On the 12th of December last year, I set myself a goal; if I could just pass my previous sober record of 63 days, I would have been happy. But it just sort of snowballed – thank God – and today I have 200 days of sobriety under my belt. One day just ran into the next and they piled up: First 1 week, then 30 days, 50 days, 10 weeks, then a 100 days, then 4 months, 20 weeks, 6 months… And now 200 days.
I have much less anxiety (even taking into account my personal situation – which many of you know), I’m more at peace with myself than I have been in years; calmer, but far from complacent. I know it just takes a minute and one drink to take me right back to the beginning of the zombie-like hell I was in just a few months ago. Just
one drink, and strangely enough, that was what I was offered yesterday, for the first time since I kicked the booze. My stepbrother asked me when I visited his house (we live on the same stand; different houses), if I was still not drinking or if he could offer me one? This while he sipped from a Brandy and Coke
. It was easy to say, “no thanks, tomorrow I’ll be sober for 200 days”; much, much easier than it would have been a few months ago.
Which brings me back (again) to a point I’ve made on SR many times before. IT GETS EASIER EVERY DAY. It really does. The AV gets easier to shrug off and you smile a lot more – even if sometimes it is only to yourself. You’re happier, healthier - I could go on and on - and after each and every day, drinking becomes/seems like less of an option.
A line from an old Jim Croce song comes to mind; “If I could save time in a bottle”... I so much wish I could have, these days; instead, “I drowned time in a bottle”, and a large part of my life with it. The silver lining, thankfully, is that in three or four years from now, people won’t stand next to my grave and say “He
killed time in a bottle”.
Early days still, but each of them is a (sober) gift.
