Progress - Slow but Sure
Day 4 after a week-long bender, don't recall if it's the 4th or 5th of the year, but feeling like I'm pretty much over the worst part. What a difference each day makes coming out of the depths of pure hell!
Going through this process so many times over the years (which gets noticeably worse each time), it seems I've pretty much mastered it, as each phase passes almost like clock-work. Not something to be proud of, but at least I've learned to realize that there is a way out of the doom and gloom when I do find myself mired in it.
At least, I maintain the presence of mind to begin the tapering process immediately upon picking up, constantly aware of the fatal potential of that "first one".
While chatting with another SR member yesterday, something remarkable occurred to me. When I look back over my drinking track record over the last few years, I'm now qualifying short bouts lasting a few days to a couple of weeks, as opposed to identifying and tracking periods of sobriety.
Instead of charting islands of sobriety in a sea of alcohol, I'm identifying ponds in a field of sobriety.
In other words, I'm at the point in my "recovery" that, instead of finding dry patches on a slippery slope to gain a foothold, I'm finding slick spots in my climb up a dryer one, and that's progress in my book!
Battling this progressive, terminal disease is a constant work in progress and there is no final victory, yet then again, life itself is terminal, is it not?