SUNDAY 23RD APRIL 2023
Another uneventful week and not much to report but I can see from looking at the date as I type that I have now been 10 months sober. 10 down, 2 to go. Funnily enough, the shift in the balance of the numbers doesn’t fill me with joy as I might’ve thought – it’s more akin to dread. Time is running out and I have not yet achieved everything I set out to achieve during this year of abstinence.
MY WHY
I’ve heard it said many times that, if nothing changes, nothing changes. There was a time when I actually took pleasure in asserting that I was someone who didn’t like change. I think it felt safe and I was pleased to have identified a part of myself and been able to put a label on it. So where did that get me, huh? Looking back, I can see that being someone with a fondness for alcohol has been part of my identity for all of my adult life. My brother once referred to me and one of my sisters as Alcky Hall and Nicky Teen. She was the smoker, I was the drinker – in reality, we were both doing both but I preferred my nickname. A few years ago, I read a memoir by someone who had cut out sugar. She claimed she had always prided herself in being the girl with more champagne in her fridge than food and she talked about mourning the fact that she would now never be able to go to Oktoberfest or sip cocktails on the beach again. I totally identified with that and could not get my head around why she should be prepared to change so much just to cut out sugar. I distinctly remember the first time I contemplated an alcohol-free lifestyle. I was visiting a friend on a quiet Saturday night, after a particularly raucous Friday night. I can’t remember what had happened the night before but I remember saying to him, as a result, that I could see that there would come a time when I would stop drinking. He told me about a friend of his who had made that very decision – he’d decided he just couldn’t handle it any more and had been alcohol-free for some time. We were all in our late twenties at the time and I was in awe at such a young man taking such drastic action. That conversation was as far as I got then but I’ve always remembered it and here I am, so many years later, still wondering what it would be like to cut loose forever. I couldn’t have done it then and, I’m still not convinced that I want to do it now but what I am clear about is that I don’t want to be classed as a drinker any more. I’ve been reading a lot of self-help stuff recently and one of the things that keeps coming up is that, if you want to change your life, you have to change your paradigm, you have to start acting like the person you want to become – fake it till you make it, I guess. So, this week, as well as not drinking, I have been dragging myself out of bed in time to go out for a run and get home again in time to wake the kids up for school. That’s who I want to be – the kind of person who gets up and exercises Monday – Friday, come rain, hail or shine. And that, most definitely doesn’t go hand-in-hand with being a drinker – at least, not at my age!
Theme Tune: Changes by David Bowie