This morning felt cleaner somehow. Not because the air was clearer or the sky looked any different—but because I woke up without a dry mouth, without that strange anxiety that creeps in after a heavy night. Most of all, I woke up without guilt.
When I left the rehab center five months ago, I thought something inside me would flip like a switch. I thought I’d walk out different. Better. Lighter. But I didn’t. I was still me—just without the alcohol.
It was… unsettling at first. Like removing something important, only to be left with a space you don’t know how to fill.
One Sunday morning at a café near Lumpini Park—where our support group sometimes meets—I overheard someone say,
“I never thought post-rehab life would teach me so much about myself.”
Those words stuck with me.
Recovery life isn’t big and loud like people imagine. It’s built from small, quiet decisions—over and over again. Choosing not to call the drinking buddy. Not turning into that familiar alley. Not letting loneliness turn into a reason to spiral.
These days, my life is full of boring things.
Fixing an old bicycle that had been rusting for years.
Trying to cook something edible from YouTube.
Strumming a guitar I hadn’t touched in two years.
To anyone else, it may sound ordinary. But for me, this is what freedom looks like—and I didn’t have to trade my health or dignity for it.
I’m not strong, to be honest. But I have people around me who didn’t let me walk this road alone. The program gave me a bridge back to normalcy. And not just any “normal,” but a version I actually want to live.
Once, in a peer support circle, a 22-year-old guy shared,
“Sometimes I’m afraid that without alcohol, I won’t have anything to hold onto.”
I told him,
“That fear is real. At first, everything feels empty. But give it time—that empty space becomes the room where you can finally place new things.”
What sobriety gave me wasn’t a perfect life.
It gave me the chance to start again—on my own terms, at my own pace.
Some days I still wobble. But even on the hard days, I choose this version of life over the one that nearly drowned me.