Day 24

I've just read another wonderful post entitled Six Reasons to Stay Sober by Mrs D aka Lotta Dann on the online Living Sober community she built, https://livingsober.org.nz/ 

I already know the benefits I'm experiencing from living-sober are massive but in true copy-cat fashion I'm going to name a few...

I too have a new-love in herbal tea, while Peppermint is my staple, it seems there are endless flavors to try. I recently absolutely delighted over a flashy expensive Hot Spiced Cinnamon tea, it was a blissful experience, the flavors took on a three dimensional ability ! Actually ! My other reasons to stay sober are many and so so so important ! I've learnt that the act of refusing to harm myself with alcohol has induced other self-loving actions. I'm taking long walks, I'm swimming, I'm allowing my thoughts and feelings to process, I'm eating mindfully, I'm engaging with loved ones fully; spending full days with them without wanting and waiting to bail-out back to my secret-bubble of withdrawal and drink. My mind is clearer, my thinking deeper, my body is healing, depression and anxiety are no longer crippling my moods and days. I'm able to recognize triggers and work through it, I'm writing and reading, two  great loves of mine that can't be enjoyed when I'm boozing, I'm doing things I've not done before, I'm discovering that I like things I didn't know I did.

Addiction has plagued most of my life. As a fourteen-year-old I drank to black-out and continued to use alcohol and drugs most days until falling pregnant at sixteen. Then as a young solo-mum of three beautiful beautiful beautiful children, in 2004, I was handed a meth pipe. I've been free of methamphetamine-addiction for five years but cross-addicted back to alcohol and have struggled to stop multiple times for well over a year. I've not spent five years drinking until black-out but I had become a bottle a night, sometimes two a night, wino. A pattern emerged, every month or so I would have a complete emotional collapse, a meltdown, an alcohol induced breakdown, where I wanted to die. Swooning over a cup of tea may seem insignificant but a little more than a month ago, I was sobbing on my shower floor, drunk and suicidal, so now being able to sit sober and still and love myself with a cup of  flashy tea is pretty cool. There's no gray area anymore, no moderation or tricks that can make me drink safely. Drinking and sobriety for me has become as black and white as life and death.

For the first time in my life I am choosing with a will as strong as steel to live life without circling a harmful addiction. For me, relapse became common because sometimes the familiar, no matter how awful it is, is less scary than the unknown and the unknown for me is knowing how different and good my life can be without being dictated by a harmful addiction.