I hope that you have each had a Merry Christmas and are all looking forward to the New Year.
Thank you for being here to (eventually) support when support is needed.
I’ve now been sober for four years. It’s been an easy enough journey so far. The AA community were an understanding and helpful resource in the beginning but I sort of stopped going to the meetings, where I’d met many lovely people.
This Christmas, I’ve spent with my children, so no alcohol was on the table. I can’t say that I’ve missed the taste or rush of alcohol.
Today, on Boxing Day, the start of a five day down period, I have a longing to go out and drink for the duration. Maybe meet new ‘friends’ and ‘lovers’ and encourage all the drama that I now live happily without.
I’ll be spending the day with my family and friends, however, and will not be sneaking off anywhere. Still, it’s strange that this longing came upon me now after such a long time…
The mind, and alcoholism, work in dark and sinister ways.
Basically, I have felt much better in body and mind since stopping drinking. I hadn’t really felt any desire to start again. Today though, it snuck up on me.
I hope that made sense.
Merry Christmas again, and a Happy New Year to you all!
The power of recognizing and naming a thing is immense. “I have a longing to go out and drink for the duration.” That can arouse fear in you and others, but naming it releases the grip on you that thought may have had.
Keeping alert to our internal states, thoughts and feelings is an effective remedy to letting them fester and grow into cravings. Thank you for the reminder.
This is reminding me a lot of how I felt in my drinking days. Having that 5-7 day stretch after Christmas where I didn’t have to work always bred in me, the desire to “hit the fuck it button”. I thought it was a pressure valve releasing. The time to party after a job well done.
In sobriety, I’ve realized that down time scares me. It gives me time where 1. I have to figure out what to do (it’s not laid out for me) and 2. There is more room for the voices of fear, comparison, insecurity etc to make themselves known. Drinking was my way of wasting time under the guise of “tying one on”, AND drowning out those voices.
It was also a chance to get lost in one night’s crowd at a bar. The little “community” that would pop up of people drinking at a local pub. The one or two guys I’d start chatting with, the flirtation that would develop, the thought of inviting one over etc. all a little exciting, but…in the end…was never setting the stage for a meaningful relationship to occur. Because honestly: that version of myself was not the type of person who should/could have been in a meaningful relationship.
For me at least…pulling myself out of the vortex of drinking life is what I needed to see what was happening and how I was acting, and it was by doing this, that I was able to interrupt the impetus to “hit the fuck it button” and start being the active creator of my life again.
This post Christmas stretch (December 28th to be exact) was my deliciously terrible rock bottom. And I celebrate it every year!
Cheers to us not having to exist like that anymore
“Thoughts” creep up on me once in a while. Out of nowhere sometimes. So far, they have been nothing but a healthy reminder of what I don’t want my life to be and that my “struggle” with alcohol will never end. I have been able to play to movie forward and see it end the same way it always did.
That thought you have is what keeps me going to meetings. So many people have acted on that thought and it never ends well. I believe I could have a drink once in a while and control it, evidence proves otherwise.
The good news now though is that we don’t have to act on those thoughts as that’s a power we never had before. Congrats on your sobriety.
