Four Years
Good Friday to you Good People.
Today marks my first post, about five years of lurking, and four years to the day without a drop of booze. For those of you who think it will be torture not to drink, rest assured, I hardly ever think about or want alcohol in any way. I still go to concerts, pool halls, holiday parties, social gatherings, wedding receptions, and all the usual stuff. I just have a spritzer instead, and it's just not a big deal at all.
When alcohol does cross my mind - maybe every month or so - it's not a craving anymore, but a kind of repulsion mixed with utter gratitude that I'm off the sauce, emancipated from the mess of it all. What a time, life, health, family, money, and joy suck it is!
And don't be fooled: Not only does addiction destroy lives and utterly rip families apart, it's progressive and if untreated it's undoubtedly terminal. I have two dead brothers to prove it. The first died at 35 from a polytoxic overdose, and the second died at 47 from a lifetime of untreated alcoholism, with my mother's help as she enabled him right to his early grave. She since went mad from all of it, leaving no one else in our little family of origin.
So I stay sober, focus on my own family, and use what used to be survivor's guilt to make sure the cycle ends with me.
Like a phoenix, I rise. Join me.