Chris - Great work recognizing your body's signals. Learning how to take better care of myself has been an ongoing process. When I drank, I would wake up, exercise, drink a green smoothie, and drink some detox tea every day before work to facilitate the removal of alcohol from my system. I hurt my foot, and about a week after I stopped drinking, the pain of the injury caught up with me. I realized that I had been as obsessive about the morning regimen as I had been about drinking. Rigid behavior was a way that I modulated my emotions. Recognizing when I was angry, lonely, tired, anxious, etc and feeling it and accepting that I was feeling it - instead of pushing it away with rigid behavior - has opened up my recovery a great deal.
Zero - Congrats on 11 months sober!
Drake - I hope you have a safe trip.
Gilmer - I hope you enjoy your revised Thanksgiving plans.
Carlos - Sweet potato casserole - mmmmm.
Saskia, Petals, Glandon, Dee, BeFree - HI!
I'm spending tomorrow evening with my husband's family. I rarely drank too much when other people were around. Thanksgiving doesn't feel like much of a trigger for me, nor does the youth hockey tournament that my family is going to this weekend. Even though they were situations where I typically drank heavily, I feel like a nondrinker now that I have significant sober time under my belt in situations where I used to drink.
A woman at AA shared that she had been drinking while attending meetings. She said that in four years, the obsession never left her. She wanted to drink every single day. When she shared her story, she sounded broken. I was broken when I finally quit, and afraid that I was going to lose everything, including my life. My mind cracked open that day, for the first time since I was a child, because I was willing to do what ever it took to stop. That willingness to admit I was powerless over alcohol has transformed my life. From the outside it still looks pretty much the same, but psychologically, emotionally, spiritually it is gently transforming into something deeper and more meaningful.
Have a good one, Undies!