Thank you.
I mean....I went low, but honestly I was low for about 5-8 years. I drank in the bathroom, hid alcohol, and drank before going anywhere but work for a very long time.
I played games with the addiction (forcing a hard stop every 72 hours with shaking and withdrawal because I knew 72 hours is how long it takes for the liver to clear, switching from whiskey to beer for a long time until I couldn’t stand it and had to have whiskey again, changing diets, changing exercise, only drinking at 5’oclock (and never stopping at cocktail hour of course), using Antabuse then waiting 10 days for it to clear, drinking, then taking Antabuse the next day, changing work schedules, changing jobs, deciding to have children (I think I partly chose to have 3 kids because the only time I got any relief from drinking and the addiction was pregnancy), overhydrating during a drinking episode....)
it was a lot of years of games. I was on a real losing streak at the end, none of my old or new strategies worked any more, it always won, and it got darker, and darker.
but at the end the light of day was thrown onto it somehow, it’s lies lost power, the illusions were gone, and I know today as much as I knew the day I quit that I was done screwing around with alcohol, it was over. I knew none of the good times would come back, and it would be only addiction, the the circular wheel, the sickness, the regret and the fear. I still see it that way today. I’ve thought some dangerous thoughts in the last three years, I’ve done some rationalization and some romanticizing, but ultimately that last drunk I had and those last five years of my alcoholism are my most prominent memory now, so the thoughts lead to that and so far, I haven’t picked up. Just because you have a thought, doesn’t mean an action must follow.