Great update, dpac. Sounds like a wonderful weekend with your friend. Oh yes, I can relate, that pesky thought about drinking, thankfully, it’s just a thought and they’re fleeting. I’m really benefiting from meditation. I don’t particularly enjoy it, but I’m transfixed by how my brain goes off on tangents, without my input, like it’s on auto-pilot. For instance, I’ll be meditating, I’ll hear a certain noise outside, a crow calling. I’ll go back to the breath, my brain will instantly recall a similar crow noise from years ago, then look at the scenario and people there when the noise was made, then recall what a particular person in that scene did to me! And if I didn’t keep returning to the breath and ignoring this stream of thought, I’d be dragged down into a vortex. Because, sadly, my brain has a negative bias, and doesn’t remember good things, only bad experiences.
Sorry, I rambled, but this is what I’ve found recently, and the outcome is, thoughts are just thoughts, they arrive and pass. Apparently, we have, as human beings approximately 70,000 thoughts a day. There must be a lot of irrelevant and irrational thoughts amongst those to discard!