Got two things:
Little Thing !: I thought my AV was my whole me. I thought addiction was my identity. But completely to my surprise, something else really weird is starting to emerge. It's a personality, and it's an addict, but it's got other stuff going on too, stuff the active addict/alcoholic didn't leave any room for. So far, in the last 24 hours, it's been someone who riffs on the cultural distinction between a burnout and a stoner, and someone who can talk intelligently about the relative merits of teaching or not teaching matrix algebra to graduate students, and someone who crowd-sources her every decision to an online recovery forum LOL. Someone who invites a bipolar alcoholic survivor of incest experiencing a depressive episode to sleep on her couch, because even though she doesn't exactly care, she'd like to help. Oh, and someone who's becoming a little bit self-aware. This may all be some new kind of insanity. It may be a little bit of mania. But for a change, I'm taking my AV for a ride instead of the other way around.
Little Thing 2: My FS pointed out that for longterm addicts/alcoholics, the substance became our only motivator for any behavior. So when you decide to have caffeine, you suddenly feel better-- the motivation is so highly associated with the gratification that it triggers the relief even before the caffeine hits you. When I absolutely knew I was going to relapse, I felt like a rocket blasting off. It was like I'd been wandering around for a full year with no purpose or reason to live, and all of a sudden, I was purposeful. I knew what I was doing and why! I was going to get booze, so I could drink! Hooray! Unlearning that gratification system is hard, but ask any cognitive-behavioral scientist. It can be done.
Hugs, Cow. Stay off the caffeine. And stay off the booze! Or I'll have to come to the west coast and pimpslap your AV.
Oh, and Dee =
