I'm going through all my old posts organising them into new pages - one page full of posts for every month of the first year of my sobriety. It's so interesting to go back and be reminded about all the things I don't miss about being a boozer. It's so easy to forget as time passes and the new sober way of living becomes the norm.
I don't miss having painkillers dotted all around the house. Most important was the packet I kept in my top bedside drawer. I'd reach out in the dark at 3am to grab a couple and swallow them down with the water I always made sure to take to bed (in my sloppy state). Sometimes I wonder how our bedroom must have smelled in the mornings after a binge. Often I wonder how my kids must have smelt wine on my breath all the time.
I don't miss that panicky feeling when the wine had almost run out.
I certainly don't miss staring at the back of the toilet door thinking 'I'm boozed again'. I don't miss sitting on the sofa late at night by myself full of wine, feeling like a dead weight, watching tele I would forget .. too sluggish to get up and go to bed. I do not miss the 3am wake-up. Head pounding, mouth dry, bladder full, feeling so guilty and dysfunctional. I don't miss hungover mornings, feeling like my kids are screaming loudly through breakfast on purpose (as if they knew I had a hangover and couldn't deal with any noise).
I don't miss any of that bloody boozy bollocks.
I love getting into bed sober now. I love my morning mug of green tea. I love when tiredness can be assessed simply as 'not enough sleep' or 'crazy busy day' rather than 'that bottle of wine last night can't have helped'.
My clever friend the nurse thinks the world is on the cusp of a big turnaround with regard to alcohol. That slowly but surely societies around the globe are going to start turning on booze as we have on cigarettes. 'It's a poison' she said to me simply. Alcohol is a poison.
Check out this article about an expert in global health at the University of Copenhagen. They say about alcohol "this isn't a harmless staple of living. This isn't bread or water. This is ethyl alcohol, or ethanol. We know it can be addictive, we know it's harmful to our health and we know it causes an enormous burden to our society. The alcohol industry may spend large sums to help us resist questioning our relationship with alcohol, but lets be honest - this relationship is truly bizarre."
It's a big-ass ship to turn around though.. but maybe alcohol's time will be up soon. And if that's the case I'll be happily standing on the sober shoreline waving to all the drinkers on their boozy boats going; "Come on over guys! It's fine over here in sober-land, really!"
Love, Mrs D xxx
