Days I have lived with an alcohol addiction problem: somewhere around 10,666 (which is more than 29 years)
Attempts to quit: at least 20 serious attempts, all solo, all failed
Longest stretch without drinking since I was pregnant 19 years ago: 7 days
Blackouts: so, so many
Crippling hangovers: even more than the blackouts
Car Accidents: 1 (the tree won, thank goodness it was just a tree)
# of times finding out when/where AA meetings are: 10
# of times attending an AA meeting: 0
My rap sheet goes on and on, and yet it is really only in the last couple of years that I have begun to sense the precariousness of my position. I am now a middle aged woman with a solid but mediocre job, very little saved for my future, very little to call my own (except for a mountain of debt), a boyfriend who lets me get away with awful behavior and a two adorable dogs. Most importantly, I have a wonderful adult daughter who still loves me in spite of everything.
Oddly, through all of this I am a distance runner. Weird, yeah?
I have to change, I have to stop drinking and it has to be now and so here I am on day 4 of not drinking. I have found a blog that has given me hope and right out of the gate I want to thank Belle of tiredofthinkingaboutdrinking.com . She has been a huge help to me, I have been binge reading her blog posts from when she quit drinking and will keep looking for other bloggers that speak to me about finding and keeping sobriety.
So far it has been mind blowing to realize how much time I have spent in the last four days simply mulling over this topic. I am all resolve for a couple of hours and then halfway though my 15 minute commute home I am contemplating having 'just 1'. Idiotic as I cannot remember the last time I had just 1 drink at a time. I cannot remember the last time I planned any sort of activity without giving thorough consideration to when and how I could fit in drinking time. I plan my running schedule around my nights out. I decide who I will spend time with based on how intoxicated I feel I can be around them. I tend to only go places I know will have alcoholic beverages (Will there be beer at the zoo?) Last weekend I found myself looking for receipts in my purse/pockets/car because I had no idea how much money I had spent the night before - or where I had spent it. That was not the first time and even when I found the stupid receipts I had to wait for the charge to clear my bank account so that I could figure out what I tipped the bartender. (BTW I am ridiculously generous when I am tanked, which explains the big smiles I get when I return to the bar days later just SURE no one remembers me.)
While drunk I have sprained my ankle, chipped a bone in my other ankle, exploded a bursa in my knee, fallen in a stone bathtub and hit my head and have had more "mystery bruises" than I can count. Honestly, I rarely if ever know where any of my bruises come from. My last car was also extremely bruised; 3 dents in the front end from whacking the frame of my garage door on my way out, a dent on the hood because I did not have it backed in far enough one night and the garage door came down on it, and unspeakable internal injuries to the motor from the pathetic battle with the felled tree minding its own business on the side of the road (where my poor car should not have been).
Fuck yeah I have to stop drinking. Duh. I have never itemized the above list before and it would seem that the question of 'Do I need to quit?' requires as much thought as 'Do I need to breathe?'
The answer to both questions is a resounding YES! so here we go....Yeay day 4!!
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