You need to start giving yourself some credit as you 100% do know shit about fuck. I cannot WAIT to read your posts in coming years. I anticipate them. Your experience is authentic, and it is yours. I’m very proud of my 22 years of alcoholic drinking because it was necessary for me to remove all reservations - for now. The right answers are different for everyone. Sobriety has been described as “a $ million program you get a nickel at a time” Even if you’re still drunk but visiting with sober people, that’s authentic experience. A guy I sponsored got sober in AA to prove it didn’t work. He wanted to go out and tell his friends “I tried AA and worked their steps and it is a useless fraud, and they are a despicable cult.” He’s got 7 years now, we share a sponsor, and I’d have no qualms about asking him to sponsor me one day. Another dear friend was sober for 13 years, drank for 4, and just picked up his 2nd 13 year chip. I’ve done step work with him but he is almost female and I just don’t process emotions the same way he does so while I love him like a sibling, I have to draw the line at trying to experience emotions as frequently as he would recommend. I’d be sobbing all day, every day. But I respect his sobriety and his sponsor (female) has passed on a lot of valuable things through him. He was the one who taught me the value of indifference - more accurately, ambivalence. Another guy I took through the steps was into meth, facing 20 more yrs in TDC, got a reprieve, worked the steps, stayed sober 8 years, relapsed briefly on alcohol, and is 6 months sober now. But that experience was necessary to remove his reservation around alcohol. Otherwise, he went from a white supremist prison gang shot caller to someone I love like a brother. He didn’t lose that when he relapsed, it was just necessary. I didn’t get sober because I wanted to. I had to get sober because I wasn’t ready to die. And as a result, I got to witness the 3 aforementioned miracles. We recover together.