THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH for being there.
As far as seeing a doctor, that's not possible right now. I'm currently unemployed and between my former employer and the COBRA people, they delayed getting the ball rolling with COBRA until about 1 week ago. Now they tell me I can pay $600+ per month for the privilege of having insurance back at some unknown time in the future. Bottom line, I have no medical insurance right now and therefore no doctor.
Meanwhile, I did land a job interview this Friday for what would be a good job, so I decided to stay dry at least until Friday. Yesterday was day 1. Today is day 2, and I feel restless, bored, tired beyond imagining, sad to the point of tears, and a million other things, but I am pretty sure I can make it through today until early evening and then take a sleeping pill and go to bed before I have any second thoughts otherwise (I've been an evenings-only drinker).
I know Friday is going to be an extreme challenge, because
1) I will have gone through being dry for the minimum amount of time I promised myself I would
2) I will have come out of an interview (the all-afternoon type) and will have a lot of stored up stress from that
3) it will be Friday, and in the past just being Friday has unfortunately been enough of a temptation to start again
It would be nice to think that, Friday evening I'm going to go to my first AA meeting, but I know that's easier said than done. I think ultimately whether I start going to meetings is going to be a very literal matter of life or death for me, because I have no safety net whatsoever. I have no family. I live alone. The very few real friends I have all live a distance away. My father and 2 brothers live on the opposite side of the country (and it's never been a very supportive family), and the woman I have become progressively closer to for the last 6 years has just decided to get completely immersed in her parents' cultish religion which does not allow close relationships with those outside their belief system. So ... I need people in my life desperately, and I don't see how else that's going to happen except maybe by ending this habit which seems to do nothing so much as it puts up more and bigger walls between myself and the rest of life.
Writing what I just wrote just took everything out of me. You all have been very kind to welcome me. I can't thank you enough.