On Nov. 19, I reached 18 years of sobriety. It looks neat when written as a number, but it represents anything but a neat journey.

Thanksgiving has always been a complicated season for me. It has carried a mix of gratitude for the life I've fought for and grief for the parts I've had to lose along the way. As I look back on nearly two decades of recovery, what stands out is not a flawless success story. The simple truth is that sobriety didn't hand me a perfect life. It handed me a chance. The time since has been a constant reminder that staying here takes effort, courage, and a willingness to keep choosing the hard thing.

When I first entered recovery, I was the young man with a 0.75 GPA, arrested 14 times in a single year, whispered about as someone who was "too far gone." I survived a

See Full Page