I'm done with it
I've been posting here for coming up 3 years. I did 7 weeks or so, then relapsed. After that I worked really hard on building a sober life and did 2 years and almost 7 months. Things were going well despite lots of difficulties in my life.
But I realise now, looking back, there was always a little part of me that wondered if one day I would be able to drink normally again. 'The whisper' I called it. Every 6 months or so, 'the whisper' would get a little more urgent. It took advantage of tragedy (I heard it after my Dad died)...it would pipe up when something good happened (promotion? Yay, let's drink!).
Mostly I recognised it and learned to ignore it...but I never shut the door on it. Not completely.
Over Christmas I drank and threw away years of sober time. I had a million reasons..I was depressed, lost in grief, I left a job where I had been happy and settled for many years, my sisters marriage broke down, my daughter split with her long time boyfriend...blah blah blah.
Truth is, I started listening to that voice and I planned to drink. It happened fairly slowly but became inevitable because I WANTED to drink. I knew what the end result would be. After that first sip, all bets were off. There was no going back for me...
I was lost in self pity for a while...but as the new year came in I decided...no more. I am well and truly done with it. There will never again come another situation that I will drink over.
The door has been shut and bolted. And I've never been more sure of anything in my life.