I would like to use this thread to organize a mentorship program. I believe it would be very helpful for people struggling with their sobriety to be teamed up with a volunteer from our plentiful crop of successful abstainers.
I'll begin by asking people to come forward to present themselves as a candidate to be mentored and to describe their drinking patterns, main obstacles, age, and life situation.
Then, hopefully, a person with a year or more of sobriety and commonalities will come forward and offer to be their private coach, guide, sounding board, cheerleader and friend.
They will then set up a system of communication either through PM's, emails or whatever they decide.
No one has to facilitate this thread, it will grow on it's own but we can all encourage those who are asking to be mentored even if we, ourselves, are not eligible to assist. All I ask is that no matter what happens with this thread, if you think of it, bump it up occasionally. You never know if there's someone out there wanting to help or in dire need of a friend.
I, who, as many of you know am a completely unreliable member of this wonderful forum still have a keen yearning to achieve sobriety and humbly present myself as the first candidate for the aid of a mentor... probably the toughest challenge.
My name: Sober Soul / was Tipplerette
Been here: more than 4 years
Life situation: 57 year old woman, happily married, living in an environment of constant paryting for the past ten years but am moving back to my quiet, home town in a few months to live closer to my four young grandchildren and to reaquaint myself with my language and culture.
My drinking pattern: About 11 years ago after my divorce and when my teenage daughter started acting out I began using wine to cope. I have drank a few glasses of wine nightly for the past ten years and half of those have been spent either quitting, relapsing, regretting, breaking promises and repeating the pattern. I have alcoholic tendencies and cannot go long without relapsing; 30 days being my tops. My drink volume may not be earth shattering but I have a real problem with the way it makes me feel. I have definitely improved in the past year but still drink some and I want to attain complete abstinence; otherwise I won't stop ever obsessing over it and it's taken up too much time already.
Obstacles: people I hang with and that is changing in a few months. I will be temporarily living even closer to those same people until our house is built so will need lots of support at the start
In a nutshell: I feel that by moving out of this environment I can finally do this. My reasons for quitting are many; my mom is an 82 year old miserable alcoholic, my son has drinking issues, I want to accomplish so much and my alcohol consumption is limiting me at a time when I should be soaring. I love being a Granny, love nature, love exploring spirituality (think Zen) and enjoy knitting, playing the keyboard by ear and cooking healthy food.
I hope that someone sees this and volunteers to be my mentor.
My goal is to become a mentor one year from today.
** Please do not worry if you do not get a mentor the first day you present yourself as a candidate; it just means that your perfect match was not online that day.
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