Restless, irritable and discontent...

My body always knows when things aren't right. It knows long before my brain even suspects. When I sleep too much, when I'm in pain, have a headache or feel like my stomach is in knots chances are it's not the flu but the onset of a bout of depression or just my body telling me that I'm not right with myself or my Higher Power. I've allowed something to get in between me and the Gods and my gut is trying to warn me that if I keep doing so, disaster will strike.

Last week I came closer to drinking than I have since getting sober. It's no one's fault but my own. I let my guard down, and wasn't being honest with myself or those around me. Of course I've thought about drinking over the last year, but this was different. I had a plan! I was going to get to that booze when no one was looking and I would have just one! One couldn't hurt anything, right? I would stop at one, I knew how to stop, I'd done it before so this time I would be okay. And NO ONE would ever have to know about it! Lies, lies, lies. I've told myself these things a thousand times before, but they've never come true in the past and they won't come true now.

I scared myself more that night then I think I've been in years. I've felt that fear before, since getting sober, when I have the "drunk dreams". Dreams of drinking that are so vivid and real that I wake up in a panic, full of shame and scared to death that I've fucked everything up. Many drunks have these dreams after getting sober, I think it's our Higher Power making sure that we remember what's at stake. But to scare myself like that while awake is a hundred times worse. The only thing that could trump it would be to actually drink. One sip, that's all it would take, just one sip. It's ridiculous and humiliating and terrifying to think about.

"One drink is too many and a hundred, not enough." "One drink, one drunk." These are slogans that I've never paid much attention to, I was more keen on repeating "First things first" or "Let go and let God" but fourteen months into my sobriety I need to go back to the very beginning, remember the despair, the filth and emptiness that drinking brought me. Now is not the time to rest on my laurels but to redouble my efforts, be honest, work my program harder than ever and hold that connection with my Higher Power above all else on Earth. "You've got to give it away to keep it" the slogan goes, and the Gods know I was getting pretty damn selfish.


J.