Posted by partlycloudy on April 11, 2005, at 7:35:51
In reply to Re: Silence banished!!, posted by just so sad on April 5, 2005, at 19:59:26
I'm back - had a rough couple of days with meds - had to learn the hard way to split up my Klonopin dose or I wept into my keyboard all day - work challenges (how's that for an expression) combined with too much babble made me a horrid mess for a bit.
So - sobriety. It's my carrot at the end of my stick. Some days it is unnoticed; other days, all I can see is that darn carrot, wagging in front of me. My latest phrase to describe myself is as an Out Of Practise Alcoholic. Trying not to be beat myself up for any slips; trying not to put myself into situations where slips are likely.
I had the nastiest surprise while reading Caroline Knapp's "Drinking - A Love Story". Her drinking behaviour eerily mirrored my own, hiding the majority of her drinking from the rest of the world, fooling no one. It was a fascinating memoir up until I discovered that the young woman is now dead of lung cancer.
Well, unfortunately I took this as a sign that I might as well drink, right? Look what happened to this poor woman - went to rehab, AA meetings every night, smoked like a chimney (every other page in the book she is lighting up). She lost both parents to cancer during the course of the book - and in my head, I make all these connections. Alcohol + smoking + family predisposition to cancer = You are Going to Get Cancer. This is just my head talking, you understand? We have a lot of cancer on both sides of my family. I don't smoke and haven't for years.
Something about knowing the fate of this relatively young author made the experience of reading her memoir about drinking made me want to say, For goodness' sake, have that glass of wine!! You're not going to be around for long, girl!! Totally, totally drunken thinking on my part. It's not like she was any safer a drinker than I am - it's not an activity I can partake in moderation (Ha! There's that four-letter word - in spirit) - but she ended up losing it all anyway. And in retrospect, reading the back cover, the book was released after her death, but there is no mention of it, except to speak of the author in the past tense.
So this little slip of a book was enough to send my thoughts spinning again. Stay sober? For what? For whom? If I can keep it hidden and do it in secrecy, who cares? It was not a healthy line of thinking. I recognized it as such at the time. My family, for one, would not be pleased to have me Dialing While Drunk again. I don't like waking up and wondering who I spoke with, what I said, how many conversations will I have to fake my way through before the penny drops and I remember that I'd had that conversation before... you have to be very clever to keep your tracks covered if you consciously decide to drink. Not that it fools anyone.
So I have been struggling. Not drinking, but struggling with the resolve to stay sober. Meetings, to be honest, are the one single thing almost guaranteed to have me run straight to a liquor store afterwards - I don't find the cameraderie to inspire me to do anything else but drink some more.
What I am doing is taking my supplements, using the found energy to be more active around the house. Working on projects I've been talking about for months but haven't gotten around to.
Sorry for the ramble. it just had to come out. I'm not finding this an easy battle by any means, but I'm not giving up. Waking up sober every day, without a hangover, without worrying about the night before, is a gift. I treasure that gift - I cling to it. It's all I have right now.
pc
poster:partlycloudy
thread:480270
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/subs/20050323/msgs/482680.html