I heard someone once say: "I don't know if I was born an alcoholic but when I took my first drink, an alcoholic was born." That was my experience. This is certainly not the life I would have chosen if they were handing them out when I was young - but it is the life I have and it is far better than anything I imagined for myself when I was using.

I started off drinking at home when I was young. Alcohol was available. My father was an alcoholic. My grandfather, two uncles, many cousins, are just some of the other family members who have this illness. I had no idea what I was up against when I started drinking. I was a control drinker from the start. I saw what alcohol was doing to my father so I figured if I drank beer, everything would be okay. I did not know anything about the science. About genetics. Then I also discovered marijuana - and everyone knew that was harmless. So I drank, got high, and then began experimenting with other drugs.

I loved being drunk. It made me forget about me. It gave me things I never could imagine myself attaining sober. I could talk to girls. I could stand up for myself. I could look people in the eye. I was funny. It is the same ole story we hear all of the time.

My using took its toll on me early. The times that I drank hard liquor I blacked out. While driving one of our family's cars when I was 15 I ran into the other one in a blackout - friends had tried to stop me from driving. That same kind of chaos followed me through high school and college. Numerous detentions. Kicked out of class. Almost expelled - twice. Dropped out of sports. Gave up on life. College for me meant the freedom to drink even more, smoke even more pot, and try things I had not done before. The last thing on my mind was studying - I regret that to this day.

I am convinced that if I had kept using I would have moved to cocaine because it was all around me - whether it was crack or powder. But I did not go down that road. I had the good fortune of getting sober at the age of 21. Alcohol had stopped working. The marijuana was making me so paranoid that I thought people were trying to kill me and I ran home or to my car all of the time with my key out and ready for the shadows in the bushes to attack.

I had just graduated from college. I had been trying not to drink for eight months - doing all of the different experiments they talk about in recovery meetings: just drink three, don't drink for a month, don't drink and drive, throw away all of the pot paraphernalia, and throw myself into my studies. Like most addicts I was quite smart when I applied myself - I was on the dean's list one semester when I took 21 credits and then I made high honors when I took 23 the next semester. Just another way of me avoiding me.

So, on May 21, 1994 I got sober - I chose sobriety. I chose to surrender to the reality that with all of the effort I put into not ending up like my father I did. It did not make him bad or me bad - but I did not really get that at the time. We both were two sick people who needed to get well - not two bad people who needed to get good.

I have worked hard in my recovery. I have worked hard to become a healthy member of society and I have achieved that goal. Like many people, life continued to happen to me while I was sober. I learned how to go out without drinking, how to pay bills, how to have fun without drinking, how to let other people drink without them having to be alcoholics, how to focus on myself and not have to save the world. I worked, got fired, got hired, got fired, buried my father from chronic alcoholism, buried other family members, went to graduate school, began learning how to date, began exploring my spirituality, began taking responsibility for my life and the decision I was making, went to train as a CD counselor at a well known treatment center in Minnesota, fell in love (or lust), learned how to exercise again, how to eat healthy, broke up, broke up again, went through a domestic abuse program, broke up again, left the treatment center for another job, had that job offer rescinded, surrendered to the fact that I had other issues in my eighth year of sobriety and got on medication, took a job, another job, and another job. All of it was life happening and I stayed sober through it. Just as those who had come before told me I could do - I stayed sober and got through the pain.

Today I have 10 years of sobriety. I have a wonderful relationship with my mother. I have a good relationship with my sister. I am married. I truly fell in love this time and have been given the blessing of an incredible woman. She truly is who I imagined myself being with when I was first sober. I have a job that I love. I am doing things today that I never dreamt possible only three years ago. I have opportunities to do more things in the future that are even more incredible. I imagine nothing but a wonderful future for me and my family. And, again, it is all because I am sober.

I have broken a cycle that has killed many of my family. Like so many other diseases, this one has run throughout both sides of my family. Like people with so many other diseases, I am in recovery. I know what I need to do to take care of myself and I do it. Just like the diabetic who I was sitting next to in a meeting for work the other day - I, too, have the daily things that I need to do to take care of myself. It is what it is.

I am so thankful to be in recovery. I am so grateful for the life I have today. I hope more than anything that Recovery Month will only grow larger and that someday those of us who are in recovery from alcohol and other drugs will look back to the days when we needed a movement to have a voice and a face in order to be real to so many people who just don't know that Recovery from alcohol and other drugs is America's best kept secret.

Dan, 32, Minneapolis
10 years sobriety