Day 1, Again

I woke up this morning feeling like crap. My head ached. I was dehydrated and tired. I hate feeling this way! And I thought, “What is wrong with me? Why can’t I control how much I drink?”

My boyfriend, Bruce, got up and made coffee as I lay there in frustration and disappointment with myself again. As we drank our coffee on the porch, we had the same conversation we regularly have around our drinking, how we need to stop and all the basic reasons we need to stop. We committed to each other again this morning to stop drinking. It was only about a month ago that he was on board with completely stopping for 100 days, rather than trying to control how much we drank or cutting back on how much we drank. He finally was on the same page with me that cutting back and controlling our consumption wasn’t working. In the past, we usually didn’t even make it through day one. We would end our day with a bottle of wine and think we are doing good that we only shared one bottle of wine. Nutz!

How did we get here? How did our drinking get out of control?

Well, I think drinking became our hobby and a habit that has gotten out of control. Drinking is also a very acceptable and promoted habit in our society. We enjoy it, and we see all the good things around drinking wine.

Honestly, we have gotten a lot better at controlling our drinking than where we were at the beginning of this year. But even though it is better, it has only made it clearer that we can’t control our drinking and that we need to really stop and become sober. That is a daunting thought.

“One isn’t enough, and one is too much.” a wise, sober man told me.

I plan for this to be my last day one and that this is my sticking day. So much so that I am going to share my journey with you and those who are interested. What I hope to get out of sharing this journey with you is that I help others on their journey to a healthy, sober life.

I’ve done a lot of work to get here today, my day 1 for the unknown number of times, too many to count. The only other time it worked for me was when I was pregnant with my son in 2012. During that time, I remember feeling healthy, and I want to feel healthy for the rest of my life. I want to grow old and grow healthy for myself, for my son, for Bruce, and our future.

I am not pregnant this time, but I have this new understanding of my inner child, my essence. So I am not drinking anymore to nurture and grow my inner child and strengthen my “sage.” This is something I learned recently while working with my Life Coach, Stef (dreamlifecoaching.com). When we started working together, he had me start Positive Intelligence training, strengthening mental fitness. I highly recommend it to everyone! It has changed my life, and I can tell you more about that later.

Today I have more tools than I had a month ago, and each day I am finding more tools to help me on my sobriety journey. I have a list of podcasts about sobriety. I signed up for the Sobriety Starter Kit by Hello Someday coaching. And this morning, I found another tool, The Alcohol Experiment.

So, my last attempt at day 1 was just about a month ago, and I made it a whopping 12 days. What happened? Well, I caved. We had something big to celebrate. We were buying a home and moving to the mountains, a huge dream we both have been working towards. At 2 am, I was in full regret. My heart was racing, my head pounding, and I thought to myself, “never again!” So I guess that the next day was really the last attempt at day 1, but a few days later, I was back to drinking every night again. Some nights were controlled with only two glasses of wine, but other nights there were one too many glasses of wine. Last night got out of control, and when Bruce opened the third bottle, I was frustrated, but I joined him for yet another glass of wine. I plan on that being the last glass of wine.

I plan to share with you my journey of how I am going to navigate a sober life. I want to share this with you because we all need and connect with different individuals, and finding a connection along your journey is key. So if you connect with me, that is great, and if not, I hope you keep looking and find your connection to get you through your sober journey.