2:50 am
When I finally stopped drinking this past June, I had a HUGE many reasons: blacking out and doing all sorts of shit, most of which I’ve come to realize, is WAY outside the norm. Yet, I somehow managed to keep some semblance of control over my life… Anyway, I was driven in June to simply quit. I kept my head down, endured the pretty strong physical and psychological cravings, and ran and did bikram yoga and kept myself insanely busy and focused. Eye on the prize. Fuck this and fuck them and fuck fuck fuck All y’all can go fuck yourselves if YOU THINK I’M GOING TO CAVE.
Well, I did cave. At day 60. And I got back on the horse. And I caved a week later…and got back on that same horse. And now, approaching my second round toward day 21 (today is day 19), I feel…like I need incentive to not drink. Like, maybe, being sober is just temporary and after which, things will be different and I can go back to drinking. Non-alcoholically, that is.
Like, once I do this fixer-upper of a “90-day detox” from the sauce, my mind will be reset and I can have my wine back. If I give it my best shot, a perfect score, a real good one-two, then…I’ll be able to successfully return to a place I was before I started binge drinking a decade ago. Maybe?
The question is, is it possible to rehabilitate your drinking? I used to binge eat — more on that soon, as it definitely relates to the way I came to drink — and I remember the early days of literally, re-learning how to relate to food. It was really tough, I remember, rehabilitating my binge eating habits — eating and emotions are deeply connected, based on my experience. With wine, it’s similar in that I’m re-learning how to relate to incentives — what gives me pleasure and why. It’s like building back up the muscles and tendons around a broken bone, and re-teaching them how to work again.
Rehabilitation. I LOVE this word, and I truly do believe that some people CAN re-learn how to relate to drinking alcohol. It’s not black-and-white for everyone, most certainly. Circumstances — and people — are all different. Anyway, to make a long story short, for the first time since getting sober, I allowed myself to think that perhaps I will be one of these people. I feel like there may be something to look forward to, that this getting-sober thing doesn’t necessarily have to be about AA’s dogmatic (and possibly erroneous) “once a drunk, always a drunk/you cannot be fixed, EVER” philosophy.
This, however, begs the question, why would you drink alcohol if you don’t really need it? If the buzz is fun only to the extent that you don’t need it to have fun or be happy or feel good, then…why would you drink?
In any case, I hate to say it, but some days the only thing that gets me through the day, past the lone bottle of “it’s me against you, bitch, and I’m winning” red wine on my kitchen counter is the thought that I’ll allow myself to drink it one day. Not today. Not tomorrow. Probably not before a month. Or 60 days. BUT, maybe at 90…? Alone. With all the doors locked from the inside and all my electronics equipment safely hidden in a steel safe.
(Whatever it takes, right? Or, maybe this is what they call “dry drinking.” I have no idea, but I can’t help but think it’s pretty normal and well, pretty damn OK if it’s what gets me through my witching-hour cravings.)
Drunky Drunk Girl 