Easter Reflection
I'm in the house on my own today, I get Good Friday off but my wife doesn't and my kids are at nursery, then tomorrow they're off to her parents for a few nights but I'm staying home.
This means I've the whole weekend to myself, mondays a holiday too for me.
These set of circumstances are almost exactly the same as last year, I'd the whole weekend to myself then too.
That is as far as the similarities for the weekend go though, last year I bought a litre of vodka on the friday along with some beers just as soon an the family left. This was to see me through the weekend.
The drinking wasn't a new thing ( those of you that know me will know by now that I was a half bottle of vodka every day man ) but the stash to get me through the weekend going so quickly was different. With no responsabilities the litre of voddie was gone by the saturday and replaced, this continued through the weekend and by the monday night with probably 4 litres of vodka drunk in 4 days it was apparant to myself that I wasn't going to work the next day as planned.
I actually did get in on the tuesday morning ( quite how I drove the car there I'm not sure but I did ), I claimed illness though and went home again, think I missed work the wednesday and thursday that week and just couldn't get myself feeling well again.
I'd got myself back onto just the half bottle of vodka a day that I knew I could cope with and thought things would settle down.
It was different though, I really needed that half bottle to perform anything, I felt worse than the normal hangover feeling I was used to coping with. I couldn't stop being sick, couldn't eat without drinking vodka first.
Other days were missed at work, until the weeks passed and finally on the 9th May I woke up, something clicked, I'd come home from work the day before early, sick again, I'd no intention of going in that day.
I'd 2 choices, either go buy a half bottle of vodka or do something else. My wife and work were worried about me. She reckoned I should go see a doctor, I did, now for newcomers out there I'd not reccomend this but I didn't tell the doctor the truth, I lied that I was stressed about work and needed some Diazepam to calm myself down. I never mentioned the drinking.
The doctor gave me 30 Diazepam tablets and I went home, I knew I was on my last chance, I either had to stop drinking for ever or face the fact I had to come clean to my wife and my boss at work.
The tablets got me through day 1, I found here on day 2 and here I still am, going strong, counting down to one year sober.
I still have half a bottle a diazepam tablets upstairs, I only needed them to get me through the first few days.
I've never admitted to my wife or work that I have a drinking problem.
Course I'm not nieve enough to think that they haven't guessed parts but as nothing is broken, I'm not gonna change it. Most folks I know now know I no longer drink, doesn't seem to be a big issue for them and although it was for me early doors I'm now pretty cool about being around alcohol or in places serving it and just accepting its not for the likes of me.
I'm happier, I can enjoy the kids, spend days as a family with no thoughts about wanting the day to end so I can get back tore into the drink.
So sorry about the long self indulgent post folks, just wanted to get this down, just in case the little voice starts speaking to me.
Ain't going back to that place, too much hard works already gone in and way too much too lose.