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

  • Halloween in Recovery

    10.31.25 Tonight was such a good night. I figured the alumni meeting would be smaller because of Halloween, but there was actually a pretty good turnout. We talked about burnout and how important it is to keep a healthy balance of activities in our lives. After the meeting I went over to the Fellowship Hall

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  • Season of Service

    10.29.25 The line “We found that freedom from fear was more important than freedom from want” really hit me tonight. It sums up exactly where I am right now. For so long, I thought peace would come from finally having what I wanted — stability, security, control. But I’m realizing that it’s not about what

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  • Happy Fucking Birthday Glen!

    10.28.25 Today is a great day. We haven’t gotten to celebrate yet—because, well, adulting and life. But it’s Glen’s one-year sobriety birthday today. Coin, solution, and cake Thursday. I was lucky enough to meet Glen at inpatient rehab, and we formed a friendship there. Our group stayed in touch after we got back out into

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  • Shared Shadows

    10.26.25 The speaker at the women’s meeting this morning was only a few years older than me. Maybe that’s why I connected to her right away. She started sharing her story. What she went through, how she felt about it, how she reacted had a heavy rock forming in the pit of my stomach. It’s

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