Tomorrow is Day 1
I have this thing about new beginnings starting on Mondays (or the first of the month), so I've chosen tomorrow to be the first day of the rest of my life.
Tomorrow I will quit drinking as I am an alcoholic going down a very slippery slope.
I come from an alcohol-soaked family. My late dad became an alcoholic as a senior citizen. He passed away last year. My oldest brother is probably in a late stage of alcoholism and is very much in denial. My other brother is in recovery. My sister drinks too much. My boyfriend of 12 years died a few years ago of alcoholism. My husband, a heavy drinker, was charged twice with impaired driving and lost his licence. Three years ago he left our three kids and me to go "find himself". He has lost touch with us completely.
I have been drinking since I was a teenager and I'm now 42. I started out having sips of homemade wine. This progressed to beer in university and then wine, my drink of choice. I love cooking and I love drinking wine, and often do both at the same time.
I can easily drink 2 litres of wine in an evening, sometimes more. I spend my days thinking about when I'll get some wine. I drive around to different wine shoppes so that I'm not seen in one all the time. I am quite a functional drunk -- I don't drink all day, it doesn't affect my work, I get the kids to their activities. It's when I start cooking dinner that I open the bottle and off I go into oblivion. Once I finish one bottle, well it's an automatic, mindless progression to the second. I can't stop.
I am all that my kids have and I want to be here for them, in all ways and with all of my senses. I am terrified that they'll go down the same road. They know I'm struggling to stop - they've seen me say this is it and then a few days later I talk myself back into a drink. The longest I've been sober in recent history is 8 days in a row.
I have had it. I can't go on like this. I have to stop drinking! I have bought and read numerous books on sobriety and I've tried to read the Big Book, but it just doesn't speak to me.
This time it will be different and I hope by committing myself to this with all of you as my witnesses, that I will DO IT THIS TIME.
Tomorrow is Day One. Tomorrow I will not drink alcohol. And I will take it one day at a time.
Thanks so much for letting me talk. I wish all of us the very best on this journey back to a real life.