Tigers on a Gold Leash




We crave a different kind of buzz...

Day 89 Sober

This is the danger time for me.  I know my alcoholic self well enough by now - I can work through the early stages of sobriety.  I can roll with the cruel self hatred and cold claminess of detox and waking up with the real, full world there each morning.  I can go to the meetings early on whilst the shame of drunkeness is there with me in recent memory.  I can do it and go through it - have done it a few cycles now.  But then I get around 100 days and I start slipping....

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Since Christmas I have been going to Yoga for pre dawn salutes to the sun at 530am-7am.  It is barefaced reality waking up and dressing and then walking into the studio and sitting down for the Yogi to toy with our bodies and minds.  For me it is a revelation - the frustration and pent up anger and hurt justs melts out of my body with each twist and lunge and as I slip back into my Birkenstocks at the end of the class - I feel clean and clear.

I've done seventeen classes in around sixty days - I'm going three mornings a week - and never felt as supple and open in the last decade as I do now.  Plus, I am falling asleep by eight o'clock most nights, not watching TV so much and feeling very in touch with my body.  It is right for me - it is my new religion.  I am yogi.

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I go to an outpatient group meeting most weeks, where I get a chance to talk openly and without shame about living in recovery.  There are twenty or so others, most (not so)fresh from detox, but a quarter or so are long term sober and we are getting to know each other.  It is calm and deliberate and the psychologists run the ship with a steady but firm hand.

Each week there is a new cohort of fresh drunks - mostly from the mental health unit but also with legal shit getting them recommended to the program.  And we listen to each other.  It is also working for me.

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I listen to Royals - it has a calm, metronomic certainty and shows her bold confidence beyond her years. I love the imagery behind "tigers on a gold leash" - the decadent wastefulness and utter recklessness of that uber lifestyle reminds me of how I used to see myself as a high stepping drunk.  Faking that it was alright, fingernail-biting daylight waiting for the next time to drink, the burden of being drunk all the time - or chasing away the anxiety.

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Now I am appreciating with my Yoga how sustained practice leads to a different level of awareness - and how my self-knowledge at Day 89 is completely different to day one, or day 21.  To build on that number and let go enough to feel who I really am is terrifying but basically where I have to go.

I have a new project underway and there is no scope in the business plan for me to be a fumbling drunk not answering the phone.  I know it is all coming together and I am feeling face-to-the-floor humble but also confident that this is where my life goes at this stage.  The time for fooling myself and letting everyone down is over and I am declaring it.

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I always keep alcoholic self help books by my bed so I can go to sleep with some little nuggets of sober wisdom.  And there are some really sobering truths out there - I was sharing it with the group about how alcoholism is a relapse based thing - that in the vast majority of cases there is relapse and the patient sort of leaves the situation only to turn up somewhere else drunk again at some point.  I shared that our goal is not to look at it as though we will never drink again - the literature says I probably will at some stage - but instead look at it as delaying that drink for as long as possible - like years. 

The counsellor said with a solemn face that most graduates of the group do not ever come back and the counsellors don't ever really get a firm sense of closure in the sense "Well, there's one we cured" if you know what I mean.  It's like putting little fish back into the ocean and just hoping that they will not be eaten - no too soon anyway.  It was really empowering to know that each of us drunks has that power right there in our hands every single day from here on - whether to allow ourselves to be eaten - or to swim on and live a little longer.

4 comments:

  1. I'm coming up on 8 yrs, and find myself back in the place (geographically) where I last drank...I wrote a letter to myself on the plane here, to read if temptation visits, outlining everything I have achieved and gained in those 8 years. I hope I won't need it, but if I do, I hope it works.

    So glad to read that you are doing so well. Made me smile big and broad. Yoga rocks. Try daily Tibetans at home maybe? Gives me great energy. Google it - there are heaps of vids etc.

    Respect and regards
    x

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    1. There's something about old paces where you have so much alcoholic history. For me it can be the smell of the carpet or the sun through the window at a particular time of day. Good Luck and keep yourself a priority.

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  2. I'm not an addict or alcoholic (well maybe a food addict) but I do know that I'm healthiest when I am aware of my intentions. It has certainly been a life changer. I also learned that the word conversion from it's roots simply means to change your mind or perspective......I found that to be very helpful

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    1. I know that just bumbling along through life "chasing butterflies" and the next thing that happens along does not work for me. A focus and solid meaningfulness is what it is all about.

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