Hello again everyone. I hope you are all well! I am keeping well in my sobriety and have kept my vow since I made it. It is still early days, but my confidence against drink is growing with each day. One thing I am warned against alot, is not to get complacent in the future. I have heard many stories wherein people have been sober for months and relapsed because one down day they believed it was okay, as they haven't picked up a drink in a long while.
My guard against this occurance, is born with simply knowing the danger itself. It is improved by not thinking of my recovery as abstinence against alcohol - abstinence implies that I am denying myself a pleasure. I see it as opposition against alcohol.
The reason I think this, is because alcohol has power over me that I cannot control. I have no power and it is free to cause me ruin. It is free to hurt me. Temptation is a tool of the alcohol - its leverage point. The temptation that things would be easier, as if to release me from pain.
The simple point to remember is this: Alcohol does make things easier. It makes it easier for myself and others to get hurt. It makes it easier to give up on my dreams. It mkes it easier to succumb to depression, anxiety and low self-esteem. It makes it easier to be a dispicable person.
What it does not make easier, is my life.
When I drank, any good times I THOUGHT I had, were an illusion. I acted terribly, and swept the truth under the rug of denial as if it were dirt. What was really happening, was that I was losing my life. Nights that I have no memory of, losing control of myself and being filled with regret. The rest of my life, the time I wasn't drunk, was spent apologising, regretting, and wanting to drown the guilt. I had no choice but to stop, because I would have ended up a lot worse than guilty. I am willing to accept what I've become. You're only truly clean once you lift that rug and accept that the 'dirt' can be moved, hidden, denied, but never changed.
For these reasons, I don't see alcohol as a denied "pleasure". It almost ruined my life, and many times nearly killed me. It would have succeeded if I had kept going. I say no. Not today. Not in this lifetime. Alcohol, my friends, was never a "pleasure". It was, and always will be, the enemy. A nuisance.
This realisation lead me to this fact: I was born an alcoholic. I will live an alcoholic and I will die an alcoholic - because an alcoholic is not a person who drinks too much, it is a person that is allergic to alcohol. We have no choice but to cut it out of our lives, because the alternative is death.
The fact to remember though, is that without poison clogging our veins, we begin to accept ourselves as we are, for our faults and our talents. I am beginning to like myself again, to accept myself. I don't worry about the future, because now, it seems bright.
One day at a time. My love to you all,
Jack