Thanks Tatsy
The three days were productive and good for the budget. The tiredness fades quickly.
Actually I would have liked to work this afternoon.
Didn't sleep well at all tonight. Fell asleep only at like 1.30am and was up already at 5 :/ then dozed off for an hour at around 11. So, a weird day. But since it was fully committed to 'doing nothing', I'm alright with that.
Maybe there'll be more work tomorrow, maybe not. If not, I'll do my research, or read, or maybe translate the book for a little while. Plenty of things to choose from, each one good for/towards something
Made schnitzels today, mmm. Drank plenty of fluids and rested up. Have basketball game to watch.
I did think about the concept of self-sabotaging behaviour and how much of it there is in addiction. In the first weeks I didn't 'get it'. I just knew that I had not been able to think myself sober and that action seemed to work better. However, I didn't really grasp why. During the last translation, I was taking a break and sitting on my balcony. A weird thought popped into my mind: "What if I just blew this whole thing up with a drink?". I dismissed the thought at once, but the point of it sort of lingered. I didn't want to drink, nor to be drunk. And my brain went straight to just explicitly stating what the consequences of a drink would be - as if that would somehow ... convince me better? Needless to say that an addict's brain is a peculiar phenomenon, but the idea behind that thought stuck with me and I wanted to address it here. The primary thing in recovery, as I've come to understand it, is of course staying clean. But the intricacies involved in doing so are legion. The common trait, for me personally, was always self-sabotage. I would rush into something (or make a commitment whilst under the influence), keep drinking, sober up and realise there's no way on Earth I'd be able to do what I said/promised, try to find an escape and move on. Then probably drink, because I felt like a failure (yet again). It was a cycle of self-sabotage, where booze was the coping mechanism. And this cycle perpetuated itself for years - rush into sth, feel overwhelmed, drink to 'calm the nerves', screw the thing up, feel guilty, drink to escape the feeling, and prolly make some other commitment and/or get myself in trouble again. Rinse-repeat. That's why action is a lot more important than thoughts in the early days. Because thoughts are just screwed up manifestations of some years and years worth of maladaptive subconscious programmes running strong in the background. Which is why sobriety (and new, positive habit forming) reinforcing actions, however small, are paramount. Very slowly, the programmes can be overwritten. That was my personal revelation on the balcony. And it happened because my brain no longer tried to convince me that a drink would be great, it was more like a professed arsonist suggesting I torch the place. By that, it showed its true intentions. For some reason I'm convinced that's how I and other people in early sobriety get sucked back into the booze. Some self-sabotage effort goes on before the first drink is taken after some time sober. And I'm also kind of certain that the sentence "I thought it would be fine" should be replace with "I thought I could get away with it" in those accounts. Just my thoughts, though
Hope everyone had a good day!
End of Day 218. I did not drink today.