Thanks for your honesty, Wil. It sure is an inspiring story. My reasons and circumstances were slightly different than yours, but I quit drinking seven or eight years ago (I suppose it's a good sign that I don't remember when anymore: they say about smoking that as long as you remember when you quit, you're still a smoker. There's some truth in that).

For me, the hardest aspect of sobriety has actually been handling friends and colleagues, who I think feel that my sobriety is a veiled criticism of their social drinking. They keep saying things like, "but one drink won't hurt you?"

This has made me avoid many of the social settings I would have attended before. Still, like you, I now see things with new clarity, and that makes this worthwhile anyway.