Reflective Essay On Drinking

It took me nine years to allow myself to live again. Making the decision to quit drinking was not easy, but necessary in order to live a happy and healthy life. My driving force for becoming sober was becoming able to reflect on how alcohol had been doing more harm than good. My mental and physical health suffered, as well as relationships with those I hold dear. Today I am able to use my past as fuel to continue living my best life.

Around the age of fifteen, I was living with social anxiety so severe that it had caused me to stop going school. I avoided any challenging social situations. It was around this time that alcohol quickly took hold of me by providing relief from anxiety and making me more outgoing. I began spending my time with

I often times would choose to purchase alcohol over food and other basic needs. I exposed myself to dangerous situations resulting in assault and injury. Among the many other physical repercussions of drinking, withdrawal from alcohol was something I never imagined I would have to experience. Spending three days in a hotel room seven hundred miles away from home, shaking, sweating, crying, and hallucinating because I couldn 't afford liquor should have scared me straight. It amazingly only seemed to concern others at this point in my

I knew I needed to find another way to live, so I decided to start planting seeds for myself. I indulged in recovery vlogs, podcasts, and literature all while I was still using. I attended AA meetings hungover and cried my eyes out to people 's stories. I wrote pros and cons lists and researched the benefits of sobriety nightly. I kept family, friends, and my dog in the back of my mind at all times. I started to feel hope when I imagined all the good things I could do in my free time if I were to quit. On February 26, 2017, I knew I was ready to try something