metta-ish - Tumblr blog

metta-ish · 8 years ago

Text

Day 6 into sobriety

August 21st marks the 6th day since I decided to kick alcohol completely and attempt to live a sober life. I started with the book “This Naked Mind”, and whoa! Part of addiction that people don’t realize is that its embedded in your subconscious mind, the “behind the scenes but running everything” part of the human brain. If you want to repair the motherboard, you gotta get in tune with the subconscious and install a new program. Personally, just reading “This Naked Mind” has helped greatly with taking away the desire to drink.

  I have been contemplating and verbally expressing my desire to cut back, or to do a 30 day no drinking “detox” for about three years now, all to no avail. Let me be clear about something first; I didn’t (don’t) drink everyday, and because I consume alcohol daily, I didn’t suspect that I had an alcohol addiction problem. My normal routine of drinking was drinking on the weekends, holidays, social gatherings, vacation, social events, and very rarely a work week night. On a normal night out with my friends, I could consume anywhere from 4-8 beers, with maybe a shot or two in between. This could be on a Friday or Saturday night, sometimes both. I drank when I was upset, when I was happy, to celebrate, to relax, to socialize, or to heal a broken heart.

  Now I want to state my reasons for giving up alcohol. Jason Vale in his book “Kick The Drink...Easily” expresses that its counterintuitive to make a list of reasons why to stop drinking, as the drink already knows the reasons to stop drinking, but for the purpose of documenting my journey, I will list a few. The main reason being for my overall health. I want to have better mental clarity, make better decisions, feel less depressed, better handle my emotions in a more organic way. When I’m not drinking I practice yoga, read books on self improvement, teach myself new skills such as sewing, cook healthy vegan food, meditate, the occasional writing to express my emotions, and conducting creative ways to spend time with my son. All these things are things I identify with, the type of person I always want to be, however, I consider myself a beginner at nearly all of these things because instead of focusing my time on things I love, I hold myself back when I weekend binge and spend 3-4 days with a hangover recovering and by the time I feel recouped, its the weekend all over and my binging continues.

  I am a completely different person when I begin to drink, even right before I start drinking. I’ll be at work, so excited to grab a drink with my friends that I get anxious and when I get anxious I don’t eat, so I start the night with an empty stomach and already dehydrated. Once I hit the bar, I can be out anywhere from 4 to 12 hours (yes, that’s correct) drinking the entire time, by the time I get home and fall asleep its well past 2AM. I’m a natural early riser, so even if I go to bed at 5 am, I’m awake by 7:30. As alcohol is a natural depressant, it affects me as soon as I awake from the first initial around of sleep, which is why I cant fall back asleep to begin with. The feeling of hungover, guilt, sadness, trying to recollect my memory restricts my brain from falling back to sleep. The entire day is filled with sadness and guilt, avoiding all responsibilities and opting to head out for a Bloody Mary to cure the hangover, which turns into another night of heavy drinking.

   My addiction is not aligning with who I know I truly am, or capable of becoming. I have no idea what kind of person I really am, I’m 30 years old and just now wanting to get to know the real me, the sober-hippy-love everyone to death-yoga loving Sierra. This isn’t just my recovery process, but also the journey of falling in love with my sober self.

  What's progress without visual documentation? A photo of myself 6 days sober. Left without makeup, right with makeup. I'm hoping my skin improves and I lose some weight.   