danger zone

What can you do when you feel like you’re getting near your danger zone …

• you’re almost 30 days sober and you’ve NEVER managed to get past 30 days, and so you’re getting close to when you usually ‘fail’
• you’re about to attend a wacky family event with super crazy dynamics, pressure, alcohol, and general nuttiness
• you’ve been sober for a while but you can feel wolfie‘s voice getting louder; it’s not screaming yet, but you can see it coming – on the horizon
• you have a flu, an accident, a setback at work, an argument with your husband (wife)

I mentioned to Heidi today that thinking about shit like this IN ADVANCE is like having a tornado disaster plan.  What will you do (and maybe even in what order)…

so you can see your disaster zone, it’s looming.  it’s the place where something ‘bad’ might happen.  how can you stay in your sober car and manage to drive around the disaster zone?

ok, here’s a big idea.  you’ll have to do something different from what you did last time. If last time you crashed straight into the pit, then maybe it meant that you didn’t have enough tools, enough support, or didn’t have a good enough plan (or didn’t implement the plan). For example, before i started this blog, i would quit drinking for a week at a time, but i had no real commitment to it. Just being in the grocery store was ‘danger zone’ enough for me to buy wine and drink it. So to be successful in the future in a grocery store, i needed a different kind of support… can’t really avoid grocery stores my whole life 🙂

So now, if you see something coming up that looks like a danger zone where you have previously ‘given in and drank’, you try something new to navigate the situation.  You can call your sponsor, go to a meeting, you can take some time to write and to read sober blogs.  You can email your sober penpal more than once that day. you can plan to have easy take-out meals. you can go to bed early.  you can declutter a few drawers (decluttering is weirdly calming). you can have a big bubble bath. and you can wait.

Heidi also added a hilarious twist to her tornado disaster plan:  “[If I feel like drinking], I will write about it.  I might put it in my blog or in an email to one of my sober friends, asking for advice.  After all, if it’s a good idea, someone will agree with me.”

imagine if we all had to get someone to agree with us that drinking was a good idea before we relapsed… that would certainly slow us down some!

Team 100 update: 84 members, welcome to Leah (4).  Virtual cake celebrations for Ellen (30), Victoria (55), Lane (40), Christina (40), Kirst (21), Allison (20), and J (who is 6 months today). I’m on day 320.

I am taking a 4-day mini vacation beginning tomorrow (staying at home this time) but will spend most of each day with technology turned off. So I will be a bit quieter than usual! You can enjoy the break from the noise of me!