“Hello?”

“Is this Katy Ripp? Yes, hello. This is your wake up call.

This is the call where we tell you that you cannot continue this way or you will die. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but slowly and painfully, you will die…without ever actually living.

You’ll continue down this path, which inevitably leads to nowhere great, slogging along until one day you can no longer walk. Then, you’ll crawl on your hands and knees the final distance to your end.

So, we’re here, as your friends, the Universe, your physical body, spirit and mind, to wake you up. We’re sorry we’ve had to do that in dramatic form but the decades of weight gain, insomnia, headaches and hangovers didn’t seem to be working.

We’re glad you picked up.”

The Truth Stings.

I wrote this back on September 6th, 2021. It’s hard to go back and read it now, I was only a week in to sobriety then, but the truth often stings a little.

As I sit here on Day 56, I have so many thoughts running through my head. The most intense one at the moment is about this blog.

I want to stand in my truth. I want to be proud of where I am and where I am going and I want other people to know it. I want the accountability. I want my mess to be my message and I truly believe that the obstacle is the way and in my case, the obstacle is alcohol.

I’m SURE I’ve written this before (that’s what happens with the truth, it gets repeated because it’s the only story you actually know and remember) but drinking has been my only roadblock and it’s blocked everything; my physical appearance, productivity, spirituality, health, wealth, everything. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time to go in to details about all of that soon.

A Thousand Day Ones

If you’ve followed along here at all you’ll know I took a 90 day hiatus from drinking back in 2019 but the truth is I’ve had many, many more Day 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s, even 50s since then and well before. I’ve tried a THOUSAND times to quit drinking and I just can’t unknow what I know. I’ve googled and read and researched and listened and read some more. And after years of Day 1s and self-loathing and hangovers and fights and crying, I’m just done.

And it’s going to be fucking awesome.

I want to write again. It fuels me; helps me process my thoughts. I didn’t know I loved to write, or that I was any good at it, until I started this blog in 2018. (I mean, that’s one of the coolest things about sobriety…this list is endless of the things you learn you never knew you loved) Unfortunately, when I started drinking again two things happened:

1. I felt like a failure.
2. I didn’t feel like I had anything worth writing about.

After all the reading and research and listening and googling I’ve come to realize that “failure”, and the thousand before that, is exactly how I got here: sober.

I wouldn’t be here without the decades of Day 1s…yes, decades. I have felt like shit after EVERY drinking episode (not all of them horrific) since I was in my early 20s. Every. Single. One. Not just hungover, sure, the headaches and fatigue sucked and definitely got worse as I got older, I mean the self-flagellation.

The knowing.

I knew I shouldn’t be drinking. I knew it wasn’t good for me, the people around me, my life. It just didn’t make anything better. So, it just had to go.

Ba-bye.

Someone asked me the other day, “How do you do all of this? Aren’t you scared?” with a sweeping arm motion. I’ve been asked it before but the answer that came out that particular day almost knocked me on my ass: “I just trust myself. I know that I will do whatever it takes to make it work.”

I have never even had that thought before and there I was saying it out loud.

I spent the rest of the day struck by it. I think because it’s the first time in my adult life I have trusted myself and the reason I’m starting up the engine on here again.

I had fears that I would “fail” again. I would claim sobriety only to fall off again. And then where would I be? Stuck with a blog about sobriety where I would go radio-silent (see absent blog posts from April 2019 – now).

But I trust myself.
This time it’s different.

And I don’t really care if someone doesn’t believe me.
I believe me..for the first time ever.

Update: September 2024 I am 3 years sober.