I feel with you tnek! I also experienced intense cravings today. My boyfriend spoke on this hipstery panel about his job and I came with him for moral support as he hates to speak in front of an audience.
What I didn't know when I agreed on going was, that there'd be a bar with free drinks.
Normally I am okay with situations like that, I would say. I've been to bars and boozy dinners on several occasions since getting sober but this time it was much harder because I wasn't prepared for it at all! What a difference that made!
I went there super hungry (plan was to grab dinner on the way home) and also feeling slightly weird from all the cold medicine I took. So I came in and my BF who went there early said 'they have a free bar tonight, might as well have some wine, eh?' (He was being sarcastic of course).
On my way there my AV was already shouting at me on two occasions (first when I passed a bar which advertised their gin&tonics as today's special for only 3€, which was exactly the amount of change I had in my pocket; and second when I was right outside the venue and played with the thought of texting my BF I'd be late and go have a drink in the wine bar right next to it).
So hearing about the possibility of free wine wasn't helping. Then this guy sat next to me who sipped for endless times on his white wine and he sat so close that he held it more or less right in front of my face. I was exposed to the smell the whole time and couldn't stop staring at his glass. It was pure torture. I was tired, hungry, not clear headed cause of the cold (and meds) so my AV went wild.
I got extremely annoyed by this guys slow sipping because, WHY?! Why would you drink it so slowly? That's insane to me! If I had gotten my hands on it, I would've finished it in less than a minute! And also I just really wanted him to finish it so it'd be out of sight and I wouldn't have to smell it anymore.
To be fully honest with you guys the only reasons I didn't drink were that my BF was with me and i didn't want him to see it and confront me about it (but for a moment thought even that wouldn't stop me) and mostly cause it's exactly 1/2 a year for me today (posting this after midnight) and I didn't want to cave in just a few hours before my 6 months milestone.
But yea, OBVIOUSLY, lots of work left to do. And on my way home i decided I'd attend AA again and do it properly this time with a sponsor and doing the steps.
I'd be so disappointed in me if I'd relapse and didn't try everything before. And I definitely am starting to forget already about the downsides of my drinking in the past and what kind of hell I went through in early recovery.