Day 10 (yes, really)
Having posted a lot of "Day 1 (again)" sort of threads I thought I'd post something a bit more positive for a change. I hope it might be of use to somebody out there who felt as hopeless as I did.
So today is my tenth day sober. This is now the longest I've ever gone without a drink since I started drinking problematically about 15 years ago.
My last relapse began a week last Tuesday and lasted for a couple of days. On that Tuesday, I had been out to do my voluntary work in the morning and was dreading it finishing because I knew what was going to happen.
Sitting in my flat, I can only describe it as being like having two people in one head. They were both me, but one was completely desperate not to drink. I literally poured every single ounce of my being into trying to fight it. I cannot express in text quite how much I mean that but it is the truth.
Lasted, I don't know, half an hour? Then I was off.
I think this is when, after several months in AA, I finally properly got step one. I'd said it before, heard it before, but I think this was the point that I finally fully internalized the fact that I was simply powerless against this and completely unable to win that fight.
So come Thursday morning when I woke up and didn't drink, I began to phone my sponsor every day, read the big book and start to sincerely ask for help from my higher power. I started to sincerely look for help outside myself and to ask for help in handing my will over entirely to what I call God.
I'm not projecting into the future. I know there are harder times ahead, but all I can do is describe how I feel now and how I have felt over the last 9 days and I can say with complete honesty that the desire to drink has been taken away from me.
It has to be this way. If the desire is there, if I am fighting, I will lose. Full stop, end of, simple as that.
If anybody reading this is feeling hopeless, reading all the great stories of success around here and feeling like they will never do it, I feel for you. I don't think anyone could have felt more hopeless than me.
But I was trying to do this on my own terms, with my own will power. I believe I have stopped that now and for the first time in my life, something else has come into my life and taken the desire away.
I'm not proud to be at 10 days. I'm humble and grateful.