Sitting here with a mug of green tea. My body is aching from having been to the gym three times this week - three! A marathon effort given I had 10 weeks off exercising while I crunched to finish my thesis.
I just have to let it go now and try to relax. Have been told it will take 3 months for me to get grade back so I do just have to let. it. go. Somehow. Let it go and figure out what to do next.
Maybe my next task should be write a book about my journey in sobriety. What shall I call it? "Confessions of a Boozy Housewife"? Or maybe "How blogging saved my liver"? Or what about "What, me alcoholic?" Ha ha!! But seriously I am going to need to think of a new plan eventually.
In the meantime I've been cooking up a storm and I have a huge pile of novels next to my bed and am also dipping in and out of the brilliant recovery book Belle's been talking recently. Recover to Live. It is bloody marvellous resource and exactly what I was looking for when I first got sober and was frantically looking around for books and information to educate myself about alcohol addiction.
I did find a few books that really helped me along and also found some useful information off the tele (!) from the likes of Dr Drew and Oprah (!!). When I think back now about what I didn't know when I first decided to remove alcohol from my life it's astounding. I honestly thought I was simply an aging party girl whose drinking habit was getting a little out of control and I just had to learn how to not drink alcohol and everything else would continue on as normal. I didn't realise my steady heavy drinking was actually all about how I'd been choosing to deal with emotions all my adult life and what I would really be learning in sobriety was how to deal with shit raw. (That's a technical term - 'how to deal with shit raw'. Not.)
What I mean is I had to learn, and am still learning, how to sit with uncomfortable feelings, or go through hard (sad, angry, stressful) times without reaching for an 'out' or numbing away the pain.
When I look back over the past year and a half it is bloody amazing what I have discovered and I am sooooooo grateful to myself making the decision to remove alcohol and sticking to it. I wouldn't want to be anywhere but where I am today.
Anyway this book by Christopher Kennedy Lawford is a massive tome bursting at the seams with loads of information from so many clever, educated and knowledgeable recovery experts. If you have a question about anything to do with addiction the answer will be here. It's great. And I really like that it calls itself a 'self-treatment guide'. Self treatment is all I've done so far.
Actually that's a big fat lie. Self treatment and the undisputed, undeniable, unbelievable support of a community of online bloggers and readers. Kudos to you lot too.
Love, Mrs D xxx
