Meet Dara.

Back in the spring I asked the eight QS Guides to write about their experience to freedom in sobriety, so that I could share it with the world. Six of them responded and you have already heard from Sophie, Theresa, Jayne, Victoria, Hazel and Nikki. However, for two of my team the task was not as simple as putting pen to paper and a real journey has been undertaken to get their experience down on paper. When Dara sent me her words last week she said,

“Last night before I fell asleep I realised something. I have been procrastinating over writing this testimonial because I thought I hadn’t quite achieved something big enough to write about. Then I remembered that’s the whole point: the feeling of not enough IS the struggle of addiction! The moment I quantum leaped into a reality of sobriety 18 months ago, I did achieve something monumental. I chose a new reality. I became a different person. I primed my heart and soul to remember that I am enough and always was.
So here it is!”

Insightful when you read her story in her own words below, from QS Member and Irish Guide: Dara

“I’ve always wanted more, since I was a child. More cake, more books, more playtime. As a teenager, I wanted more music, more discos, more kisses, more phone conversations with friends ten minutes after arriving home from school. When I started drinking alcohol as a young adult, ‘more’ gradually became ‘never enough’. I didn’t know it, but what was ‘not enough’ was my perception of myself.

I remember aged 12 trying to act like one friend because everyone liked her. Later, I tried so hard to be ‘one of the lads’, it became a badge of honour to be able to drink anyone under the table. I had to prove myself. Alcohol took me out of my self-doubt and into a place where I could connect with people, where I could feel ‘as good as’ anyone else. But it also made me a toxic person, an unstable person, an underachiever, an unpredictable mother.

After many years, and several attempts to cut back or quit, alcohol made me hate myself. When I finally realised that I had an addiction and I needed help to release it, I found Quantum Sobriety. Suddenly, it all became so simple. Choose your reality. Decide to not be addicted anymore and live your life from that reality. Meditate. Learn tools that put the power back in your hands. Choose self-love over self-abuse. That’s what QS teaches, ultimately. The only cure for addiction is self-love.

It’s a gradual process, but after doing the first meditation, I was instantly free of any desire to drink. It was that powerful. From that day – 12 April 2016 – my focus has been on how to love myself. How to remember that I AM ENOUGH. I always was. I have been learning how to come back to the 12 year old girl, dancing at the local disco, feeling so free and so… herself. Complete, happy, fully in the moment and not needing anything more. This feeling of being enough and being happy in the moment is what allows me to expand my life in any direction I choose, a joyful freedom that I didn’t think possible before I joined QS.”