Today gave me a few obvious "reasons" to drink. A couple arguments with my wife, run of the mill and of the sort all couples have (and not at all AL-related), which in the heat of the moment send along an unsubtle suggestion to my brain: "You can escape from this crap right now AND show her she can't control you, all in one fell swoop!" Yes, that's it: be a man! Don't talk! Drink yourself into oblivion!
Making decisions while angry, my old nemesis. I'm amazed at all the times in the past that I fed this anger, carefully and deliberately, until a smoldering wastebasket became a roaring forest fire, obliterating deliberate thinking and getting me to reach for Old Reliable, that first drink, that surefire remedy for making me feel better for about a half an hour. And then turning my life into terrifying black chaos, many of the specific details of which I will never know, as I don't remember them.
It takes so long to build a painstakingly handcrafted house, or life. It takes so little time for fire, or anger-driven drinking, to burn it to ashes.
So the strategy employed? Don't do anything. Sit down, breathe. Don't leave the house, don't put on loud and angry music, don't feed the destruction. Sit. Breathe. Be calm. And within a couple minutes, it's completely gone. To think, for want of three minutes of quiet reflection, I've repeatedly torched my relationships and my life.
There is already progress being made; I can feel it and remember it from my sober year. "Have a drink" is moving from the part of my brain where that is an allowable possibility, a considered course of action, to the part of my brain where the stuff that is never entertained (infidelity, hard drugs) have always lived. It doesn't happen overnight for me, but it does happen faster than one might expect when I'm living an AF life.
Things change so markedly when you're sober, but it does take time. It can be so difficult to remember that in the early days and weeks. There are days when it seems like there is no payoff to sobriety.
Today, I'm remembering the payoff is huge, nearly infinite, but that you only get to realize it if you stay sober. And the longer, the bigger the rewards. My life was once entirely transformed, for the better, in the span of an AF year. I know that can happen again.
Making decisions while angry, my old nemesis. I'm amazed at all the times in the past that I fed this anger, carefully and deliberately, until a smoldering wastebasket became a roaring forest fire, obliterating deliberate thinking and getting me to reach for Old Reliable, that first drink, that surefire remedy for making me feel better for about a half an hour. And then turning my life into terrifying black chaos, many of the specific details of which I will never know, as I don't remember them.
It takes so long to build a painstakingly handcrafted house, or life. It takes so little time for fire, or anger-driven drinking, to burn it to ashes.
So the strategy employed? Don't do anything. Sit down, breathe. Don't leave the house, don't put on loud and angry music, don't feed the destruction. Sit. Breathe. Be calm. And within a couple minutes, it's completely gone. To think, for want of three minutes of quiet reflection, I've repeatedly torched my relationships and my life.
There is already progress being made; I can feel it and remember it from my sober year. "Have a drink" is moving from the part of my brain where that is an allowable possibility, a considered course of action, to the part of my brain where the stuff that is never entertained (infidelity, hard drugs) have always lived. It doesn't happen overnight for me, but it does happen faster than one might expect when I'm living an AF life.
Things change so markedly when you're sober, but it does take time. It can be so difficult to remember that in the early days and weeks. There are days when it seems like there is no payoff to sobriety.
Today, I'm remembering the payoff is huge, nearly infinite, but that you only get to realize it if you stay sober. And the longer, the bigger the rewards. My life was once entirely transformed, for the better, in the span of an AF year. I know that can happen again.
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