I remember doing the dishes one night in early recovery, my first time around.....
Thinking to myself: "Booze is EVERYWHERE. EVERYONE drinks. How can I ever live this life without drinking?".
I was a few months sober and though I was going to meetings and making what I felt to be progress - these quiet thoughts haunted me. I didn't really share them all. I didn't really even admit to myself that while I was thinking them, a part of the same brain doing the thinking was simultaneously thinking "well.... just hang in there a while, eventually you can drink again and it'll be OK... you really just needed a 'reset'. You just need to be more conscious of how you drink...".
Well everyone who's been there and done that knows where the story wound up. I made it almost 6 months..... then wound up convincing myself it was 'fine' and for a little while I did a fair job of 'moderation'. Then it slid into binging and then into a year and a half of mostly-drunk awfulness.
I'm now living my 5th year of sobriety.
Booze is still everywhere - but I look at it more with a sense of wonder that people still drink it.... a sense of slight sadness that people choose a mind-shifting illusion over reality of life's journey.
That wasn't an easy shift - but it also didn't take that much work. It just took a decision, a commitment and a daily focus on re-defining what I wanted out of life..... seeing how inconsistent alcohol (in any measure) was with my desire for this cherished, limited, short experience of life.
If you're seeing booze everywhere.... try asking yourself "yes. It is. But what do I want most out of life?" Try saying to yourself "Here is a picture of what I want to be..... of who I want to be....." and then painting for yourself a picture of a person unaffected by booze being everywhere. A person enthralled with life and content with the experiences of life as the blessed gifts they are - sober and clear.
Try looking up to people who live in sobriety and try (even if it feels faked and forced at first) smiling into the notion of YOU being a person who lives in sobriety and can see 'booze everywhere' as an unfortunate facet of reality that need no longer trouble you.
And also.... critically.... notice all the OTHER things everywhere. Notice the spaces WITHOUT booze.... notice the joys and the goodness and the freedom and the fun and the relaxation and the happiness and the true raw emotion and the togetherness and the intimacy and the authenticity that are - quite literally - everywhere. Far more everywhere, in fact, than booze.
Happy Sober Monday
