(original published date: April 17, 2025)
Sobriety doesn’t make life easier — but it helps you levitate your life, instead of being buried by it one drink, one shovel-full at a time.
I got sober after 20+ years of drinking — and I didn’t do it when life was easy. I did it when life was falling apart faster than I could catch it.
Forty came in swinging like a wrecking ball.
COVID shutdowns.
Freshly divorced from who I thought would be my forever.
It became bourbon and wine.
Sudden health issues that landed me in and out of hospitals, trying to find answers no one seemed to have.
I told them it was my gallbladder — and I was right. But even before the diagnosis was clear, I knew something bigger needed to change.
Life hadn’t been easy the past few years, and I had been walking through it one glass of wine at a time… until it wasn’t just wine.
It became “just one more” — celebration, sadness, boredom, anxiety — it didn’t matter.
The summer before, my body had tried to warn me. Three hospitalizations. Excruciating pain. Projectile vomiting. Weight dropping. Doctors who wouldn’t listen. I cleaned up, got careful, told myself I had it under control.
I didn’t.
By June 2022 I was back in that same hospital. Same pain. Same body begging me to listen. And this time I was terrified — not of the pain, but of what came after. Because I didn’t know how to face my anxiety without a glass in my hand. I didn’t know who I was without it.
Alcohol was the solution. Until it became part of the problem.
Dating in North Dallas didn’t help either.
Money, whiskey, power plays — rinse and repeat.
At some point, drinking became survival.
But survival is not living.
And somewhere between my body breaking down and my spirit feeling buried, I heard God whisper:
Enough, my child.
June 22, 2022. That’s the day I surrendered.
The day I put the glass down for good.
Since then, life hasn’t been “easy.”
I’ve walked through heartbreak.
I’ve been laid off.
I’ve watched friendships dissolve.
I’ve battled loneliness.
I’ve faced uncertainty.
But now?
Now I rise.
Now I levitate.
Because sobriety didn’t erase my problems — it lifted me above them.
✨ Daily Word of Encouragement ✨
Galatians 6:9 (NIV)
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
You’re not just surviving anymore.
You’re rising.
You’re levitating.
Keep going.
🕊️
soberandsavedjourney.com 