Drunky Drunk Girl

1:46 am

Nine mofo days.  Well, going on.  And, man, that bottle of red at the top of my wine rack is lookin’ purdy damn tasty.

No, I didn’t blog last night and yes, I bought a bottle of red on my way home from another super-sweateous hot yoga class, but NO, I did not drink it!  Not one drop.  Sure, I thought (and probably dreamt) about it, but somehow my willpower sustained me through the gong of midnight.  As it has tonight, to my amazement!  (In fact, I can almost feel the release of the craving, as if it moves off me like a wave receding from the sand with every spin of that second hand around the clock.  The further away from midnight I get, the easier it is to buck up for another day of sobriety.  AND, be happy and grateful about that simple fact.)

I was talking to a friend of mine tonight, and he gave me some good advice, mainly, The cravings are never going to go away, it’s just going to get easier to deal with them.  I think he’s majorly right, and that kind of majorly sucks.  Tonight, for some reason, my craving is more intense than it has been since I quit, but not unbearable or out of control.

My friend suggested switching up my routine, too, becoming more of a morning person.  Work out or do yoga at 7 am, and I bet that by 10 or 11 pm, you’ll be too tired to even think about drinking, let alone stay up to do it.  I might give that a shot; what do I have to lose?  The thing is, I’m a night owl and my “witching” hour(s) always involved sipping a glass or six of red while relaxing into the day finally being over; or, settling into a few hours of “me” time, which, to be frank, had become much less about me and more about the excuse to get drunk.

I still want to drink, but…tonight, I guess I do feel stronger, more rational.  Like, I can definitely feel my brain centering itself, no longer TOTALLY tilted to the left in favor of drinking.  It’s more…leaning to the right, with thoughts that are becoming louder, like:

If you drink, you’ll fuck up your EIGHT DAYS OF SOBRIETY.  NO!

If you drink, you won’t be able to see what it’s like after eight days, and…you’ll have to go through another eight days to get here again!  NO!

If you drink, you won’t lose that wine gut!  NO!  NO!

If you drink, you won’t be able to be that self-righteous prick at the wedding next weekend, the one who gets to look down on everyone automatically assuming she’s going to get shitfaced and do something retarded, and say, Ohhh, no thanks.  I had my last drink on my birthday, a whole 18 days ago.  NO!  NO!  NO!

If you drink, it won’t feel better for long.  And, the down will feel worse than what you’re feeling now.  I’ve been creeping closer and closer to full acceptance of the reality that, When you drink, you go up, but then you come down.  And you feel even more down because you’ve been high.  I’d rather just stay low, to be honest.  That way, there is no crash, no reality check, no down.

If other people I know can do it, I can, too, damn it.

Tags: alcoholic, alcoholism, anxiety, cravings, detox, drinking, sobriety, wine, women

1:13 am

And counting.  As of now, I’m going on day seven — a whole week sans the grape!  Holy shit, is all I can say.

I mean, it’s not that I haven’t gone, uh, a while sober (my longest in recent memory has been two weeks, and that felt absolutely miraculous to me), it’s just, well, I haven’t gone a long, intentional while for a while (almost a year now of practically daily drinking).  Obviously, it’s really hard for me not to drink, to escape the habit of drinking.  However, for some reason(s), this time I’m getting by and feeling stronger every day.

I’ve been thinking about what’s been giving me that extra helping hand and here’s what I’ve come up with:

1.  This blog:  It’s serving as my anchor, so to speak.  I like coming to it.  I like holding it in my hands, as I would a cup, and filling it up with my angst, my craving, my pedantic need to expose — for some reason now — the minute details of my struggle with the bottle.  It’s NICE to have this blog here, as a friend, in a way, as someone who will listen.  And it’s public, which makes me feel like I’m really, really, really no longer hiding.  And that gives me added strength, for reasons that I can’t quite articulate at the moment.  (Even though I’m doing this anonymously, it still feels like I’m no longer hiding.  It feels like I’m talking to someone, and they’re getting it, and they’re maybe going to leave a comment and then, we’ll be talking about it together.  Warts and all, it’s coming out.  And the fact that hiding my problem is less important, for once, than maintaining my sobriety seems to be an extraordinary source of strength and self-love.)

2.  My work:  I hate to say it, but above all else — and that includes the rock bottoms, hurting myself, and hurting my friends and family — is my work.  I know that if I drink and get hung over this week, I’ll jeopardize my ability to turn in a good edit on time to an excellent potential client.

3.  Fatigue:  I’ve intentionally built a daily schedule that will either a/keep me distracted to the point of forgetting that booze even exists, or b/exhaust me beyond the ability to stay awake past midnight let alone drink!  Of course I wanted to drink tonight, as I was walking home from a truly exhausting bikram yoga class (I wanted to celebrate sweating out all those residual toxins by…ingesting more.  Makes perfect sense, right?).  By the time I rounded my ‘hood, I had forgotten all about getting wine, though.  I was so tired that all I could focus on was getting home, and when I finally did, I realized that it was too late to get wine.  I may have looked, had there been an actual wine shop that was open, but honestly, I was counting on the craving to subside so that I could just laze through it and crash early.

4.  Higher powah:  Uh, I’ve been trying to contemplate this in concrete terms, and I think I can safely admit that I have NO IDEA what this means beyond the ability to resist your cravings, whether they be mental, physical, emotional, or all three.  I’ve decided it’s close to one of two things:  one day a few weeks ago when I was attempting to quit (I went a few days, but this happened on day two), I was suddenly awash (yes, it felt like a cool shower flowing down my entire body) in a feeling of deep calm.  I realized that what I was experiencing was a complete absence of craving.  Holy Jesus on High!  It felt religious, actually, to be granted this reprieve.  I have not felt SANS CRAVING for at least a decade, if not more, I guess.  It’s a constant feeling, and a constant source of stress.  In this state of “grace,” it felt like anything was possible, and that booze needed no role.  I didn’t want it, didn’t see the need for it, and could imagine feeling excited, optimistic even, about life IN THE FUTURE without it!  It made me realize how controlled I am by my cravings, how they trap and depress me, and how they affect my perception of not only the present, but my possible future.  It went away after about five or six hours, but man, what RELIEF.  THIS, I decided, was the sentiment I should bottle and label, Higher Power.

The second is knowing, like your worst journalistic story assignment, the one that is due in 36 hours and that you’re pretty sure you’re not going to find any sources for and your writing is probably going to suck, too, and your editor is going to fire you for missing deadline anyway — knowing that it will be over soon.  Like feelings, and bad life experiences, cravings come and cravings go.  It’s easier for me to grit my teeth and bear it, even a week into sobriety, because I’ve learned that my cravings usually only last for a few hours, or as long as it takes for me to distract myself enough to forget I was craving it in the first place.

Well, on that note, I’m off to bed before I find myself wandering out in my pajamas to grab a six pack.

(Tomorrow, remind me to discuss all things liver.  I’ve been taking milk thistle for several months now, and while I thought it was helping (it’s supposed to help not only subdue hangovers but also heal a damaged liver), I’m not sure. Last week, my liver was feeling mushy, as if I pressed on it, my fingerprint would leave an indentation.  Well, a week later, it still doesn’t feel hunky dory.  In fact, even though it’s not aching and feeling mushy/sore, it still feels…gross.  Like, solid.  Like, hardened.  Like, yikes!)

Tags: alcoholic, alcoholism, anxiety, cravings, detox, drinking, sobriety, wine, women