Every time I tried to stop drinking....
I knew that every time I tried to stop drinking alcohol that I was one step closer to being able to kick the bottle to the door. I have read books, listened to podcasts, talked with my sober friends and family, talked with my drinking family & friends about stopping, discussed being sober with my therapist...but the one thing that was missing from my experiences was a "Josh". Someone who's been there, on both sides of the drinking, to guide, to encourage, to welcome and to ponder with. I really appreciated the daily reflections; what I really liked about them was that they weren't about alcohol. And I know that using alcohol isn't really about drinking alcohol, its about something unique to each of us. It is found in the deepest part of me, in the stillness of the moment that Josh offered to me when he asked me to reflect. I would wake each morning and find the daily email with the reflection prompt and paste it into my calendar, then I would go about my day and on my drive home from work, I would think about drinking. Then I would think about the reflection. I wanted to get to the other side of the desire to drink, to be able to experience what was waiting for me in the quite moment of that reflection. The one that I would write as I lay in bed, typing it out, freeing it from my soul through my fingertips. And then all of sudden, there it was, that deep part of me, the part that had been waiting for me to tend to it, that was the part that alcohol had been hiding from me. With Josh as a guide, I have been sober since January 1, 2026. I know that the effort is all mine but knowing that Josh was out there, waiting to read my reflection, made it feel less lonely. And even though Sober January is over, I know that Josh is still out there, cheering for me, cheering for all of us!
1 February 2026
Unprompted review