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
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Eight Months
7.8.25 Tonight marks eight months clean and sober—nights and weekends included. It’s not an official sobriety birthday, but it feels good to put another milestone behind me. At the women’s meeting, we read from The Family Afterwards chapter during book study. For the first time, I didn’t get upset reading it. Usually, this chapter stirs
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Expectation Hangover
7.7.25 Expectations stood out to me when I read the Daily Reflection today. I have to ask myself—who do I think I am to demand things I think I deserve? Where does that entitlement come from? My actions are what show what I truly deserve—not my words, not my justifications, not my wishes. It’s humbling
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Longer Than 21 Days
7.6.25 Drinking alcohol had become a habit for nearly 30 years. I’ve read it only takes 21 days to break a habit. I, and so many other alcoholics, are living, breathing proof that is complete bullshit. Curious, I used my Ph.D. from Google and took a deeper dive into some research—not just about addiction habits,
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Between Crisis and Contentment
7.5.25 Lately, I’ve been noticing in the rooms that a lot of people are struggling with what basically sounds like normalcy in sobriety. When nothing is actively going wrong, our alcoholic minds start waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s like we don’t know how to live without some level of chaos. When good