Matt

Matt

Curious about how others handle their sobriety journey? Matt’s share on ACA Tuesday Zoombox gives a raw, thoughtful look at life shaped by generations of untreated trauma, addiction, and dysfunction.

He talks about tracing his family history and seeing that “almost everyone that I could identify had grave psychological problems,” which left him feeling he “really had no shot” but also helped explain why he grew up “bruised and wounded and fragile.” That honesty sets the tone for the whole meeting: clear-eyed, sometimes darkly funny, and deeply relatable for Adult Children of Alcoholics.

Matt describes getting sober from alcohol at 20 through AA and staying sober for 36 years, then drifting away from meetings when life got busier.

As he puts it, “if you’re coasting, you’re probably going downhill.” He shares how stepping back from recovery communities led to spiritual decay, and how returning to ACA, Al-Anon, AA, and SLAA in recent years has brought a new sense of “personal wholeness” he never found in identities like being the smartest person in the room, a partner, or a father.

You’ll hear him contrast AA’s focus on “selfishness and dishonesty and self-seeking and fear” with ACA’s Laundry List traits, which he feels match his inner experience more closely. He talks candidly about codependency, addiction to “love, affirmation, validation, and attention,” and the shift from living in reaction to his family system to making choices based on his own values.

At the heart of his message is surrender: admitting he doesn’t “have the ability to make any meaningful or constructive change” alone, and leaning into a higher power instead of the fantasy of control. For anyone who feels stuck in old patterns despite years of sobriety, Matt’s story might prompt a gentle question: what could change if you simply kept coming back?