Shaking Hands with an Alcoholic

Photo by  Ahmad Odeh  on  Unsplash Or Should I Say, My Latest Dance? I'm now two months sober. But I've been through this too many times to say with even a shred of believable confidence that I won't slip up again. Don't get me wrong. I want this sobriety. I wanted it with equal sincerity every time in the past, too.  What did my last day of drinking look like? It was January 6, the day of the insurrection in the US. My quitting on that date was merely coincidence. Rather handy, though, as I've never previously taken note of my last day. My quitting didn't come on the heels of a big epiphany. You see, I couldn't go cold turkey. I was so interminably dependent upon alcohol that even after I knew to my bones that I could no longer drink, I had to continue to do so in order to prevent myself dying from the withdrawal. I had to agonizingly cut back for weeks before I could cease entirely, which felt like sharing a bed with someone I knew wanted to kill me. What ...

  Photo by  Kristina Flour  on  Unsplash I'm an alcoholic. But I've never said those words out loud. I drink alone. I hide. I shame myself. I'm just like the mother I loathed and judged. I was never a party animal, never a connoisseur, never a social drinker. The alcohol quieted my swelling tides of depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Soothing as a lullaby, it entranced me into lowering the defenses I'd built as the child of an alcoholic. Every time I threw it a treat, it grew a bit stronger, learned from my slips. Over time, that innocent thing which had given me comfort like a kitten morphed into a monster I had to wrestle for my life. Today, I am two months sober. I've tried to get clean before, more times than I can count. I won't be guilty of using magical thinking this time.  There are, however, two things that are different about this go-round. This time, I came within a blade's edge of killing myself. I could feel my body disintegrating rapidly day by...