In the time since I stopped drinking, each day and evening has been different.  Some easy, some hard.  Evenings are when I would drink, if I’m going to struggle it will be in the evening.  I’ve discovered that changing my patterns of life make it much easier to not think about drinking.  If I keep busy, do things outside of my usual routine, I can shut down the voice in my head telling me to drink.  Change the patterns.  Stop living on automatic pilot.

The other night I got broadsided when I left a weekly evening activity.  I should not have been surprised, but I was.  It had a been a few days since I’d felt that gut wrenching urge to have a drink. I got in my car and wanted a big glass of wine so badly!  The feeling was overwhelming and made me sad. In days of old I would pop into the store for wine on the way home if I knew there was little or none at home.  Not this night.  This night I had to come up with some other way to decompress, I was so wound up.  I wanted wine to help me calm down.  Not this night.

I told my husband how I was feeling, so he could help me be accountable.  I ended up pouring a tall glass of milk (the idea of drinking wine after milk is nasty and a good deterrent for me), watching a sporting event, knitting a bit and then headed to bed.

I’m still having trouble sleeping through the night but I can say that I appreciate no longer having that fuzzy, thick headed feeling in the morning!  Patterns, breaking old ones and forming new ones is part of this journey.

P.S. Don’t worry about me if I don’t post every day.  I actually had trouble forming my ideas for this Post.  I found it helpful to write every day recently, but I think also that I might take a breather once in a bit to let things process until I really have something to say.  Till next time.