I've been thinking a lot lately about freedom, how it plays out in my mind and how the concept influences my drinking.
I realized that those nights that I choose to drink - they are few now compared to previously, when I drank "8 days a week" - there is a voice in my head that says, "You're free to do what you want to. You wanna drink? Go for it, you're FREE!"
I'm a single mom, and this voice rears up when my daughter is with her dad. And it also reminds me that there is no partner, no nobody, who can determine or judge what I do with my time alone. To drink a bottle of wine is my way of asserting my freedom to do whatever the hell I want.
Or is it???
What kind of freedom makes me pull into the jiffy mart for a bottle of wine when I've committed, for the thousandth time, that I would not drink any more? What kind of freedom is this when after the first glass I cannot stop there, and I abandon all plans of getting some housework done, or writing, or going for a walk?
This is NO FREEDOM. This is SLAVERY.
Choosing to have that first drink is the metaphorical equivalent of holding my wrists and ankles out for my master (drink) to control me, to determine my immediate and long term fate.
This is NO FREEDOM.
I am free to choose that first drink or not. After that, I'm a slave to it.
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