I'm lucky enough to live in a time when understanding about the addiction to alcohol and its treatment are on the rise. As an expat to Berlin, when I took my first, fragile and fearful steps towards recovery, English-speaking AA was there for me. Lost in a world of confusion, crushing psychic pain, demoralization, my personal potential blocked, unable to align my behavior with what I wanted for myself, sometimes feeling a danger to myself - my inner landscape was bleak at best. My smiles had grown forced and I learned how to create an acceptable facade: 'well-adjusted', 'capable'...but my inner life was something very different and the chinks in the wall began to show. I slowly began to lose control over when, where and how much I drank.

It took me many years of intense struggle before I would seek out help in earnest. Although alcohol was an issue from my early teens on, I didn't recognize that my relationship with it was different than for many people. I never had a natural 'off-switch' with booze. It was like a magic potion that almost always had me craving more. When others had had enough and gone home aware that 'tomorrow' existed, I would need to continue. It was like a nuclear explosion that wanted to end in oblivion. Black-outs were typical, leading to accidents under the influence, brutal 3-day hangovers after binges, promiscuity and associating with people who frightened me. In the end, it was totally bewildering and scary to me and those who loved me. I had terrible guilt about what I did when I drank, but more than that, who and what I had become. I was never strong or determined enough to really change anything for very long. The shame and confusion were crushing. I believed that my failings were among the worst in all the world, after all, didn't I have adequate intelligence, and every opportunity to do well in life? Why had I squandered it all? There were countless attempts to fix myself, reduce or manage my drinking, promises made to myself and others. This cycle lasted many years and the lows always got lower and the hopeful episodes got shorter.

Finally I saw that on my own I wasn't able to do it. It's not in our human makeup to easily surrender, and I didn't yet know that this was my key to finally experiencing change and the first blush of healing...at the time it felt like dying. Life was hardly worth living and the fact that I saw people living with apparent ease and joy made it all the worse. Such a torturous existence, almost constant depression and anxiety, being robbed of the gifts that I felt were given me in my original personality before the world, my own failings and my drinking defeated me...this was never supposed to be my life!

But in that crushing realization and admission that I couldn't do it by myself (and I honestly didn't even want to try anymore), I reached out.

Looking back, my first meetings were transformative. At first I only listened, and heard stories that fascinated me. People described their drinking lives, and they described their inner worlds. Finally I wasn't out of place. I wasn't a freak. I learned that I had simply been experiencing what it's like to suffer alone as an alcoholic. All of a sudden I saw that I wasn't alone. In this group I could find a way of living where I wouldn't have to drink AND I could learn to live again (or for the first time).

I love that AA is not about promotion. Take it or leave it. It's a spiritual program that demands nothing, not even that you believe anything to participate. This inclusive philosophy kept me coming back. Now I'm almost 9 years sober. When I began, a week or a month sober seemed a pipe-dream. I got and stayed sober in Berlin English-speaking AA and I consider the LGBTQ Group to be one of my home groups. Has recovery been easy and a straight trajectory upward? It has been many things, 'good' and 'bad'. I'm able to go through life's challenges without self-destructing. I feel infinitely more connected to life, people and myself. I've slowly learned to befriend my mind. I'm more able to see beauty and enjoy life. For me, AA's promises have come true. I know happiness is not a constant but an experience, like sadness, and all humans have this in common.

I'm a bi-woman in a long-term relationship with a woman, I'm gainfully employed and finally, in great part, that 'well-adjusted person' that I wanted to be. But there's a vast tapestry of states and changing emotion that flow through me. I'm a work-in-progress and will always be so.

Louisa B.