Hello World!

Tough times don’t last, tough people do. – Robert Schuller

My name is Ciana ‘Ci’, and I am an alcoholic. I’ve struggled with addiction for most of my life. As a teenager I experimented with drugs and alcohol but was always able to stop using drugs without any significant withdrawals or impact. Alcohol on the other hand, was not so easy.

I’ve maintained sobriety in the past for long periods of time but always given in to ‘one drink’. For those of us suffering from addiction you know that one drink is too many, and one more is never enough. I wanted this time to be different, I needed this time to be different, because no matter how much I lied to myself and tried to lie to everyone else, I could see the effects in every aspect of my life.

So, I went to rehab! I started journaling as part of my daily routine in rehab. I kept thinking about something I heard there that really resonated with me. I watched a recording of Brene Brown who said, “One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through, and it will be someone else’s survival guide.” I don’t know if this blog will become someone else’s survival guide or just my journal to reflect back on later, I will be stronger for it either way.

May you be sober and happy always! Ci

  • Juniper Jo

    05.03.26 I woke up yesterday and my kitten was cuddled up next to me dead. There’s no softer way to say that. It was immediate and wrong and nothing about it made sense. My sweet Juniper Jo, six months old, warm, always curled up right against me, was just…gone. Yesterday felt like a raging storm.

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  • Desiderata

    04.28.26 Sometimes listening is more important than anything I have to say. A friend shared this with me the other day, and as I’ve been trying to write about the ups and downs of this past week, it keeps coming back to mind. So instead of forcing my own words, I’m sharing this. Desiderata –

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  • I Changed My God

    04.20.26 When I look back, it’s clear how much my idea of God had to change for me to even have a shot at recovery. I used to see God as the source of everything that hurt me, and that belief gave me a constant target for my anger. It kept me stuck in blame

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  • Obsession

    04.11.26 The topic at a meeting the other night was obsession, and it brought me back to a passage from A Vision For You in the Big Book that describes what drinking becomes for people like me. Not just a social release, but something far darker in its final stage. For most people, drinking is

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