…is a beneficial, if not essential, exercise, which frees the mind from the cataract of useless information and cacophony of conflicting ideas roaming unfettered inside a human brain.
Respite offers the opportunity to assemble things in an order which is easier to process for the individual and to make sense of the pile of notes strewn across the desk.
I’m not complaining. Far from it. Its the way I work which, in turn, works for me, and if that’s all I have to worry about on a Sunday, I’m in fortunate position. Almost 6 years ago it would have been an entirely different story, as I awoke each day from ethanol induced unconsciousness to begin another day in the pursuit of the magic potion which would appease the source of my pain.
Recovery from addiction is about finding what works for the individual. There are no tried and tested miracle cures unfortunately and it can take many years of misery inducing relapses to reach the stage where it feels that the right thing to be is sober.
This raised the question for me ” How many rock bottoms are there ?”
Because, just when I thought I had gone as low, physically and morally, as I could go, lo and behold, there were still more back streets available to explore. And on many occasions I did, without finding the the mythical, repugnant rock bottom which would be so alien to my inner self that it would propel me towards sobriety. My rock bottom, if such a thing exists, was the onset of a deeply felt hatred of myself.
I had no pressure to stop this time. My partner enjoys ( a crucial word ) a drink. The police and sheriff’s officers weren’t breathing down my neck for once. Life was probably as good as I had known it during the previous forty years but my main goal in life was still the procurement of alcohol from any given source. However, the situation where I bounced back from a particularly strenuous session after a few of what had caused me to feel ill in the first place, deserted me.
It’s substitute was something I hadn’t experienced with such intensity in all my years of addiction. A profound self loathing. 
Gone were the self justifying get out clauses. No longer could I seriously find a morsel of a reason to drink. And, believe me, I tried to, because I wasn’t used to feeling this way and it was disturbing to find that my panacea was no longer effective. So with some reluctance, I stopped, and as time went by I started to like myself and the way I was developing once more.
Have I made things difficult for myself by not using outside agencies like AA or the various counselling services ? That would be hypothesizing, and I won’t say that things have been easy, especially in the early days, but for 20 years my drinking was interjected with lengthy visits to rehab, psychiatric hospitals, AA meetings and counselling. A jail sentence did nothing to quell my alcoholic ambitions. However, I would never discourage anyone from availing themselves of those agencies, ( except jail ) because I believe that these experiences helped me to achieve my long term goal in many ways.
I wish I knew the combination or held the key to the safe where the secret of sobriety is stored because so many good people I have known haven’t made it to this stage and were never given the chance to properly experience a sober life. This stark reality fills me with deep sadness and lets me know just how lucky I am ( and luck played a major part ) to have been one of the survivors who found what works for them.
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more to come…
Everyone does it at some point during a normal day but the pleasure of waking up to a new day, after a good rest, still eludes me.
I feel drained and lethargic and I procrastinate shamelessly. Sometimes its an effort to do the simplest tasks and like a martyr I drag myself out for my daily walk around the village. I don’t involve myself with others as that would potentially mean extra work and extra thinking which can be painful at times, as I wrestle still with the ghosts of my past.
Having put some distance between us and a certain third party may have let me relax. Perhaps the subconscious knowledge that when the phone rang it wasn’t for me, helped. We were too far removed from any situation which might require our attention to be able to do anything immediately. Now we are back in the fray and subject to all that goes along with making oneself available to help an ailing elderly relative with mental health issues.
This search has given me intense feelings of joy and, sometimes, of sadness. It pains me to see how many beautiful animals have been discarded in severe states of neglect by their owners but I feel encouraged by the many agencies which exist to pick up the pieces.
My next step will be to save up some money which I can make available when the right dog makes their self known to me. Gone are the days when dogs were passed around like worthless chattels to be ill treated and misused, thank goodness. Although it doesn’t work in my favour, I’m pleased to see these charges which will deter unsuitable owners.
I must also mention that, most days I don’t feel 100% well within myself, and don’t particularly look forward to dragging myself through another period of waking hours. However, when I view the posts of other members’ dogs and the videos, I suddenly find myself grinning, cheshire cat fashion, having forgotten all my trials and tribulations. Maybe Facebook isn’t so bad after all.
This usually means having a late dinner or staying up till the early morning hours until I find myself unable to absorb any more. Meanwhile , life still keeps revolving. A little bit of it revolves around me, then my life, in turn, revolves around another, and at times like this, international affairs pale into insignificance.
When it was installed in the space I had vacated for it, my first thought was that I didn’t qualify for such a desk. This was a grown up’s desk. And it had drawers. What on earth was I going to do with drawers ? At one stage in my life, I know, they would have been full of the remnants of another drunken episode, but now, I’ll have to organise my life into drawers.
A diagnosis which I gratefully accepted at the time from someone far more educated and superior than I. Or was my shyness because I was afraid of what I might discover ?
Or, it might not work at all, and in that eventuality we would have to try something else. A friend with inside knowledge had told me that this might happen because psychiatry was a bit hit and miss when it came to medication.
However , whilst I was busy absorbing all the information being disseminated by my computer, the thought briefly occurred to me that maybe I don’t need all this medication. Maybe I’m like the people in the documentary who had been administered the medication erroneously or for nefarious and financial purposes. I’m not about to find that out, I don’t need any more pain, but it opens up a whole new avenue of discussion with my GP, next visit.
If I see an invitation to enter a competition in my inbox , then I go for it. There are all sorts of wonderful things on offer that I never used to covet, but now find myself in a state of “want” at times. Of course, I have to deal with the disappointment of not winning, after building up anticipation of the possibility of welcoming a new gadget into my life, and luckily I get over that bit quite quickly.
However, he liked to gamble. He had his weekly flutter on the horses and spent a budgeted amount on lottery tickets. I don’t know if he won, but I’m sure he would have told us about significant win. He was convinced that the big prize was going to be his some day and all his worries would be over. Sadly he never got to find out.
Its an unbelievable figure to comprehend and totally unexpected, given the reason I started doing this back in January. Huge thanks to everyone who has visited and, hopefully, enjoyed reading the content.
What it does do, is keep me at ground level most of the time. It helps to keep me from stepping on to the elevator of depression and heading downwards, with no knowledge at which level it will stop. And god forbid it should get jammed in between floors and help has to be summoned. So, being sober and writing this blog allows me to examine my feelings honestly if something is troubling me.
An Ex Drunk's View From The Driving Seat 