I felt rather smug at the beginning of lockdown. After all, I had my 12 step programme and I was totally prepared for ‘keeping it in the day’ and accepting what I could and couldn’t change; what could possibly go wrong? Evidently, this 12 step programme only works if you actually do the work! Who […]

By @SobrietyMatt Coronavirus lockdown day number…….who knows, they are all pretty similar! Still, amongst the pain of familial separation, toilet paper rationing and house-arrest, some good things have emerged from all of this insanity. For me one of the most significant positives has been the creation of the nightly @RecoveryHour Zoom meeting. A cross-fellowship group […]

Accepting the limits and handing things over was once impossible for this control-freak alcoholic. Today things are very different. By @SobrietyMatt Yesterday was a tough day. We are all under immense pressure during these pandemic conditions, coping with lockdowns, struggling to find supplies, losing employment, losing focus – the list is endless. Yet those of […]

Isolating for the Isolator Contributed by @SobrietyMatt As the world grinds to a halt and locks down, this isolator has some advice. This time last year I was drinking. Not right at this time of day (currently 11am) because I wasn’t that type of drunk, I would start only once the children were in bed. […]

If like me you spend a bit of time wandering around amongst Twitter’s #RecoveryPosse community, you will find vastly differing approaches to anonymity or the lack thereof. When I first joined Twitter and the Posse, my account was strictly anonymous. @SobrietyMatt’s avatar was a mat, literally, and my handle was some random one assigned to […]

There is a strange and rather unhelpful pattern to my sobriety journey. The better I’m doing and the more confident I become as a soberista, the more likely I am to stop doing all the things that I need to do to avoid drinking. It inevitably starts with thoughts like: “I’ll miss Thursday’s meeting because […]

I have ten minutes. Ten minutes to articulate what I have struggled all my life to understand. Eight minutes now, it must have taken longer than I thought to open this word document and select the font that makes me most comfortable. Seven. I do not know what it is that I am meant to […]

Something has happened this week to make me feel sad, reflective and fearful. There is nothing that I can do to change it, whatever it might be – events and their outcomes are totally out of my control and they will inevitably bring big changes to my life. Faced with this my initial reaction was […]