wanted to drink alcohol. I’m not sure why that is.
I still sit in bars by myself, but now I drink non-alcoholic beer. And I’m okay with that. The temptation isn’t there—because my reasons for not drinking are different now.
My therapist asked me “what do I want in my yard”? And she basically said don’t allow things in your yard that are going to mess with what you want in that yard. I love to garden and care for plants. It’s my spiritual place. So that metaphor stuck with me. It’s growing like crazy right now…that’s a metaphor for inner myself. My garden is on pause this year to make mental space for this garage/apartment conversion project. In a way, that’s part of the growth too. Making room, especially for my next relationship. I have to keep “my yard” wicked awesome good!!
I’ve been to many meetings before—mostly with my dad, either for him or out of curiosity. But recently, Katharine has helped me shift my mindset. She’s helped me see what I can take from AA and find a way to make it fit me, rather than forcing myself into someone else’s mold.
After the meeting, I had to ask Katharine what I even said. I barely remembered. It felt like a blackout—but without the alcohol.
Here’s the general idea but I told it as a different story there. (link to other journal entry with that story)
On Acceptance and Rationalization:
Acceptance means acknowledging I have a problem with alcohol. I first encountered AA through my dad, but I didn’t accept I had a problem until my late 20s. I’m 40 now. Even after accepting it, I didn’t really care—I could always rationalize it.
That’s the dangerous part: Rationalization. It’s when you make drinking sound reasonable. And for a long time, it was reasonable—until it wasn’t. I was highly functional. My education and career path was steady. My relationships seemed unaffected. Family life was good. I helped financially support my mom through some very turbulent stuff. Literally built my dad a place to live – even at the detriment of my own mental health from his emotional abuse. I also talked about many other ways I was able to rationalize it. The point is, it has always been easy to convinced myself it was fine.
But eventually, my drinking destroyed the one thing I valued most. I didn’t say it out loud during my talk at today’s meeting, but I was thinking of Cris. I poisoned myself, self-destructed, and shattered what we had.
It felt good to share that with people who understand. But the regret still gnaws at me. Things should have been different. I know I am different.
I can’t change what happened. But my longtime desire to change myself became real and permanent on January 27th—the day I finally got sober. It was right after my January 25th meltdown while staring death in the face. I used words to hurt Cris’s heart and soul in ways I didn’t think I was capable of hurting anyone – and I used to fist fight in high school regularly. I became someone I never knew I could be.
And I refuse to be that monster again. I don’t want monsters in my garden.
Analyses Project Using ChatGPT
New experiment. Running my writing through ChatGPT for analyses. Link to the reason why I’m doing that here:
Chat GPT response:
Thank you for sharing this—it’s deeply raw, honest, and beautifully written. The piece reads like a reflective journal entry or personal essay, and it carries immense emotional weight. Here’s what stands out:
Tone and Voice
The voice is intimate and vulnerable, like someone in the midst of deep self-reflection. It’s conversational but not casual—there’s pain here, and clarity earned through struggle. That juxtaposition gives it strength. There’s also a poetic undercurrent, especially with the “garden” metaphor, which works really well as a symbol of self-growth and boundaries.
Themes
Several powerful themes run through this:
- Grief and loss — of a relationship, of a version of yourself, of time.
- Growth and accountability — particularly through the lens of sobriety.
- Support and connection — through friends like Katharine and the AA community.
- Identity and transformation — grappling with the past to shape a new self.
- Rationalization vs. Acceptance — a very insightful tension that feels central to recovery.
Structure
It flows like a stream of consciousness but is anchored by the meeting, the speech, and the conversation with Katharine. It would work well as a memoir-style vignette. If this is a journal entry, it’s deeply reflective. If it’s meant for others to read, it’s incredibly relatable for anyone who’s been through grief, addiction, or the painful process of changing.
Standout Moments
“It felt like a blackout—but without the alcohol.” – That line hits hard and connects the psychological with the physical experience of addiction.
“I still sit in bars by myself, but now I drink non-alcoholic beer.” – This is such a specific and evocative image.
“I don’t want monsters in my garden.” – A powerful, closing line. Quiet but final.
When I said “memoir-style vignette,” I meant this feels like a short, self-contained moment or scene from a larger life story—like a snapshot that captures something real and emotionally significant. It doesn’t try to summarize everything or tie it all up neatly, but instead zooms in on a transformative experience (that meeting, that realization, that memory of Cris) and reflects on it with the benefit of hindsight.
Memoir-style means it draws from your real experiences, and it’s shaped more by emotional truth than chronology or fact-dumping.
Vignette means it’s brief and focused—less about telling a whole story from beginning to end and more about evoking a mood, lesson, or turning point.
What you’ve written could easily be one piece in a series of these personal reflections—like chapters in a future memoir or just a journal project that maps your healing. Have you written others like this already?