Drinking

After yesterday’s wobble in the afternoon and overcoming it again, I wanted to reflect on why it’s is important to me that I don’t slip up, a list to read over when the wolf is at the door:

• Drinking makes me lonely
• Drinking makes me gain weight
• Drinking makes me eat crap
• Drinking disrupts my sleep
• Drinking gives me pleasure for about 30-45 mins and then I get sucked into the void
• Drinking makes me have less fun on a night out
• Drinking makes me sneak extra drinks in because my friends or colleagues aren’t drinking enough
• Drinking takes up huge amounts of my headspace. I’ve been actively trying to quit for about a year, and have never succeeded. All that wasted time for giving into an early evening craving isn’t worth it.
• Drinking affects my health- during my last round of drinking I actually felt my liver ache. God knows what its done to my insides.
• Drinking makes me more selfish and introverted- I want time alone to drink/recover from hangovers so I shut myself away and the loneliness cycle starts again
• Drinking affects my running
• Drinking squashes my ambition- the past year has been dulled by drinking and as a natural achiever, I’ve let the driven side of my personality slide.
• Drinking makes me secretive.
• Drinking makes me feel like I’m leading two lives.
• Drinking tricks me into thinking I don’t have a problem, when I clearly do, otherwise the above list wouldn’t exist.

That’s a pretty significant list eh?

These first few weeks need to be focusing on the one day at a time approach. I’m finding that forgetting the bigger picture is helping, as I still find it difficult to imagine long term what it will be like to be sober. So for now, all my energy is going into beating wolfie in that 4-8pm witching hour window and enjoying my glorious mornings where I wake up happy I’ve had another night sober.