One week clean. Might actually be day 9, but who’s counting!
Definitely had an urge yesterday afternoon but powered through.
One thing I know about myself is I love being alone. Always have. It’s the “I” in my INTP (Meyers Briggs). I recharge when I’m by myself. Unfortunately that’s when I’m most susceptible to the demon. It usually wins, but yesterday it didn’t. In part because there’s nothing left to drink. But also because I am feeling grounded. I am committed to losing weight and maintaining sobriety.
I recently moved into a new house. An 18 month long build. A dream house of sorts, except for the fact that it’s located in a town neither my wife nor I really care for. We prefer the Pacific NorthWest where she is from. Her job brought us out East 6 years ago, where I am from. I grew up not far from where we built the house. The town is convenient, schools are good, people are decent, crime is low. Ideal in many ways. Look at any Norman Rockwell painting and that’s pretty much where I live. It’s a white, white town. Conservatively liberal. I took a knee with a group of residents on the lawn in front of Town Hall when George Floyd died. Firemen watched from across the street while they washed their shiny red fire trucks, and passers by stared at us, a white, white crowd assembled on the green. Conservatively liberal. Norman Rockwell. I digress.
Where was I… oh yeah. Yesterday.
Yesterday my wife, who is usually working during the crucial hours of camp pickup and drop off, was free in the afternoon to pick up our oldest daughter from adventure camp. It turned out my other daughter was babysitting for a neighbor so she wasn’t home either. There it was… alone time. An unexpected 30 minute window of me time. 30 mins at home by myself, which as it turned out became almost 2 hours due to a nasty accident and an unplanned stop at the local pizza place to pick up dinner.
Old me “as soon as she leaves to pickup daughter go to liquor store, charge a 6-pack, pay cash for the vodka, ready set…GO!” Old me would have rushed to the liquor store, picked up a 6-pack for the fridge, and a bottle of Kettle One, or a fancy Russian potato vodka for the now empty hiding spot - potato vodka because it’s the cleanest vodka which seems to prevent hang overs no matter how soon you reach the bottom of the bottle. The trip would have taken about 15 mins, giving me plenty of time to stash the vodka in one of 3 hiding spots, load the beer into the beverage fridge, pour a beer, and shoot enough vodka for a good pre-beer buzz. The beer is for optics. If I’m seen consuming beer it justifies my altered behavior later that evening. The vodka is the real buzz.
New me, drinking is just not on the table. It doesn’t exist. I’ve side-stepped into a dimension where I’m not controlled by alcohol. Some spiritual luminary from my soul searching days years ago explained how all potentialities exist simultaneously. What ever you are focused on in any given moment places you on a path in alignment (in resonance) with that thing. It’s like you’re a locomotive with an infinite number of tracks in front of you. Focus on drinking and that’s the track you’re on. Focus on money and that’s the track you’re on. Focus on sobriety, health, wellness… The thinking is, the more you stay focused on the track the longer you stay there, and the easier it becomes. The change I want, in this case sobriety, actually happens in an instant. I’m left with a swirl of dysfunctional thinking, memories, cravings. All artifacts from occupying space on the alcoholic train. The change has happened in an instant. The swirl of crazy looping around in my mind starts to get ignored, shrinks, and eventually gets squashed by the new reality. This is the idea anyway.
It isn’t where you come from, it’s where you’re going that counts. — Ella Fitzgerald