Stayingsassy

Jpa,

I’ve looked over many of your posts, you’ve described many of your nights drinking and in most of them, you ended up unconscious.

In one, a romantic getaway with your wife ended up with her needing help to get you carried to your room at 10pm.

In another, your friends in Munich had to get help carrying you to your room as well.

It’s taking less and less booze to make you really drunk, which has physiological causes of course but also means that every time you drink, it’s totally unpredictable.

I point this out because I know there were many more nights like this, that you haven’t posted about, and I had nights like that too.

My husband would have to hold me up, I’d slide off my chair to the floor during nice dinners or reunions with old friends, I’d fall on the way to the bathroom, I had to be carried out to cars, I had to be pushed into ubers, I’d wake up with giant dark bruises all over my butt and thighs that took weeks to heal, I’d bleed in scary ways.. I’d pass out every weekend. Eventually I just carved out entire weekends or 3-4 day weekends to devote to 24 hour drinking. Withdrawal felt like imminent death and it happened every week before workdays.

I’m at two years sober now and I’ve had those thoughts you have. I’ve had them more than once. Getting sober was like being in a black chasm for months and I often was so overwhelmed I’d check out and didn’t know where or who I was, I had dissociative episodes because sobriety was too much for my brain. But I did it anyway.

I want you to look forward one month, two months, six months from now, I want you to imagine taking your wife out to dinner. You have sparkling water, you eat something awesome, you have a nice conversation and you smile and laugh and touch her hand. You pay for the meal, you stroll to the car with her and you drive her home. You spend the rest of the evening with her as a sober husband and you get in bed and sleep on your own. No one holding you up. No dissolving in tears or rage or one way illusive thinking patterns that go nowhere. No passing out. No throwing up. Just you, your bed, and sleep.

When you wake up in the morning, what you’ll feel is something you haven’t felt in a long time. Dignity. Calm. Quiet pride. A sense of knowing yourself. And guess what you can feel this thing that feels new while at the same time still sad, or anxious or craving or unsure. You can feel this because the way your life is unfolding, each day, each night, each morning with those children, your workdays, your wife in the evening, are yours. You’ll still kind of hate it because the healing takes a long time. But you’ll realize one thing: your life is yours again.

You don’t have to love it or accept it to just do it. Little by little as life unfolds as a sober person, you’ll get you back.

I’ve been where you are. I’d like nothing more than for you to feel again like your life is yours. Even if it’s hard, it’s yours, because it no longer belongs to alcohol.