My head was too loud. I couldn't make it be quiet. Twenty-four hours a day, my thoughts were just screaming at me. The more I drank, the quieter it got. It never went away - but it got quieter. I was able to take a breath, and not feel what the voice was screaming at me.

I had a traumatic event in my life that changed everything. That's when drinking really started to become an issue. It was my first inclination: as soon as something went wrong, I needed a drink. As soon as my kids were asleep, I needed to drink.

It was horrible when I tried to quit. I didn't really think I had a problem until I went on a trip, and I got sick. I couldn't drink. Within a couple of days, I was starting to experience withdrawal and I was like, “holy crap.”

I came home, and talked to my doctors. We did a withdrawal program which really kind of sucked. They told me about Sophia Recovery. I thought because we had a healthy income, I wasn’t eligible for the programs. I didn’t realize that they are available to everybody.

I'm not really a people person. I don't do well in a group of people that I don't know, and I'm not interested in anything that would be faith-based. So I felt AA was never going to be an option for me.

The first time I came in, I was just terrified. I think I just stared at the ground the whole time. But I started working one-on-one with one of the staff members. Sometimes you talk to people about things you’re going through, and they don't show any humanity. They're just kind of robotic. But I had a human sitting there going, “listen I totally get it.” That human connection made it so much better.

My strategy was, “OK, let's see if we can go one hour after the kids go to bed for that first drink.” Then I tried to see if I could wait two hours. Just kind of stretch it out. One hour at a time was manageable. I realized that if I didn’t stop altogether, nothing was going to get better.

Now I’m coming up on 70 days sober. There's a lot of positive things, and a lot of negative things too. From a positive perspective, I am aware of what I'm doing. I’m not hung over all the time. I have a child with medical issues, and I know now if she needs care, I could take her to the hospital. My stomach feels better. I feel clearer, not as tired.

On the negative side: that voice in my head can still be loud. I’m still cranky sometimes. I’m trying to figure out new ways to cope, new ways to ground myself, and new ways to distract myself. There is work involved, and vulnerability

I'm still fairly new to this, but one thing I do know is that how I cope with things has shifted. I’m doing the work I need to do on myself, rather than drinking it away.