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Starting my Journey...

HELLO there! My name’s Sarah and I’m an alcoholic. I am a fledgling member of this Fellowship and I just wanted to share with you the beginning of my journey so far. I don’t want to dwell on my active drinking, like many it started early as social drinking, got out of control, prescription meds got involved and it got really messy. After a particularly difficult spell over last winter I was on my way towards a complete breakdown. I just couldn’t put on the brakes and I couldn't see the wood for the trees.

I don’t know how I made the decision to go into rehab, but one Saturday morning in January my husband took the dogs out and I found myself on the chatline with a local rehab facility. By the time he returned from his walk I had booked myself in for 28 days starting the following Saturday. They had a single room and they could fit me in on the dates I wanted. I don’t know who was more shocked me or my husband. Then the fear set in, how the hell were we going to afford this, what were work going to think, my family etc. etc. etc. The next week was a nail-biting wait, but one morning just before I went off to rehab a letter plopped onto our doormat. It was regarding an ISA my mother had taken out. My mum had died four years previously and I had looked after her finances, I was her POA and her executor. I didn’t know anything about this ISA, the letter said what amount there was available and how to cash it in. It covered two-thirds of the cost of rehab. What a stroke of luck!

The few people I did tell about rehab all encouraged me, they hugged me and a few of them cried along with me.  I entered rehab, the look on my poor husbands face when he left me there will always stay with me. I was anxious, but it had been my choice to go and I wanted to give it my all. So from day one I joined in - the walk that was leaving just as I was being shown to my room, I joined it. The no-pub pub-quiz the first night – I joined it, I did everything I could to the best of my ability. I realised early on I had been allocated the senior counsellor, we got on very well. I was so thankful for being her client because it was not all plain sailing. In my first week I had to deal with a really upsetting situation, but my counsellor was just fantastic. She rightly told me that dealing with something difficult in rehab was a blessing, because I was in a safe environment and could not pick up, which I’m pretty sure I would have done at home. I was also very blessed with the group I was put into. They were such a lovely group of caring, kind, sensitive but challenging folk like me.

My second day in rehab was a Sunday. I got to watch all the other clients meeting their families and going out for a couple of hours. Although I felt a little odd knowing I wouldn’t be seeing my husband for another week it made me realise that this time was about me. This was probably the only chance in my adult life I would ever have this time to focus on myself, and to think about how I got in this state. So the next four weeks I spent time in my room writing a journal and completing the work that was given to me on Steps One, Two and Three. For the first time in a long time I was just me, not a wife, daughter, boss, or friend. I was just me.

All sorts of excitements went on in rehab, people walking out, people being thrown out, people coming in in various stages of desperation, romances, fights, and so it went on. I loved watching how things evolved and I kept my journal religiously every day. I haven’t looked at it since I left rehab, but one day I will…

SARAH