My Tape

I am seven days sober. Seven long, fragile days. I wish I had started writing this on day one. I don't want to forget how awful I felt before I decided to stop drinking. I fear forgetting.

This blog is my way of remembering, staying in touch with myself as I go through this process, documenting it so I can reflect and, I pray, be successful. If it helps me connect with others, wonderful - and, if not, that's OK, too. This is for me.

I've gone seven days without before - though, admittedly, only a handful of times outside of pregnancy. But I've never before intended to remove alcohol from my life completely. I've toyed with the idea. I've had a fear in the pit of my stomach that I might be at the point where giving it up is a necessity. But I've never embraced it. I've never found hope in it. This time, I am trying to see it not as giving up alcohol, but as gaining sobriety. I know it's going to be hard, but I already feel a huge weight lifted from me. I already feel better about myself, lighter and free.

My story isn't one of debauchery, blackouts, legal trouble - it's not exciting. I had plenty of alcohol-fueled escapades in my twenties, even a DUI. But those days have been behind me for a decade now. I'm a married, Christian mother of three. I drink less since I had children than before. But it's a tooth-and-nail fight to avoid slipping as far down the path as I used to go, and I fear what the future might hold. I hate my lack of self discipline. I hate feeling like crap every morning. I hated myself until I decided enough was enough.

My dearest friend since childhood recently went to rehab and is living in a halfway house. She is a textbook alcoholic - when she got her first DUI, they found her crashed, slumped over the steering wheel with a bottle of Jack Daniels in her hand. She has been an amazing inspiration to me. On day two or three of sobriety, I told her my fear that I would start drinking again, because there are no immediate consequences for me. She told me the AA saying "play the tape." It means, don't just think about what happens immediately after you drink. Think through the hours, days, and weeks that follow. Where does that first drink ultimately lead you?

My tape goes like this - I drink today. I go to bed tonight and wake up tomorrow feeling okay. That gives me reassurance to drink tomorrow. I even "reward" myself for handling my alcohol so well the night before, and have a couple of extra drinks. The next day I feel a little down about drinking so much the day before, so I say "screw it," and have drinks that day.  This time, on my way to bed, I'm waiting for a moment when my husband isn't looking so I can chug down one or two last shots or glasses of wine, just to make sure I'm good and knocked out before we go to sleep. I get crappy sleep and wake up feeling awful - dehydrated, headache, burning eyes, hazy memory of the night before. I feel like an utter failure, a willing slave, and a terrible wife and mother. My day is full of self-loathing, and I can't wait until the kids go to bed so I can numb all the negative feelings with some more alcohol.

This is my tape. This is where that one innocent drink leads me. It's tempting to convince myself otherwise, to swear it can be different, to vow to have a healthy relationship with alcohol from now on. But 19 years of drinking have told me otherwise. For 19 years, I've tried unsuccessfully to have a healthy relationship with alcohol. Nineteen years of guilt, fear, and hours and hours of my life lost. Not to mention I went over it in my head last night, and couldn't think of a SINGLE person in my entire family history, on either side, who has ever had a healthy relationship with alcohol. Not a single one. Teetotalers or alcoholics, every one of us. I'm done giving my self-esteem and energy to alcohol.

I'm excited to read the book Kick the Drink... Easily by Jason Vale. It sounds like he breaks things down in a really systematic way to help readers understand and believe that alcohol doesn't add anything to life, it doesn't help us have fun, and it doesn't make special events more special. Part of me can see that this is true, but another part of me is afraid it really isn't - so I definitely need to read this. I ordered it from Thriftbooks, so it may take a couple of weeks to arrive. I have some other sobriety books to read in the meantime, along with plenty of Bible study that I felt too guilty to face when I was drinking!