How I Got Sober Without AA (And Why That Needs to Be Okay)

How’s this for a punchline: Before I got sober, I was an addictions counselor.

I worked in an intensely drug-affected neighborhood, holding the stories of people who had been to places I couldn’t yet admit I was heading. “You a friend of Bill?” they asked, sizing me up, deciding whether I was worth the leap of faith. Many wouldn’t talk to someone who hadn’t previously struggled with alcoholism. Some were court-ordered into counseling and never dropped their walls at all. I sat with them anyway.

I learned their names. I held their hands. I even watched some of them die.

Ethically, I had to leave any bar immediately if I spotted a client. That’s when I just started drinking at home instead. Alone. Exhausted from realities that were horribly sad and nearly impossible to put down at the end of a shift. I didn’t last long. It only took several months to realize I wasn’t built to carry that weight (partially because I was already quietly drowning in my own.)

I had unhealed trauma, codependency, and a drinking problem I hadn’t named yet. But I also had money in the bank, a full calendar, a 4.0 GPA, and a circle of friends. Nothing about my life looked like the rock bottoms I’d seen on A&E Intervention.

So I kept going. Because surely… that wasn’t me.

And then one day it was undeniably, unavoidably me.

So what was I going to do… go to a meeting?