This entry is about my last relapse, how I encountered the triggers, the excuses our minds come up with to rationalize lapses in sobriety and the consequences that followed. While relapsing is common in addiction recovery, I never imagined how deep the effects would be until it happened again.

We are shaped by our environments the way we speak, our preferences, and even our addictions. Whether addiction stems from abuse, pressure, early exposure or other factors, we eventually start to shape our own environment. We become so immersed in our lifestyle of drugs and or alcohol that we unintentionally enable ourselves and others. We pull people into our world, trying to make them fit the vision we’ve created for ourselves. As time goes on, we get tired. We want change, but the very environment we've created for ourselves becomes an obstacle. Suddenly, telling them “I don’t want to drink anymore” feels like a burden. But you know what? Just because your past is checkered doesn’t mean you can’t play chess. We all have a chance to change the game, no matter where we come from.

The power of marketing is truly a force to be reckoned with. It has the ability to influence, create awareness, persuade, and evoke emotion sometimes in a matter of seconds or minutes. It's found in content creation, word of mouth, and affiliate marketing, just to name a few. The world is vast and complicated. No single action can please everyone, and this is no different. Someone’s going to be offended, triggered, or annoyed. That’s what this is: a rant about liquor commercials, Here’s the scenario.

I’ve done this a couple of times, lasting a couple of months to a year each time. But I really only worked the program the way it was meant this most recent time. What used to be the hardest part was acceptance and acknowledgment. It took a close friend constantly telling me I had a problem and while at the time I wasn’t listening a small piece of me did listen and the seed was planted. Now this was years ago eventually I did sober up but I wasn’t willing to seek professional help. Eventually after a couple of relapses and long periods of binge drinking I got sick and tired of being sick and tired of it all and I have a what I thought was decent but really looking back a lackluster run. This was supposed to be my last time doing this and I got sloppy and relapsed and now we fast forward to this current run.