Alcohol: Cunning, baffling, powerful

I have been having a less than sober week. No, I haven't been drinking, but I have been thinking about it. Planning it, making excuses for it, trying to convince myself I'm cured. It's been a busy week in my mind. I even considered secretly doing it and seeing if I can hide it from my husband to avoid encouraging him to start up again. Wow.

I remember when I was still drinking and other times when I would try to stop, that it was around this time (60 odd days) that I started thinking about it. I start to loose focus and question everything about my life, the program and people around me. Somehow it starts getting too tough.

I would stop going to meetings and start by limiting my drinking - you know only one bottle of wine - and I would have the one. Savouring it, relishing it, because I did not know when I would be able to make another excuse or dream up another event or occasion for me to drink another bottle. Then the time between events would become shorter. I would have my well thought out permissions and excuses ready. Then all time would disappear. I start falling. Deeper and deeper into the nothingness of carelessness. Because really that's the only way I can continue drinking - if I don't care.

At first it seems easier. My husband and I get along, my problems are distant and I feel happy and reacquainted with my old best friend. Eventually, it always starts going pear shaped. First, I start feeling cranky, tired...hungover. I start loosing the will to get up. Depression. Guilt. Then the emotional tug of war. I want to stop, but it will upset everything and everyone who likes me drunk - including me. Maybe I can just try to drink less again? That never works. Maybe I should just stop and not say anything? The temptation of alcohol being served up is just always too much.

And then it happens. I find the strength to claw my way to freedom and into an AA meeting.

I have been around this block more times than I care to count.

I don't want to go around the block anymore. I want to go where I please. Free from the circus I called "life".
I know I can. I know I want to. I know I should. And just for today, I will. Not because I have to, not because I can and not because I want to, but simply because I am worth it.

P.S. I thank God for Koos (sponsor) every day.

2 comments:

  • Koos | March 28, 2011 at 11:01 PM

    Isolation
    If I feel isolated in AA, it is not something for which others are responsible. It is something I've created by feeling I'm "different" in some way. Today I practice just being another alcoholic in the worldwide Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. - Daily Reflections, p. 58 Thought to Ponder . . .
    I am unique, just like everyone else.

  • Anonymous | April 28, 2011 at 12:53 PM

    One fire drives out another.