saoutchik

I didn't use AA, to my discredit I let a few negative things I had read about them deter me from going and making my own mind up.

One of their suggestions for early recovery is 90 meetings in 90 days. This is a good idea because to a hardened alcoholic like myself 90 days seems like an eternity but the truth is that it is not long compared to the time I had been drinking.

The thing is the 90 -100 day mark is an important milestone for me certainly, and others I have read about. This is the point at which the actuality (sorry if that is not a word) of not drinking becomes more of an automatic thing. You do not have to make such an effort to stay sober and those terrible cravings do not strike every day. Much is made of having to keep working at recovery and rightly so but I think it is right to point out too that it does get easier.

I saved a lot of money since I quit about 900 days ago. Conservatively I would say £4,500/$6,000 on booze alone but in addition to the money saved my displacement activities meant that I cooked more often and better, I went from hopelessly unfit and fat to passably fit and I restored an old car. That last one earned me a chunk of money but more importantly it stopped me from sitting at home alone with nothing to do except think about drinking.

I think all of the above would have applied if my drug of choice had been something other than alcohol.

So this weekend enjoy those displacement activities and let's do our best enjoy our recovery.