What Now? The Realities of Life After Addiction

"For two decades, every single day of my life started off the exact same way. I’d wake up with a crippling hangover, and tell myself that if I could just get sober, everything would be fine. If I could free myself from the inescapable darkness of addiction, all my problems would be solved, and I’d finally be able to live a normal life. Then, I finally did get sober, and wound up feeling just as empty in sobriety as I did in active addiction. Maybe even more so. At least when I was drinking myself to death, I was a bit more numb to the crushing feelings of meaninglessness that seemed to surround everything I found myself getting caught up in. There wasn’t much of a need to distract myself from feelings of worthlessness when my existence centered largely around blacking out. Sobriety woke me up to a very harsh, yet liberating reality; the inescapable darkness I so desperately wanted to escape wasn’t my addiction—It was me."