There's a certain kind of calm that comes with the first few weeks of sobriety. Like the heat has been taken out of my blood, like the fire his been quenched a little, like the fight is less intense. Feeling calmer and balanced and efficient - not so much focused solely on getting drunk and recovering before getting drunk again.
It's made a lot more easy with the default setting of antabuse. The drug works by turning any alcohol in my system or even on my skin into acetylene and formaldehyde, - like nail polish remover or paint thinners - which would force me to feel nausea and vomit and all the rest. So dissolving a tablet each morning as I rise and drinking that first glass of water is literally "a day at a time".
So I am sober, and thinking things through, but I'm also aware of how I am whistling in the dark. Walking blindly along feeling as though I will not drink today because I have had my antabuse, but at the same time incredibly humble and aware that I am not going this thing alone.
*
Today was 38C and we were sticky and walking in shadows and leaning to catch the breeze.
Just now, the thunder rumbles and the girls have curled in my bed and we watch the blinking sky as the thunderstorm rolls in.
And it's a full moon.
The End of the Beginning
Last time I posted I was fresh from five days not drinking. So what did I do? Went and got drunk. Had my last (how many times have I said that before) bender before going sober for once and for all and forever.
So I drank another dozen or so bottles of wine. Lately, I had migrated to light white wines so my teeth wouldn't stain and I wouldn't smell as much for family and at work. It sort of worked but the mere fact I was so chatty and irreverent should have been a dead giveaway.
My wife knew and was hoping against hope that it would sort of go away if she didn't confront me.
It didn't. I wound up exhausted, vomiting, missing appointments and, sad to say, curled up again thinking that life was simply too hard without alcohol and the withdrawals were something I could not overcome.
*
My wife booked an intervention appointment with a new doctor and I shamelessly fronted up and conceded defeat - I was an alcoholic who had gone ten months sober but had spent the last eight months glugging through a couple of bottles of wine a day - or more if the situation presented.
I am prescribed antabuse and have been taking it for a week now, with blood tests and a mental health plan to be confirmed. The new doctor is a mature woman who has let slip that drinking is a loss of control and lack of discipline - which it is for sure and I am in no position to argue the finer details of addiction and willpower in the position I am in.
Each day I have to go for an exercise period, which has been simply floating in the ocean baths and looking out to sea. I don't do laps like I used to - not yet anyway - just floating there letting the ocean take the heat out of my body seems to cool my mind. And, cautiously, she filled a script for two dozen valium so I can stop walking around the house through the night.
It's like I have to keep repeating this lesson until I learn it. I cannot have alcohol in my life. So I'm coming back from a false start and with the gut-wrenching immediacy of antabuse there just in case to keep me from touching alcohol.
At this early stage I am doing the same as my last recovery - sleeping and drinking plenty of water - and reading and preparing for a psychology plan and Alcoholics Anonymous. It is not for me to be questioning the type of the shoes when I am walking on glass - AA is open and free and exists.
*
Here we go again.
So I drank another dozen or so bottles of wine. Lately, I had migrated to light white wines so my teeth wouldn't stain and I wouldn't smell as much for family and at work. It sort of worked but the mere fact I was so chatty and irreverent should have been a dead giveaway.
My wife knew and was hoping against hope that it would sort of go away if she didn't confront me.
It didn't. I wound up exhausted, vomiting, missing appointments and, sad to say, curled up again thinking that life was simply too hard without alcohol and the withdrawals were something I could not overcome.
*
My wife booked an intervention appointment with a new doctor and I shamelessly fronted up and conceded defeat - I was an alcoholic who had gone ten months sober but had spent the last eight months glugging through a couple of bottles of wine a day - or more if the situation presented.
I am prescribed antabuse and have been taking it for a week now, with blood tests and a mental health plan to be confirmed. The new doctor is a mature woman who has let slip that drinking is a loss of control and lack of discipline - which it is for sure and I am in no position to argue the finer details of addiction and willpower in the position I am in.
Each day I have to go for an exercise period, which has been simply floating in the ocean baths and looking out to sea. I don't do laps like I used to - not yet anyway - just floating there letting the ocean take the heat out of my body seems to cool my mind. And, cautiously, she filled a script for two dozen valium so I can stop walking around the house through the night.
It's like I have to keep repeating this lesson until I learn it. I cannot have alcohol in my life. So I'm coming back from a false start and with the gut-wrenching immediacy of antabuse there just in case to keep me from touching alcohol.
At this early stage I am doing the same as my last recovery - sleeping and drinking plenty of water - and reading and preparing for a psychology plan and Alcoholics Anonymous. It is not for me to be questioning the type of the shoes when I am walking on glass - AA is open and free and exists.
*
Here we go again.
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