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A little about me

I’m Nina and I’ve been itching to start a recovery blog forever!  I’ll have
11 years of continuous sobriety on September 11, 2011 (that’s like any day now!) and I got sober at Radford Hall in North Hollywood, the old-fashioned way…I shook until I stopped shaking, I stayed awake until I fell asleep, and I drank more coffee in my first year than I probably have since. I went to meetings where there were hot guys (I was 25) and strong coffee…and cake. If you know me…you know I love my cake!  My original sobriety date was July 7, 1998. Obviously, I had a pretty bad 4th of July that year. It ended in Lake Havasu with me in handcuffs being interviewed (if you can really call it that) by the local authorities.

If you’re any good at math, you can tell I stayed sober just a little over 2 years and then got loaded.  I don’t think I ‘slipped’ onto that line of Speed or fell into the bottle of Sierra Nevada, though I did shamefully claim both for awhile.  I was as physically
sober then as I will ever be.  But I decided to react alcoholically to the conditions of my life.  It was a big F-you to my sobriety.  What a child I was. I was still burning with resentment and had just discovered that life still happens, even when you’re
sober.

I love recovery—it means (according to Webster) getting back something you have lost. Did you know that?  And there are guarantees ( I’m a big fan of guaranttees): If we don’t drink, we won’t get drunk.  It’s that simple.  So just stay; that’s the deal.  But the deal is also that when you  just stay sober one day at a time, the days turn into weeks, turn into months,turn into years, and before you know it–things are happening!  We can do anything here. It’s like getting a 2nd  life—it’s grand!

It’s a simple gig, but not easy. It just takes changing everything basically. It means learning to let life turn you inside out, upside down, to open yourself to the path, to shed layers of ego and ‘who you think you are’ like the dead skin from a bad facial peel…it’s
a lot. I give you that.

But there’s something magical too, something that happens in that sticky mushy place where you’re learning to show up for
your life; how to clean the blinds in the house without being hopped up on Meth or grocery shop without a bong hit, or fuck without a drink, or sleep without a pill. There’s something that happens as you learn to say things (odd things…things you never thought you’d say) like: You might be right; Yes, I’d love to go; How can I help?

I’m looking forward to sharing this sobriety thing with you.  Settle in and become a part of it.  .  This thing belongs to all of us, and none of us.  We have to keep it that way, because that’s why it works.