Good to see you respond.
If you are not an addict or alcoholic (like I said before, I don't know you so I won't make any judgements) then what will probably happen with your life is this scenario: As the years go by and you adjust to "normal" society again you'll shed all of the things that AARC taught you. You won't feel like an outsider looking in all the time. You won't feel passionate about sobriety OR alcoholism, because neither of those things apply to you. If your family understands that AARC is not benefiting you and you have moved on in your life from it, then they will over time also forget about AARC's ways, especially after they see you consecuitively thriving without it. There will inevitably be a time period however where they worry that you are not spending enough time with AARC people or at meetings etc. That's when you need to show them the non AARC people who are strength in your life, and the positive ways that you are spending your time.
In the meantime you are very much in recovery, because you're deffinately recovering from a traumatic event. Fill your apartment with the things and people who make you happy. Do you feel overwhelmed easily? If you're still dealing with depression then you probably do. Most of us do after AARC. AARC people handle this by constantly "spilling". Others can go off the deepend without help. If you need to take baby steps, take baby steps. Cut out anything that is unecessary stress.
I'd just like to say something that I was thinking about recently. When I was in AARC I spent a lot of time during raps, or before falling asleep at night, thinking about all of the wonderful things I would be doing if I weren't there. A lot of those fantasies were simply waking up in my own apartment and enjoying coffee while looking out the window, or sleeping in, or anything that involved having time to NOT be rushed and just enjoy the moment. The other night I was front row at a concert for a band who's CD was not AARC approved and taken away from me until graduation (it diddn't have drug refferences, they'd just never heard of the band. I cried to a peer about it at the .... aww!). I thought at the time about how great it was that lately I've been able to enjoy all of the things I dreamed about back then. For a while I lost all of those little things that I loved to do. So my question to you and every other AARC survivor, are you taking advantage of your freedom? Do you remember how wonderful it is to have it, like the way you felt the day after you graduated when you slept in and called all of your friends?
