All of my past Mondays
Today was my 14th sober Monday in a row. And the 14th Monday in a row that I have shown up for work reliably.
That may sound like nothing to a normal person but, as I was thinking it through today, I realized that I maybe, maybe, had 14 Mondays at work last year. And likely none of them without a wicked hangover or still pretty drunk.
Mondays were always the worst, especially late in my drinking days. For years, I used to party Friday and Saturday nights and, during football season at least, drink for most of the day on Sunday at friend’s houses or the bar.
But the last two or three years of my active alcoholism were characterized by me counting the hours until 6:30PM on Friday when I could escape home to my apartment, crack open what would be the first of many bottles of wine, and drink until I passed out. Sure, maybe a happy hour kicked it off here and there but, since I was most comfortable drinking alone in the end so I could ensure both the amount and frequency, I normally just headed straight home. And right there and then commenced the weekend bender. Friday would bleed into drinking all day Saturday and Sunday, ignoring the phone, doing stupid stuff on the computer I would inevitably regret on Monday, and then trying, trying, to get myself into some semblance of order to go to work on Monday.
Dehydrated, shaky, stomach in knots from not eating for two days, blinding headache, and blistering anxiety attacks---needless to say I normally did not make it in on Monday. Sometimes not Tuesday either because I would inevitably drink Monday to try to alleviate the symptoms of my weekend binge.
To this day I still marvel at the fact that I wasn't fired. That my direct supervisor and boss are also alcoholics “helped,” but, still, I was skating on very thin ice there at the end.
Today I went in an hour late because I had a dentist appointment I forgot to mark on the shared office calendar. When I arrived, my boss (still currently drinking) came up to me and said, “Are you OK? Rough weekend, huh?”
It took me a minute and then I realized: She thought I had a hangover! She thought I was late because I had been drinking!
I was shocked and almost rushed to defend myself and then realized how stupid that move would have been as well. So I just said, “No, dentist, actually.”
Wow. What a difference 14 weeks of sober Mondays makes. But just because I had temporarily “forgotten” I was a drunk, didn't mean they had. Good reminder that although it’s good to celebrate small successes, years and years of drinking behavior follows behind you.