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You might be reluctant to begin in-person meetings when you first recognize you need help with substance abuse. That is fine as long as you start somewhere. Recovery meetings on Zoom are a great way to ease in and learn about programs of sobriety. AA and NA are not the only ones either.

On Zoom you can get a feeling for the way meetings work too. Other programs may work for you, especially if you are not interested in the God aspect. I compiled different Zoom recovery meetings here so you can explore.

AA Online: check out the tags in the sidebar or search for specific types.

Virtual NA Meetings: Narcotics Anonymous for the drug fiends out there!

Secular Recovery Meetings: recovery and steps without gods of belief systems.

SMART Recovery: secular, research based support groups to help with addictive behavior.

Moderation Management: a program for behavioral change with a focus on reducing drinking amounts.

Women for Sobriety: abstinence based, secular program with a focus on women’s unique needs in recovery.

LifeRing: secular recovery meetings providing support and assistance.

Marijuana Anonymous: for my fellow potheads. Is it really helping you?

Cocaine Anonymous Online: if the powder is ruining your life.

Crystal Meth Anonymous: slowing down the speed.

The military taught me to worry about future contingencies. I had to have a plan for many different scenarios, especially being in the medical field. It was a useful state of mind when lives were on the line.

My personal life suffered greatly from the worry, though. I applied it to everything. Alcohol expanded my worries into consistent anxiety. Adding weed to the mix as a civilian distorted my imagination to a wider range of negative future scenarios, none of which were occurring.

My paranoia, worry, and anxiety grew through my years of substance abuse. I carried my assumptions that the day would suck or that something terrible was about to happen.

My outlook on life had turned bleak. I started to see our world as literal hell. But of course my perception was skewed from tens of thousands of drinks over the years. My mind and ego were the hell, which made booze the devil.

Healing from the Worry

It took a few months of sobriety for my brain to clear and for the impending doom to start to subside. I was like a nervous and broken chihuahua when I crawled into AA. I began to see that all my worries were from my negative beliefs in things that weren’t happening. It was a couple of years before my outlook was much better.

The more I practice focusing on the here and now (I call it the herenow because I am into word fuckery) the more peace that grows in me. The consistency of going to recovery meetings and talking with other alcoholics and addicts has brought my turn around.

I take care of what’s in front of me, the things that I am capable of working on. I forget what is none of my business and let go the things I cannot control. What a pointless torture it was! I called it being a realist, but that was a lie to cover up my dark, negative attitude handed to me by substance abuse.

I was absolutely unprepared to get out of the military and was clueless about that fact. I hadn’t planned anything. I just knew I wanted to get away. I was a broken and crotchety 26 year old Iraq veteran that didn’t care about much of anything when I got out.

I had a bunch of money saved and invested so I traveled for a while, which was really great. I was always heavily drinking wherever I went, though.

My eight years of constant military drinking (except for deployments) had implanted the habit deep within me. I don’t place blame anymore though. I take responsibility for every drink and bong rip now. My alcohol abuse would probably have embedded itself whether I was in the military or not.

I had been back from my second Iraq tour for just a few months before being released into the wild. Nearly all the people I knew had moved on except for my one fellow drunk veteran friend, which was not helpful. I lived in a city, so there way always a bar open somewhere.

My main goal as a civilian was to drink and get high as often as I could. I was a shiny, new pothead with a weed card. The marijuana worked great for about two years until I started falling into paranoid psychosis while studying conspiracies.

I grew in sickness and misery over the years. My depression and PTSD went untreated as I simply drowned my discomforts. There were only two things that kept me from offing myself at the time. They were my curiosity about the future of humanity and the disdain I had for people that killed themselves.

I also didn’t have any beliefs, so I thought that it was just oblivion after this life. I don’t think that anymore. Maybe recovery reconnected me to my soul. I don’t know. I will have to ponder that for a few more years.

I often write about cycles or feedback loops that happen with veterans and their addictions. In my case, I lost my military identity which left me solely identifying as a drunken pothead. I drank and smoked more weed, isolated even more, became more unhinged, drifted away from healthy human contact, and felt worse about myself. This led to me seeking more escape through my substances. That was how I flushed myself down the toilet.

In this article, I will share some of my main problems I had as a battered new civilian that was drinking and smoking way too much pot. Then I will give some hindsight with what I should have done instead. In recovery, this is called “contrary actions”.

Problem: My isolation was intense. I had disdain for civilians and was too anxious and paranoid to get a full time job. I would try to go back to school, but couldn’t focus. I taught myself to build websites so I could work at home. I would barely talk to anybody for weeks on end.

A Better Way: Get a job in something that interests you and where you can be social, integrating into the civilian world. It doesn’t have to be a fancy new career. It can be simple for a little while. Volunteer and find hobbies where you can interact with like minded people. Go to your church often if you are into that.

College is great too. You can live well on the GI Bill and the grants provided by the states or federal government. I took lots of random classes over the years without much of a goal, but finally focused on a topic and graduated. That was after I got sober.

So, think deeply about a career goal or an industry you want to join. You can take general education classes that can be applied to many degrees until you find one that fits. I also had a lot of fun in study groups.

Problem: Losing my identity. All of a sudden when I got out, my military identity was gone. I didn’t realize how my military ego was the majority of what I knew about myself.

Solution: When getting out, I should have pondered what I really wanted to do. I just fell into learning about building websites and digital marketing.

At the time, it wasn’t the best for me because it allowed me to isolate, drink, and smoke weed while I was working. I really should have gotten a job where I could go somewhere and actually interact with people. What a concept!

I think it’s the best for veterans to quickly find a new identity, whether that is through intense study of a subject at college or a new career. The successful ones do this, in my opinion. I failed for a long time because I drifted from one thing to another.

Problem: Dipping in and out of depression. Did you know that pouring gallons of a depressent called “alcohol” onto a depressed brain makes it way worse?

I would get deep down into hopelessness for weeks on end. The world would turn gray and the hours seemed to stretch for days. I obsessed about all the dead I saw at our field hospital in Iraq. I ruminated about their families left behind. I kept all this bottled up and let it fester in me.

Solution: I should have recognized my depression and alcohol problem, gotten into recovery, and sought help from the VA and therapy. My misery was all wrapped up in my isolation and avoiding society.

Problem: Dipping into psychosis. I fell down the conpsiracy and paranoia hole in the years right after gettting out. It was fueled by my love of research and my out of control imagination made ridiculous by alcohol and especially weed.

I felt helpless and hopeless. I thought I was completely right about every conspiracy, even though my beliefs would change every day. Every institution seemed to be evil.

Solution: Sitting alone researching dumb shit online every day while drinking and getting high was a terrible idea. I should have had something more constructive for my focus such as a specific college degree or a new job. My denial told me that weed was healing me, though it was obviously driving me insane.

As my years of recovery have progressed, my conspiracy focus has disappeared, weird!

Problem:  My sleep was pure shit for years. My mind would swim with worry, paranoia, ridiculous plans, anxiety, regrets, and conspiracies. I would toss and turn until midnight, often waking up around three or four a.m. My nightmares were way out in sci-fi land. They were debilitating and made me dread going to sleep at times. It was a rare and awesome night if I got a solid four hours.

Solution: I wasn’t getting much exercise at the time. I should have kept working out every day in some way. Walking from bar to bar wasn’t cutting it!

The alcohol and weed kept my mind screaming at itself. It wasn’t until ten years after leaving the military that I sobered up in AA and finally got a full night’s sleep again. I should have been studying productive things that were down to earth.

Those were my main problems after leaving the military. Don’t do what I did with isolation, denial, and substance abuse madness. That is a ticket to hell.

Jump into your civilian life completely with a brand new identity that you choose. Consider recovery if your drinking or drugging is harming your life. Learn from my mistakes.

Feel free to leave a comment with your own struggles and share this post with someone that might need it.

“What’s wrong with pain? It’s only temporary!” That was one of the stupid motivational chants we learned in one of my military schools. Remember that one?

While enlisted, I was trained to embrace and even enjoy misery when the mission asked for it. We had to be tough! Of course, this way of being was necessary in a combat zone or when working around the clock.

Learning to push the suffering out of our minds and perform was part of the military experience. It served me well when lives were on the line, but it really bit me in the ass when I was deep in alcoholism after getting out.

I was in a weird state of mind for many years after my deployments. I wore my hangovers as a badge of honor. As I fell deeper into addiction as a civilian, I would “push through” my mornings by drinking or smoking weed.

Of course, this made things even worse as time dragged on. I began dipping in and out of paranoid psychosis and was in a continuous state of anxiety. Since I was working online and isolating to the extreme, nobody could see my deterioration.

I finally came into recovery (AA meetings specifically) when I was completely broken and desperate. The familiarity I had with suffering day in, day out kept me on the hamster wheel. It was my normal state until I finally had enough. I saw the light and came to the realization that suffering was not necessary in life.

Looking back, I should have recognized my drinking problem in my early 20s, but the toughness that I learned kept me in denial for another 15 miserable years. My drinking buddies were the same way, so I saw it as normal.

So, go ahead and take an honest look at yourself right here and right now. Is your job, family, money, health or mind being negatively affected by drinking or drugging? Do you drink or use more than you plan? Would you be better off quitting?

The truth is that misery is not mandatory. Suffering from alcohol or drugs is not normal and you can find free help today.

I would be dead without dragging my defeated ass into AA. I have zero doubt about that. So consider reading about addiction and recovery programs right now. Go Google them.

There is probably a free recovery meeting close to you today. There are definitely ones going on Zoom at least every hour. There are also recorded recovery talks on Youtube too. Go check them out.

The real toughness is when we admit our problems that are destroying us, ask for help, and start to practice recovery. Becoming honest about the level I had sunk was one of the most difficult admissions of my life. But this first honesty saved my life.

If this 17 year blackout drinking pothead can get years of sobriety you can too. It’s not easy at first, but you can be tough once more until misery is no longer your companion. Suffering is not cool as we grow older.

Have you had enough misery and negativity from your substances or other addictions? Good news! There is a ton of help, there are millions like you, and there is a solution called sobriety / recovery. Let this post be your sign to get help right now, yes you!

Veteran Specific Resources

• Dial 988 for Suicide Prevention or a Veteran in Crisis
• Veteran Addiction Hotline: (629) 302-2890 
• VA Substance Treatment for Veterans
• VA Substance Use Page 
• Veteran Addiction Treatment Guide
• Free Rehab for Veterans
• Veteran Addiction Stats and Rehabs

Start repeating to yourself throughout the day every day, “I am sober and clean today, one day at a time” to get some positive self brainwashing going. Sobriety takes repetitive and habitual behaviors because that’s what addiction was!

Beginning a Recovery Journey as a Vet

I am a two time Iraq veteran that would be dead without AA and now have four years of sobriety (six of no drinking). The easiest thing to do when starting to get sober is familiarize yourself with addiction and recovery. Look up AA or NA meetings near you and actually go for it. You only need to bring a desire to quit in order to go.

Start reading the free AA book here. Look for the similarities that you have. You can always find meetings on Zoom  and plenty of recovery talks on Youtube, so you can dip your toes in that way too.

Your local VA or veteran center is a good place to call also. Just know that there is often a wait time for help such as rehabs.

If you really don’t want to talk to anyone, then I suggest learning about addiction and how it applies to you. This initial self-study can get you to the point where you can go to recovery meetings and ask for help in other ways. It’s OK that you’re fucked up, but it’s not OK to stay fucked up!

Learn about the ways your specific substances affect veterans. Read about PTSD online if you are on edge, anxious, having nightmares, your mind is racing, or are just generally stuck. Learn about depression (which can affect all sorts of shit) and the other issues we veterans face.

The ones that make it to long term sobriety are the ones that go to a lot of recovery meetings. We put our sobriety above all else and our lives fall back into place, though in directions that might be surprising and new.

The people in recovery meetings are always ready to greet us with open arms. For me, AA has been a group where I feel I belong for the first time in my life. I never had that growing up and not even in the military to be honest.

I was a blackout drinker for 17 years and a constantly smoking pothead for ten years after getting out. I was completely broken in every way: physcially, spiritually, emotionally, and economically.

My PTSD and depression took me to hellish depths I never thought possible. It lasted way longer than necessary because my substance abuse kept me stuck there. So I know you can recover if I can.

Start studying addiction and recovery. You are seeking a strong and brave path when you ask for help. Everyone can do it, so get connected now. Good luck!

It was really strange to feel like I belonged to a group of people since I never had in my life. That’s how I felt when I joined recovery, AA in my case.

Growing up, I secretly felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere. I would hang out with various groups in school, acting different around each one. I settled into a small pack of friends, but never had much in common with them.

It was the same way in the military. Deep down I wanted to be a loner, but I fit in perfectly with the drunks! Of course, on one level it was hard to not feel like I belonged. We all did the same job, worked towards the same missions, talked the same, and partied together.

Beneath the surface I still had that feeling of being an outsider. It made me drink more, desperate to be entertaining, joking all the time. I was playing a role yet again. That sense of being a fraud had carried into the military.

The deep seated outcast feeling really screwed me when I got out. After a couple of Iraq tours and being a hopeless drunk for years, I felt like an alien in a civilian world. My isolation was absolute since I taught myself to build websites and lived alone after I got out.

It was ten more years of drunken pothead insanity before I was broken enough to walk into an AA room. That decision saved my life and continues to years later.

My first AA meeting was a speaker meeting. An older lady with 30 years of sobriety was sharing her story. Through my nervousness and shaky brain fog, I was amazed to hear my own thoughts, resentments, and assumptions come out of her mouth.

She talked about feeling traumatized for a long time, being suicidal, and not fitting in herself. I left in tears, knowing for the first time in my life I had found a group of people that understood me. That realization kept me going back every day.

It turns out, I was always an alcoholic as my core identity! It took me walking into a room full of recovering drunks to learn that truth.

So, the moral of the story is that if you are a veteran or military member that drinks a ton or uses a lot of drugs and feels like an outcast, we have a club for you! There’s tens of millions of us around the world.

Start learning about recovery. Read some AA or NA literature and look up meetings around you. Listen to the similarities which apply to your life. It might save you and show you a group of people where you belong like me.

After being in addiction for a while, my honesty muscles began to atrophy. Denial of my problem was the first lie I told myself. I believed I was OK for many years. It started a pattern that grew over the years.

Our substances begin to talk to us. They say they are our friends, they help us in some way, that we are just having fun, and all types of other bullshit. They distort our brains and minds.

As our addictions persist, our morals start to slip away too. We do things we normally wouldn’t and care less about what is right or wrong. We are only focused on continuing our addictions, whatever they are.

Does any of that sound familiar? Then you should look up and check out recovery meetings. Zoom meetings are a great place to start. There are also meetings and sobriety talks recorded on Youtube. In-person meetings are the best for connection and help, though.

Shifting Towards Truthfulness

Our first honesty is seeing our addiction(s) as having a negative impact on our lives. This is what brings us into recovery. Sometimes this is from a relationship break up, being disowned somehow, a run-in with the law, or getting sick. But it doesn’t have to be. Long term misery can show us this glimpse of truth as well.

Complete and consistent honesty is required for long term sobriety. It is the basis for many of the 12 steps. We don’t get much better without a new truthfulness. This can take years to develop, so don’t be hard on yourself! Start to recognize your dishonesty today and do opposite things compared to your past.

Honesty in Recovery Steps

Step One is an honest admittance of the depths of our addictions. It asks us to pull our heads out of denial. Are your substances destroying you through trouble, sickness, ruining relationships, and taking your money?

Step Four has us accept the truth of our fears, resentments, relationships, and other parts of our behavior. We admit our faults and see our roles in the negativities from our past. We find patterns of beliefs and behavior that have fueled our drinking and drugging.

Step Eight has us say, “yeah, I”ve been screwing over these people” and make a list of them. In step nine we face those people if possible and admit how we were wrong (with more damn honesty).

When I first joined AA, I was told this was a program of “radical honesty”. That has been a slow and tough 180 degree turn for me.

Denial and isolation were my lies by omission of how fucked up I really was inside. Admitting all my pain and suffering were the real first steps in my own sobriety and recovery. I came to see the ways I was escaping and why.

Please join us today. At least look up the free recovery literature around the web and watch a few sobriety videos on Youtube.

I choose to continue on this AA path because it has saved my life and is improving me day by day.

Life is a lot different today. I’m doing the things I always talked about doing while in addiction. I am appreciative and grateful through the day, which were alien words when I first got sober. That is my honest truth!

People with long term sobriety have made a habit of practicing their recovery. We alcoholics / addicts have obsessive minds and do repetitive actions, so we need consistency to keep from slipping back. It’s a hell of a lot better to be addicted to meetings, helping others, and step work!

It helps us to do similar things day in and day out to anchor our thoughts in recovery. Many that stay sober have a morning routine. It looks different for each person, so find something that works for your life.

We pray or meditate to start the day. We ask for help staying sober and clean for the day. In this way, we connect to whatever our god or higher power might be. An early call in the day to the sponsor or sober friends makes a lot of sense too.

The step prayers, Daily Reflections and other literature are good focuses in the morning. Recovery writings help me remember that I am an alcoholic, weed addict and should probably not touch those things today.

On some days, it is afternoon before I remember, “oh yeah, I’m in recovery!” That’s why I keep AA books around my place, in my car and a small one (the 12 and 12) in my backpack. The readings are always available.

Morning AA meetings have been a great start to a sober day too. A regular meeting schedule keeps me coming back. I still go to a meeting almost every day after a few years of sobriety. That is where I find connection, understanding, and people to help.

A couple of sayings I heard early in my recovery were, “stay in the middle of the herd or you’ll get picked off” and “go to a meeting every day and don’t drink or use between meetings.” Those have stuck with me and kept my habit of sobriety going.

Yes, we stay sober and clean one day at a time. But, if we don’t DO consistent recovery for the rest of our lives, we will certainly fall back into our self-destructive habits. That’s why the repetition of the program and steps is what saves our lives and keeps us improving. That’s why people with 30 or 40 years of sobriety keep coming to meetings.

Those are the two stark paths we face every day: misery, sickness and insanity OR a daily, repetitive recovery, helping others, healing and peace. Which do you choose today?

Caring for you body in early alcohol sobriety is rarely discussed. This is true even in the rooms of AA, which I visit often.

I am not a professional of any kind, so this post about alcohol detoxing comes from my own experiences and talking about it with others in recovery. I want to provide the information so you know what to expect and what to do to get through it.

First off, a MAJOR WARNING: detoxing from alcohol can kill you, depending on how much you were drinking. If you are a daily hard alcohol drinker, then you are at high risk for DTs.

No matter how much your drink, consult a doctor and consider going to an emergency room. You can Google detox centers near you and ask them about quitting cold turkey.

It is possible to have seizures, hallucinations and confusion during this time. Anxiety, depression, sweating, and shitty sleep (technical term) are common too.

For me, I had about four days of weird sweats, especially out of my feet. I was not expecting that. My hands and parts of my body trembled for about a week. That wasn’t such a big deal.

My hallucinations were pretty mild when I tried to get some sleep. It would be a bunch of lightly neon faces superimposed over each other and morphing. I didn’t mind because of my history with psychedelics!

For almost a week I was very restless. It helped to stretch, go for walks, take a nap, have a shower, and eat decent snacks.

My first few weeks of sleep were not that great. I tossed and turned, my mind swimming with all kinds of random topics. If you are up for it, harder exercise and longer walks will help with that.

As heavy drinkers, our bodies are used to a large intake of fluid. So, I always had a bottle or glass of water around. About two liters a day worked well for me. This also helps to clean out our bodies.

Another huge issue with quitting drinking comes from our bodies turning alcohol into sugar. As a result, we are also addicted to sugar. That has been a real battle in my sobriety.

For the first few days of detox, I would actually take shots of soda or juice. It kept me from drinking a gallon of sugar through the day. Juice and sports drinks diluted half with water helped with my vitamins and electrolytes too. A multivitamin didn’t hurt either.

My cravings and obsession for drinking were pretty bad for a couple of weeks. I would go to at least two AA meetings every day since I didn’t have anything else going on. They really calmed me down.

At home, I would read from the AA Big Book and other recovery literature to distract my mind when it started going a little crazy. That amounted to about 20 times per day. Calling new contacts in AA was also very helpful. It was the first time in my life I was getting my issues off my chest.

The body takes some time to heal. You have probably abused it for decades. So be patient with yourself. Keep consistent with water intake, exercising and eating better every day.

Try to avoid the sugar binges because that can really dig its hooks in. I’m an ice cream and candy whore right now. I guess it’s better than a beer, whiskey and weed whore! We are about progress, not perfection.

You only have to go through detox once if you stick close to the rooms of recovery and do thorough steps early on with a sponsor. It was a rite of passage that I am glad I did.

Sobriety and recovery have saved my life. I heal and improve month by month. Those first few crappy weeks were absolutely worth it.

My only alternative was to continue getting more sick, broken and miserable until dying an alcoholic death. I’m glad I found recovery and you can too. Go to a recovery meeting today and focus on being healthy!

A big driver of my addictions centered in taking myself too damn seriously. I thought my opinions and perspectives were the law. It made me arrogant, judgemental, and close minded. If you disagreed with me, you were an idiot, of course.

My party days of laughter and joking were long gone after ten years of alcoholism. I was isolated, serious about world affairs, and on a dark path of regular substance abuse.

As my drinking and weed smoking progressed to every day, I began to dip in and out of psychosis over the years. I would study conspiracies and form a different belief system every few days.

My outlook of the world became very dark based on my seriousness. The things I believed were gravely important. Why couldn’t everybody see that?! Well, because they were only true in my deteriorating mind.

Lightening up again in Recovery

Let’s just say I was not full of laughter and joy when I crawled into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I was trapped in the seriousness of my misery, paranoia, anxieties, and anger.

It took a few months of going to two meetings a day and working through my step work before I began seeing my sorry state objectively. My insanity was the driver of my seriousness and it was not real.

Realizing that I had an allergy of craving and a disorder of the mind allowed me to detach from my identity as a proud, drunken pothead. I saw myself as sick, not a crappy person. I stepped on a new path towards joy and relief from my desperate state.

The door to laughter began to reopen in my life. I began to laugh at my behavior in addiction, as do many in recovery. My new identity started to shift towards spiritual, helpful, and lighthearted.

Healing by Laughing at Myself

In the medical field we would make dark jokes, be sarcastic, and ridicule each other at work. The job and environment was often intensely stressful and depressing, so we used laughter to lighten the mood.

I am re-applying that tool to my life again as I progress in years of sobriety. I can look back at all my stupid conspiracies and resentments, talk about them, and laugh at how dumb and pointless they were.

I don’t have to be right about everything and correct people anymore. I accept that I am clueless on many things throughout the day. I keep my mind off what is none of my business. All of this clears my mind and calms me down.

When resentment or anger pops up, I am able to get outside of myself and see where I am being ridiculous. Now what are my lame assumptions that don’t make sense? Now how am I overreacting like a teenager? What idiots have I been listening to recently?

Looking back with laughter at my time trapped in addiction gives me the ability to forgive myself too. For veterans, self forgiveness is a huge hurdle. We are fuckin hard on ourselves! We were taught to be that way. It can keep driving our self abuse and escape into our substances.

So, get into recovery meetings if you aren’t already and learn to laugh at yourself again (as opposed to laughing at others). It can keep you away from hospitals or jails and dying a miserable death. Enlighten up a bit!