I sent a voice message on Tuesday to the mother of my ex-girlfriend thanking her for what she did five years ago on the last night I drank. I told her that if she is able to do so to tell her daughter thank you for kicking me to the curb as that likely saved my life. Hopefully one day I can tell her myself on the phone or in-person. Her mother is an amazingly strong woman and Christian (yes there are a few good ones out there) who thought I could do better and has never stopped helping or encouraging me.
Every single day I attempt to make the best of it that I can. Now obviously some days are just going to be completely out of sync. We all deal with that regularly. The difference that I tell myself is that I do not need to ever again run to a bottle and check out on life. The desire to drink died the day I quit. One of the things for me is I took that laser-like focus I have with being on the spectrum and used it to form good habits instead of something that was destroying me bit by bit.
The only part of this that sucks is that 1st year saying goodbye to my aunt a year and a day after I stopped drinking. I had to see her incapacitated on a FaceTime call and say goodbye to her while I was in Vermont celebrating one year sober. I will forever think of how alcohol robbed me of her and her children of their mom and the grandchildren who she was in the beginning stages of showering with love. She was a nurse for three decades and knew better, but her and her longtime alcoholic boyfriend just kept drinking. She stopped a month before she died, but it was too late.
If any of you reading this feel like alcohol is taking over your life please reach out to someone on this thread or someone in-person you trust. The alcohol never loses. You do not have to let it win though. You can make a stand and say no more. Perhaps it will not be as painless as it was for me to walk away, but do it if you cannot function without drinking. Your friends and loved ones will thank you for doing that.