“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill

Alcohol is so prevalent within our society, we celebrate, commiserate and drown our happines and sorrows with alcohol. I’m learning through my experiences within Alcoholics Anonymous how to find the courage to stay sober.

Past members who have many years of success in their sobriety define maintaining the courage to stay sober is broken up into actions, these actions include:

Keep coming back to AA meetings- No matter how hard it is, always make yourself come back to the meetings. The hardest part about meetings is actually being brave and taking the courage to arrive at the destination.

Get a sponsor – Someone who has worked the 12 steps and continues to work the twelve steps as part of their daily lives.

Pray and keep asking your higher power to maintain sobriety – I’m learning that for both christians and agnostics this is one of the keys to maintaining sobriety. Believing that we have a higher power, no matter what form that is, and praying and believing that this higher power will keep you on your path of sobriety.

Use all of the tools at our disposal – In this technical day and age there are so many apps, youtube Chanels, podcasts and documentary’s that we can use to continue to reinforce our messages of sobriety. I’ve found several documentary’s personally inspiring and helpful for me:

• Harrowing Alcohol Stories.– This youtube documentary is confronting to watch, it details a number of alcoholics who are suffering extreme incidents of liver failure, including one woman’s heartbreak watching her husband die from liver failure. This woman’s husband was an alcoholic in recovery, however the damage to his liver and organs was so bad that he did not qualify for a transplant.
• Australian Story – Talitha Cummins – This documentary to me was extremely powerful, Talitha Cummins is an Australian Journalist who on the surface had it all. A successful career in the media, disposable income, beauty and an outwardly amazing life. However she was hiding a secret, alcoholism. She checked herself into AA and has now achieved many years of sobriety and has been a patron for the Hello Saturday movement towards a healthy alcohol society.
• Theresa’s Story – This is a woman who has been through it all, she was a drunk, had been raped, sodomised, pistol whipped and grew up in the projects in New York City. She worked hard on her sobriety and has pulled herself from the grips of poverty and depression into a life full of sobriety.

My list is exhaustive and every day I’m finding new podcasts and youtube stories to listen too, each and every story is dramatic and gives me hope.