Resilient Seeker Coaching | Ross Raymond Nunamaker

The week of February 1, 2025 marked six months of being sober for me.

I’ve been told many times my story isn’t normal. 

I never believed alcohol controlled me. I enjoyed it. I liked having a drink. On occasion I drank more than I ought to have in too short a time, but mostly I drank more than I should have over longer periods of time.

By that I mean, I often had say four drinks over five hours on a daily basis. I spaced them out, had them casually, and was not drinking to get drunk.

One time when my wife said I couldn’t control it I quit for a month to show her I could. The first day I quit she came into the living room with a glass of wine in hand and a snack to watch TV.

I never said anything about it. I probably should have, but my fault throughout was not speaking up when I should have and the problem would only grow larger.

At any rate I knew I could quit. When the doctors, yes there were more than one, said I had to quit, I agreed and quit.

My mom and brother were concerned and before I got home from the hospital they got rid of the alcohol in the house.

Wasn’t an issue. 

When I went to doctor’s appointments I was asked how counselling was going, and I reminded him I didn’t go to counselling. He was in disbelief.

Other specialists said the same. For my hernia repair the doctor said to me three times as he kept asking because he couldn’t believe the turnaround without counselling including that’s not normal, it just doesn’t happen.

Yet it did.

Why?

As I said, I enjoyed it. It did not control me.

I can be around alcohol and not want one. I haven’t craved a drink. I do have a non alcoholic drink on occasion and I understand there is some alcohol in NA beer, but it is negligible.

I guess it didn’t control me because I didn’t believe it was needed. It was a nice to have, not a have to have.

As I worked through rebuilding myself in mind, body and spirit this was central in that it was pivotal in my health and as that improved so did my mental well being. As those two improved so too did my spirit.

At first it was a thing, one month, two months, I knew it to the day. I wasn’t waiting for the day to say, ‘whew’ I made it another month. It was more like, ‘wow, another month, no problem.’ Then it faded and I had to figure it out, ‘was it seven months or eight months?’

As I write this I’m over a year sober and amazingly I fear losing the progress I made with my weight and activity more than going back to drinking. 

It is easier to let my diet slip or not get as much activity in than it is to go back to drinking.

Everyone would think going back to drinking would be the hardest and the one to worry most about and it isn’t.

It is a phase of life that is behind me. It is my past. And that is all.

Lesson Learned

How you approach a challenge will dictate the outcome. Before the doctor told me to quit I had already quit for two days of my own choice and I believed I enjoyed it and didn’t rely on it.

Had I believed it was necessary I would have failed. If I believed it would be a struggle, it probably would have been and I probably would have lost because so many others have too.

Question for you

What challenge have you faced? How did you approach it? How did your approach impact the result?