ESSAY August 2025 - Sober, Single, and Dancing - Ryan - CASA

Learning how to surrender and open up to healthy activities affirmed that he belonged. My name is Ryan, and I am a child of my Higher Power. As a former SA sponsor once humorously suggested, “You qualify to be in the program, you are one of us!” I came to SA in 2017, but after a while, it became clear that I needed to leave the Program. I needed to find a genuine and authentic spirituality—a relationship with a merciful and loving Higher Power. Another reason I left is that I found the meetings I attended too serious! There was no joy, no humor, no levity. It didn’t seem to correspond to my understanding of healthy and life-giving emotional sobriety, so I left.