Hi, Freckles,
I've posted this quote from David Carr's autobiography "The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own."
Carr is familiar to some SRers, not to others. He died earlier this year, in the newsroom of his beloved New York Times of cancer (and other health problems). His book details his nightmarish years of addiction to crack, cocaine and alcohol, his recovery and rebound and his relapse. Of the latter, he wrote:
"In various programs of recovery, adherents will talk about 'slips'; but the collapse into drinking and drugging can take a very long time. In that process, the prospect of getting high or drunk, unimpeded by obeisance to a higher power or a program of daily living, is rolled around in the mouth absently, surreptitiously, long before it is actually swallowed, to see how it might taste. That's how I finally found myself in my kitchen with that disgusting drink.
"When I really think about it, somewhere in the late nineties and into 2000, I stopped identifying myself as an alcoholic and an addict and began thinking of myself as someone who just didn't drink or do drugs. It took about four years to make that nasty drink in my kitchen, four years of not gong to meetings, four years of not speaking honestly with people in recovery, four years of a long conversation in my head, before the thought became the deed."
His observation remains the most insightful I've ever read about relapse. It serves as an inspiration to me to take this life of recovery seriously, to never forget what I used to be -- an alcoholic -- and to do something daily that is focused solely on my continued life in sobriety.