Introductions

Hello,

My name is Zane Neumann and I'm an alcoholic.

This is a phrase that I've said countless times over the last three months--in that way, you could say that it's a new phrase to me. Certainly, hitting rock bottom, staggering and stumbling towards the hope of change, rehab, recovery, sobriety--those things are all new.

But the focal point of that statement, identifying myself as a drunk, is nothing new to me at all. What's changed is my awareness of the depths to that phrase. The truths behind that word, of all the elements it encompasses, run as deep and as endlessly as all the bottles and cans I poured down my throat over the years of my ignorant, active use.

This December I'll be turning 26 and I've been regularly abusing alcohol since the age of 13--that's half of my life spent riding the spiral steadily down. That's a lot of life, and love, wasted.

I'm thinking of this blog as a journal of sorts, but one that's available for anyone to see that may want to. There are a lot of half-truths, straightforward lies and forgotten promises inside the miserable world of addiction. This blog will talk about all of those things, but will never fall susceptible to them.

I hope that the stories and thoughts I share here may help or mean something to someone reading it. Something new that I've learned over the course of recovery is that the things that lead a drunk back towards life can include experiences as intangible as one conversation or story from a stranger--the seed of wanting your life back, and how it's planted, is as varied as the lives that lead people like myself towards becoming alcoholics in the first place. It's as varied as all of the hurtful, terrible things we did to ourselves and others all for the sake of alcohol.

But, a word of warning: I do this primarily for myself. To address and take accountability in just one more way for my own experiences with alcoholism. Addiction is a selfish disease, it either forces or convinces you to sacrifice any and every other thing in your life for its sake, and there is nothing wrong with applying that same "selfish" ideology to recovery.

So, with that, let's move past the introductions. Introductions are always the hardest, most stilted part of things, and we never really get to know anything about one another through them.

I'll try as best I can over the days ahead to offer a clear view of who I am, what my experiences with active addiction were and how I was able to begin taking my life back, inch by inch.