i am in the wine store, buying wine for a client event. i have a cold. i feel like crap. i decide that with all the fancy wine i’m buying, some of it should be for me.
i come home and i blog about it. i ramble a bit, my thoughts agitated, and I wonder out loud if it’s OK to plan to relapse. I know that if i say ‘fuck it’ and have a drink, that’s a relapse (by my own definition). but if i PLAN to end my sober time — let’s say in a week’s time — would that still a relapse?
what happened, instead, is that in the action of reaching out, of blogging, my thoughts changed. I heard ideas from my fellow sober friends. I listened to people with more sober time than I had.
And because i was deciding to relapse ‘later’ (not that day), it gave me time to change my mind. Which i did. i changed my mind and i remained sober.
That’s the last time I really felt like drinking. It was in February this year (so i was about 7 months sober). I was bored with being sober. I kept waiting for something else magical to happen. Other people’s sobriety looked better, more successful, happier than mine.
but i knew not to chuck it all in because of one bad day. One bad feeling is not enough to end my sobriety. A feeling isn’t an action. A thought isn’t a command.
Here’s what i wrote in February:
… when i get to this very adamant place where I feel that I want to drink right now, I go ahead and decide to WAIT for a week and then reassess. If i still want to do a three-bottle-red-wine-taste-test in a week’s time, I can do it then. Not tomorrow. Not without true thought and consideration. I am not ‘falling off the wagon’ because of an impulse decision. Or when i have a cold. I’m just not flaking out now. Later maybe. not now.
Next week. i’ll revisit it again next week. There will be plenty of future opportunities when i can drink again, if i so decide, it doesn’t have to be valentine’s day, it doesn’t have to be tomorrow.
NOT when i have a cold. NOT when i just want to pitch it all in and say ‘fuck it’. NOT NOW.
Bracelets:
There are 14 Stay Here bracelets on the way. And 4 Fuck You Wolfie bracelets left in the October batch as of today.
Team 100 (180):
275 members, welcome to Cat Girl (21), ErinElisabeth (40), Sandra (3), Stopwineing (7), Gwyn (2). Happy day 101 to PJ and Emm Cee 🙂 Happy day 201 to Lynda, DDG. Lilly is on 155. KT is 160. Paula is 130. Lawyer Anne is 180 🙂
Had a very merry drinking dream last night and woke grateful to still be sober but then over coffee I heard my mind say well if you just had a quick one drink you wouldn’t really have to change your sobriety date ….
The wolf is at the door , hunker down , extra podcasts today !!!
thank you for this.. I’ve been struggling lately. I need to get on here more often.
Hi Belle
I’ve been making the rounds on blogs, sobriety sights, books for the last 6 weeks of my new sobriety….I always come back to you. Your writing and struggles and triumphs are so inspiring and so real. Thank you for being there and shining your light!!
I count on you….don’t drink! What would I do without you?!
XO Mimi
If only I could have a glass of wine with dinner like others, but i cannot. If I could have a beer at the game with the boys and then quit, but I cannot. Would that I continue to remember how sobriety feels and looks and works so well that I thank my inner self for being in my favor.
Thank you, Belle for reminding us that we are better for being sober and that one day is allwe need worry about at a time.
I told my sister again that I don’t drink anymore….she was disappointed. I told her that I could not do moderation. A friend of hers pointed out her drinking behavior and her bad memory. so she is self limiting her drinking now. which is a good thing.
bizi
Thanks for the timely post Belle…. like DDG, I can’t believe it has been 201 days. Somehow that made me feel so much better than 200. Weird but true. It sets me up to roll on for another 99 days and then it’s 300. But I get what you mean about sometimes thinking that sober is boring. But truly, the alternative is boring.
I met up with a friend tonight for a brief time and she was ranting on about things not going so well in her life and then just towards the end of the conversation she made a comment about not being able to drink. This seemed odd to me in relationship to the other part of the conversation but now as I am thinking about it, I believe it was an intuitive knowing on her part that things are the way they are because of her drinking or at least they feel worse because of it. I believe an opening was presented to me to talk about my own journey and reach out to her. Damn this pissy disease, but it’s not going away so we need to deal with it.
Keep well sober friends. xxxx
I was just thinking this morning ” everyone else [was] doing better than me” at this point while looking through your and two other blogs–perfect timing–again.
Thank you! Yes, 201. Hard to believe. I, too, go over and over still, sometimes, planning to “relapse,” or simply decide to stop being sober. But…I want it to be a choice, not a reaction made out of desperation. And really, I come here and my frustration subsides and I CAN hold out another day. It’s like, no matter how much I don’t get done (my trigger), eh, there are worse things. And the better thing is to simply sit and wait. I can do that. That’s no t hard. Just wait. It sucks, but it’s not hard, and I can do it. AND, big important thing here, the world is not going to end if I just sit and wait *with my sober friends” who don’t see my problem as being worth drinking over–maybe it’s really not? Which is why when I come here, and sit, and wait, and comment and read posts, the cravings/obsessing just sort of goes away…