I'm at 52 days, and thoughts about drinking are now slipping back in. (I apologize in advance for the long post...)
I must be on my guard against relapse!
When I was drinking, one of my favorite things to do was to go to a local sushi bar and relax with my kindle or a girlie magazine and drink three glasses of wine. Every part of doing that signaled relaxation and self care, and I would go home refreshed - whatever drama from the day replaced by the memory of good clean food, good wine, and light reading. Of course - this habit warped into a daily drinking fest where I would start off seeking that "relaxation" and "self care" feeling but would just wind up drunk trying to keep it. Somewhere in there my alcoholic switched flicked in the on position.
Well -Yesterday my 71 year old mom fell down the back steps and broke her arm. I took her to the emergency room and stayed with her the entire time - approximately 4 hours. My mother is....well...a "character" to say the least and being with her feels like work for me. When I am with her, I am constantly monitoring what I am saying in response to her moods, physical condition, balh blah blah, so it is a little draining. Add to this the ridiculous pain she was in, her lashing out, and it was a lot of me managing...
In the course of the hospital stay - I clearly got hungry, was thristy, felt drained, and all of those things. So I know this.
But SOOOO strong in my brain as I was helping my mother back into the house was this image of sitting at my cozy sushi bar, ordering a glass of wine, reading my new book, and decompressing after the wacko afternoon. I clicked into a mode that had me thinking I was going to do it, evening going through what I know the weekend specials are at the place I go, before I remembered :
HEY, you don't drink anymore!
I'm afraid of relapsing.
I feel like I've done a lot of hard work to get to 52 days, and a part of me is saying "been there - done that, SO WHAT - you stopped. SO WHAT."
Ugh.