Okay, meetings work.

After 2 1/2 years of semi-solitary sobriety, I went to a meeting Every Day This Week.  How is it?  Wondeful, exhausing, a relief, painful, calming, heartbreaking.  In other words, I am in recovery. 

It is wonderful to see that so many people understand how it feels to try sobriety solo.   And how it fails spectacularly.  Though I have technically never "gone out" since I first embraced sobriety, I honestly feel like I am just starting the process of getting sober.  And I love it.  The tears, the fatigue, the insecurity and uncertaintly - I love all of it because just like I was on my knees begging for help from some still-undefined-greater-being, I am on my knees again begging for guidance and support in trying to recover from this still-very-present disease.  I love that I am honest enough and grounded enought to ask for help when I desperately need it.

Though intellectually I have always understood and accepted the fact that alcoholism is a brain disease, a chemical imbalance, a neurological disorder, it's really just sinking in now. Just because I haven't had a drink... well, that's saved me a lot of further pain and physical decline, but it hasn't even begun to help the disease lessen it's grip on me.  I now understand the "thinking disease" phrases.  My alcoholism manifests iteslf in so many ways - incredible indecisiveness, unpredictable outbursts of anger, unmanageable frustration, and obsessions with replacements - exercise (I have run 7 half-marathons in sobriety), my career (I am wildly obsessed with additional graduate degrees... though I already have two), and of course my nightly indulgence in chocolate (hey, at least it's not wine or, as it was for a year, a pint of ben and jerrys).  I so deeply, so sincerely, so humbly want to be free of all this.  I want to get better.  I want to be my best self.

Ah well, enough for now.  I am just happy today to have begun creating meaningful daily recovery rituals - meetings, meditations, readings (so many wonderful blogs!) and writing.  Have a blissful night, all....

A new kind of surrender

Wow, I thought I was done with the whole falling-to-my-knees-and-crying-for-help scenario.  I did that 2 1/2 years ago when I just could Not Continue Drinking anymore.  Could not lie to myself that it was romantic to sit up every night with two bottles of pinor noir, tossing around the same old illusions and fantasies about what I would do with my life...maybe...someday.  The reality of barely holding on to a mildly functional life (very mildly) was impossible to ignore.  So I stopped.  Wonderful, right? 

Well, maybe if I had been able to commit to regular meetings, designate a home group, get a sponsor, do the steps... maybe I wouldn't be on my knees again, feeling just as heartbroken as I did back when I drained that last wine glass.  Though I loathe the expression "dry drunk", (how unromantic!  how unsexy!), that is clearly what I am.  So, despite the time I've accumulated in not drinking, I really feel like counting days from Sunday, four days ago, when I walked into a meeting (first time in - wait for it - SIX months) and made a committment  to get my ass into a chair as often as humanly possible.  I make myself speak, sit in the middle, and stay long enough afterwards to get a few phone numbers (yet to call, but progress not perfection right?). 

So, this blog - which I have longed to do for ages - is a necessity for me.  I need to write, track my effors, and communicate with others in recovery any way I can.  As devestated as I feel, I am so so hopeful and very blissed to embark on this journey, finally...