I am on day 4, AF. Last night, I slept well. I awoke feeling good. It is nice not to have a hangover. I started reading the book titled in the the thread. Last night, while sober this paragraph was so poignant, so true to the essence of my drinking, I had to share.
"Most alcoholics I know experience that hunger long before they pick up the first drink, that yearning for something outside the self that will provide relief and solace and well-being. You hear echoes of it all the time in AA meetings, that sense that there's a well of emtiness inside and that the trick in sobriety is to find new ways to fill it, spiritual ways instead of physial ones. People talk about their fixations with "things"-- a new house they're looking to buy, or a job they're desperate for, or a relationship -- as though these things have genuinely transformative powers, powers to heal and save and change their lives. Searching, searching: the need cuts across all backgrounds, all socioeconomic lines, all ages and sexes and races." " In some ways alcoholism is the perfect late twentieth-century brand of searching, an extreme expression of the way so many of us are taucht to confront deep yearings. Fill it up, fill it up, fill it up. Fill up the emptyiness; fill up what feels like a pit of loneliness and terror and rage. please, just take it away, now. Our society has become marvelously adept at presenting easy-- or seemingly easy-- solutions to that impulse; all you have to so is watch enough TV and and the answers come, one by one: the right body weight will do the trick. The right house. A couple of beers."
It has been nice to have a few sober evenings to read these message boards and learn a little more about how this disease has affected others. This book was written by a highly functioning alcoholic, Caroline Knapp, :lwho hid her disease and lived in denial and shame as many of us have.
One day at a time.
"Most alcoholics I know experience that hunger long before they pick up the first drink, that yearning for something outside the self that will provide relief and solace and well-being. You hear echoes of it all the time in AA meetings, that sense that there's a well of emtiness inside and that the trick in sobriety is to find new ways to fill it, spiritual ways instead of physial ones. People talk about their fixations with "things"-- a new house they're looking to buy, or a job they're desperate for, or a relationship -- as though these things have genuinely transformative powers, powers to heal and save and change their lives. Searching, searching: the need cuts across all backgrounds, all socioeconomic lines, all ages and sexes and races." " In some ways alcoholism is the perfect late twentieth-century brand of searching, an extreme expression of the way so many of us are taucht to confront deep yearings. Fill it up, fill it up, fill it up. Fill up the emptyiness; fill up what feels like a pit of loneliness and terror and rage. please, just take it away, now. Our society has become marvelously adept at presenting easy-- or seemingly easy-- solutions to that impulse; all you have to so is watch enough TV and and the answers come, one by one: the right body weight will do the trick. The right house. A couple of beers."
It has been nice to have a few sober evenings to read these message boards and learn a little more about how this disease has affected others. This book was written by a highly functioning alcoholic, Caroline Knapp, :lwho hid her disease and lived in denial and shame as many of us have.
One day at a time.
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