Quote:
Originally Posted by Bandit
Zen,
Congratulations!
Did you honestly not notice it was a year, at what stage did you stop counting?
I think that for me is the most hopeful part - that you actually stopped thinking about alcohol full stop and stopped counting.
Bandit |
I think it was around the six month area (I'm honestly not sure!). Keeping busy is a good thing to do, as I do think that boredom is a dangerous thing for people like us. I think that we all tend to define ourselves too much by this illness ("I'm an alcoholic"). Now, that may be true, but we are all -
every one of us - SO much more than that. In my case, I'm a recovering alcoholic, yes - but I'm also a father, a guitarist, a film-buff, and a really bad but enthusiastic cook. We are all so much bigger than this thing, if we could just be gentle with ourselves and stop punishing ourselves.
Not thinking about alcohol is genuinely liberating. Now, it's just something I used to do. But I'm equally cautious about over-confidence, and not being mindful about this illness. I might not think about drinking very much these days, but I'm not sure I want to forget what it did to me. It is, quite literally, sobering.
Peace,
ZM