30 minute vomit warning

Yesterday I did a bunch of one-on-one calls for the sober coaching thingy.

Holy, what a lot of fun. I’ve never had a day pass so quickly in my life : )

Here’s something I said in conversation with a Team 100 member, that has stuck with me today …

Question: I know how far along you are (13 months sober), so do you ever have any really strong craving days anymore?

Answer: Craving? No. I have moments where I say “this would be a time where I would drink” – which is different. It’s sort of like a mental habit. Like if you’re on vacation, you think “oh I’m at the beach, this would be the time to drink.” But it doesn’t mean that I’m going to – that I feel antsy or I have to distract myself or I have to go hide. I think the days of having to go to bed to escape myself are over, thank god.

But like this week – on Tuesday night – I absolutely had a moment where I thought “this is exactly when I would drink. This situation, this kind of frustration, this is where I would drink. Oh, and there’s alcohol in the house. This is exactly when I would drink.”

It doesn’t meant that I’m going to. It doesn’t mean that I was even afraid that I was going to. There was really no … I knew I wouldn’t follow through, but I definitely had the thought that “this would be the time when …”

That doesn’t really answer your question because there’s a difference between a craving – which is “oh my god if I don’t get booze right now I’m going to drop off the planet,” and then there’s a habitual thought pattern of “I feel antsy, I feel crappy, I feel frustrated, I feel disappointed, I feel hormonal, I feel grief, I feel excitement – this would be a normal time to drink.”

The thing is the longer you’re sober, you realize when it’s coming. You see it coming. It’s sort of like – I don’t know – it’s sort of like if you’re going to be sick or throw up, you have a half-an-hour’s notice. Most people know about half an hour before they throw up that they’re going to. And you see it coming. Very, very rarely do you just open your mouth and things fly out. And very rarely do you trip, fall, and find a drink in your hand. You slide towards it. And you start to know what are the things that are sliding, so that you pre-empt them way sooner. Like, you pre-empt it at minute 1 instead of getting to minute 30. You say to yourself, “oh look I’m not reading the blogs as much, I’m cancelling out on my meetings, I’m not calling … whatever I was doing before that was working, I’m thinking now I want to do less of it.” You retreat, certainly …