Shaking Hands with an Alcoholic

Photo by  Boudewijn Huysmans  on  Unsplash Before I'd left elementary school, I realized there were polarizing forces within me. Half of me violently hoped to never be like my mother. The other half felt resigned to the same destruction she created. My mother was an alcoholic. I hated her. There was a time before I severed tied with her that I tried desperately to find out why, to find out how. How did it happen to her? How did she get lost to alcohol? When did it start? And why? From the few people I had available to ask, it seemed that her drinking started in high school. She was the prettiest. She was the most popular. The alcohol amplified her glow and covered for her lack of self-esteem. She got trapped in the banal way that so many do. The path from party girl to alcoholic is imperceptibly downhill and paved with black ice. The drinks made socializing silkier. The drinks made problems fuzzy. The drinks felt warm. The drinks made her forget. Sip and swallow, then aga...

  Photo by  Roman Mager  on  Unsplash Since I have an actual recorded quit date for my latest round of sobriety, I decided to download a sobriety tracking app. With no work on my end, it can tell me how many days I've been sober. The app even gives me virtual chips for each month without alcohol. Additionally, my sobriety app follows how much money I've saved and units of alcohol I've not consumed while sober. This last calculation delivered a surprise to me. I already knew that I was consuming insane amounts of hard alcohol. I was drunk 24/7, quite literally. Check this out. Today I'm 2 months and 5 days sober, according to my app. Calculating at the rate I was drinking, I would have consumed 1558 units in that time. Divide that by the 14 units we're advised to not exceed in a week, and you get 111 weeks. Divide 111 weeks by 52 weeks in a year, and you'll see that the alcohol consumption I've saved in two months is equal to what is recommended I not exceed...

Photo by  Nik Shuliahin  on  Unsplash Day One of Sobriety: the Aftermath, aka I Feel Like Roadkill The 7th of January, my first day sober, didn't dawn as a joyful new era in life with a bouncy red ball of sun bursting into the sky, birds singing with joy, and pep in my step. Rather, it was the first day of my stepping into the light after a long illness that had left my physically and psychologically beaten. I was not filled with optimism or determination. I was exhausted and depressed and knew I had to face those things and my old foe of insomnia without my drug of choice.  Day one of recovery looked less like waking up in Oz and more like coming to my senses after a tornado had ripped through my life. Habits, Health There was no immediate drama in the wake of the storm. I realized that I'd trashed my body and needed to care for it gently to return to health. The first step was to learn how to drink fluids again. I leaned heavily on icy cold sports drinks because th...