Because Real Life...

When I quit smoking in '06, I also quit drinking to eliminate a trigger. As my smoking cravings vanished, I added a glass or two of wine until eventually it was a normal habit again. I got divorced, struggled, and persevered. I drank. I'd quit for a week, a few days just to prove I was in charge. I never drank before or during work. It never caused me to miss work. It DID help me do some really STUPID things in general, though. 😳

This past October, I took an online course about creating good habits and decided, as a whim, to create a habit of not drinking. 21 days. It was a novelty idea. That was my PR spin. I started to drop a little weight but I was so tired. And I craved sugar. I was overwhelmed by remorse for past relationships. But, I pressed on because the not drinking part was a piece of cake.

Holidays came and went. I was still kicking ass on the new habit, albeit destroying fields of sugar cane. And then days 90- 97 hit. Cravings came out of nowhere....and intensified. I thought 'I can just have one glass of wine' knowing full well I couldn't. I googled and found out that what I'd been experiencing - the tiredness, the cravings - were 'normal' for people who had a 'problem'. Because I was still having them at this point, more than three months in, I concluded that I was worthless and no longer in control and a failure. There's that brain of mine.

So, on day 94, instead of reaching out for any support, I gave up. I bought 2 4-packs of mini bottles, one red and one white, drank half of them ... and woke up the next day with a vicious headache. A case of hitting the bottom to be able to go up. And I reversed my decision to give up.

Day 94, was last Friday.

Today is 102. And now, today is what I think about. I've started another online course about clearing my life. And I'm learning.

It's like days 1-89 were grade school and all of a sudden, it was time for high school on day 90.  I didn't adjust and I faltered. I'm learning how to adjust.

Live your life and live it well. I'm certainly not any authority on being sober, but I'm working on it. I'm slowing my life down to an hour by hour basis. I've looked back a tad and realized that in this three month stint, I've done a lot of things that I wouldn't have had the patience for before. And I don't yell at myself for last weekend's weakness anymore.

I've moved on.