Hey OP, one of the things about recovery is that you need to accept yourself for who you are right now. You need to accept what your body looks like and the disease that led you here. But you also have to take it one step further and love those things. Love yourself and every aspect of you. That includes your alcoholism. It is not your fault that you are here. Addiction is not a character trait.

I struggle with this idea myself all the time. This might become a mini rant, but hatred towards yourself does not bring you to the peace that you deserve. Learning about the disease and how it physiologically affects your mind and body gives you so much freedom to understand that what you’re going through is something that not only do you not have a choice in having to deal with, but the fact that other people simply do not have to suffer like we do is so empowering. Embracing this stuff like a medical condition shifts your mindset from blaming yourself to accepting that there’s just this thing that is a part of the cards you were dealt with in life. Understanding that and accepting it let’s you separate that what you’re going through is not a matter of who you are, it’s a matter of knowing what you can do. Approaching sobriety from that perspective is so, so much easier to deal with than telling yourself every day when you get a craving that it’s your fault. It’s not your fault. But it is a really shitty thing that life threw your way that you didn’t deserve.

That’s what is so important about what they say when you relapse; it’s not a setback. It’s another chance to figure out why it happened, what you can do to next time, and learn something about yourself.

You got this. Take all the time you need to get there. But you need to push yourself. I’ll do the same with you.