so the idea came from total disappointment. a stockpile of failures that did nothing but commence an eruption of personal realizations. ladies and gentlemen, i am an alcoholic. ladies and gentlemen, i am in total control. ladies and gentlemen, these things are not mutually exclusive. i will tell my story. if youre a reader of my crap, you know the beginning and most of the middle. i will paraphrase for the sake of new eyes. i drank a lot. i did a lot of stupid stuff and i decided to stop drinking for a while (30 days) in order to realign my life.
week one. slight headaches. problems falling asleep. problems waking up. and um... well, hmmmmmmm, loose stool? yeah, sure, that'll work. loss of inspiration and constant emotional withdrawal. expanding on these... the headaches weren't horrible. there were nothing compared to the pains i had lived through when i first gave up caffeine. i didn't even take anything for them, they were just there. the sleep was a major issue. i had become reliant on beer to put me to sleep every night. it slowed my brain down and put me at ease. now i was wired and thinking non stop. so i took Advil PM. at least 3 a night. that lasted 2 weeks. 2 fucking weeks before i settled into a routine that sent me off to slumber. 9:30pm, get in bed. play draw something, check my social networks and open my kindle app. 11pm i would finally start to fade. honestly, i started to worry about how much sleep aide i was popping down my gullet... thats the only reason i stopped. (see a trend?)
(splitting the paragraph purely for aesthetics) the stomach. man.... i eat like shit. always have. i joke the same joke that millions of jokers jokinly use and claim that i have a stomach of steel. i put just about anything edible up against my digestive system and come out ready for another fight. well, something about the evacuation of alcohol from my diet really changed the evacuation of my intestines. (you didnt sign up for this kind of detail did you?). a solid week of wishing for a solid week (so many poopy puns). ok, enough of that. what else was there... oh yeah, i didnt want to do lawn work, or grill food, or play video games, or write simply because all of those things are so closely tied to drinking beer. i had to do some of them because they just go hand in hand with being a responsible adult. but i hated it. i mean... how the fuck am i supposed to cut the grass without a beer? or eat a steak? MADNESS!!!
(just so you know, the first part of the first paragraph (up until "i will tell my story") was written drunk during the first weekend back on the sauce. the rest was started tonight sober. now i am on beer 3. inspiration)
somewhere in the middle of week 3 i had a breakdown of sorts. at that point i had explained, to what felt like an equivalent the population of mexico city, why i decided to take it easy for 30 days. in all of that explaining and reexplaining i noticed a trend... the same one i asked you about earlier. i quit caffeine when it got out of hand, i quit alcohol when it got out of hand, i took a 3 week break from XBOX not too long ago... i quit advil pm when it it got out of hand. i freaked out at the realization that concern of control over my life was ripping every fabric of enjoyment from said life.
FACTS.
1. I love coffee and mt dew.
2. I love beer.
3. I love video games
4. I love advil pm
5. I love control
with this squeezing the life out of my logic i decided it was time to jump ship. mere minutes after the revelation that i may be out of control in regards to being in control i was in the grocery store. Illy. wonderful coffee. i couldnt abandon the 30 day sobriety challenge but i had CRUSHED my 30 day challenge to quit caffeine. this was the time to prove to myself that i did not need to be in militant control over my life. i could let go of it and just watch it happen. a pot of coffee later, my eyes were twitching. i had let go.
so i took a month off. what did i learn? i can quit anything at anytime. i can even quit quitting. i am in total control and i managed that by walking away from the control. so when people ask me how living sober treated me, i shrug it off and say "it wasnt bad". deep down it meant so much more to me. deep down it ripped out the roots of obsession that were wrapped around my day to day life. a much bigger problem than any addictions that i may have had.
so cliche, so perfect... moderation is the key.
2 comments:
And this is what I mean when I say you get it. Love it. Especially because I was pulling into the meadery when I read it.lol
you claim to be an alcoholic at the beginning of the your writing, but I think you're just a guy who likes beer and made your body get used to have it all the time. if you think you need to have it or if you don't want to have it but something impels you to do it, start to worry about it.
moderation is not the key if you are ADDICTED to something. I quit smoking 7 months ago and believe me when I say the moment you have your drug, you get back to that shitty lifestyle again. Did I liked to smoke? NO. the whole time (13 years) I thought I did liked, but how can you claim to like something you want to quit all the time? Is like being married to someone you can't even look at just because you think you love her, but do you?
but the thing is: don't confuse addiction with abuse. ou como diríamos aqui, não confunda cu com bunda!
beijo!
;)
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