I read this entire thread on my phone after going to bed.
Thank you so much to the OP, for your beautifully written post and everyone who has bumped and shared,
Awake and sober ( day 74 now ) I still feel a little uneasy.
I feel like I have met Scrooges' ghost and been shown Christmas Past, Christmas Present, Christmas Future - Except everyday was Christmas day for me.
I never got as far as buying it in the morning, but had reached the stage of nipping wine in the morning - often I would mumble " Merry Christmas", or "Happy Birthday " to myself, while subconsciously declaring myself a bohemian, or artist or anything but what I was ( am ) - an addict.
The hiding, the planning, the pre-fuelling ahead of social occasions, nailing whatever I could after social occasions, rotating purchases and all sorts of BS when dealing with cashiers.
What I'm really saying here is that one of the major reasons I used to continue my drinking was " I'm not as bad as X " , where X was anyone I could identify in the bottle store queue - or friends of friends who were obviously struggling with alcohol and had started to let their guard slip - or any public figure or anyone in the news whom booze l had in its grasp.
I think if I had read this 74 days ago, when I came here, I would have read a few posts with interest and then moved on assuming it did not relate to me.
Now, just ten short weeks sober, it seems more relevant than anything I have read on SR. This life certainly awaits me if I drink again.
Drinking again would not be taking a (bohemian, devil-may-care) risk with my future it would be engaging in certain self-destruction.
So if you are reading this early in your recovery, and are like me ( hefty binges - some quite prolonged and spectacular from age 18-40, but at the end down to a [self-declared] 'sensible' six-eight bottles of wine a week, all at home ) - and perhaps consider that some of this may not relate to you....
... stay sober, keep sober, and see how the nature of our addiction is revealed to us as those sober days rack up.
I'm the same as everyone else here.
I'm going to bookmark this thread and look back on it when I am one year sober. Hopefully I will smile at my own comments here, with a little more peace, serenity and self-knowledge.
Thank you SR.
Fradley
PS here is a moment I have just recalled while typing this:
I was out with my new- born baby daughter, maybe 9 days old in the car. It was 5.45pm, 15 mins before the bottle store close. This was my choice.:
Should I take her into the grubby bottle store and queue up for booze with everyone else on a Friday night ?
Or leave her in the car and hope the queue would be short ( which it never was ) ?
Mercifully, I did neither. I drove home and had to eke out whatever booze was in the house.
I was so grumpy and genuinely resentful of my baby.