SUNDAY 23RD OCTOBER 2022
Work has been horrendous this week and I’ve had to dig deep to try to retain the positive thought patterns I’ve been working on lately. I hate having this new-found peace and positivity rocked by other people. On the plus side, this is just the sort of situation that would have had me justifying mid-week G&Ts in the past but I haven’t felt inclined to go there at all.
MY WHY
As I mentioned last week, part of my obsessive moderation involved recording my alcohol units daily. I would start the year by recording any units I imbibed but, as soon as I hit a period where the units mounted up shamefully, I’d just stop. For the past 2 years, I’ve forced myself not to stop recording once I’d gone off the rails. Yes, there are months where I’ve gone OTT for whatever reason, but there are also regular periods of abstinence, which I would always figure evened things out. The point I’m making is that, all things considered, my alcohol consumption probably wasn’t all that high – higher certainly than the occasional drinker but no-where near the 1 or 2 bottles of wine EVERY night that so many people in the sobersphere talk about. I regularly offered to drive to social occasions, just for ease, and that increased after I’d had kids to the point that any family gatherings that involved me drinking were the exception, rather than the norm. That is probably why one of my sisters laughed in January 2019, when I confided in her – drunkenly – that I felt I really needed to stop drinking. In fact, far from being relieved that I’d finally gotten a grip, my intention to quit drinking for a whole year was mostly met by surprise from my nearest and dearest. To be honest, I might not have properly understood it myself, had I not come across the term “cognitive dissonance” when I first read This Naked Mind. That was a total light bulb moment – suddenly I understood that the amount of alcohol I drank wasn’t necessarily the issue in my case, it was the fact that I was drinking more than I, myself felt comfortable with. It was a relief to know that I didn’t have to look further to justify the need I felt to do something about my relatively minor drinking problem – the very existence of cognitive dissonance between my beliefs and my actions was causing me discomfort and that was justification enough to stop. I’m not sure how this will play out in the future, should I decide to return to some level of drinking. Will all that I now know and feel about alcohol make it impossible for me to enjoy even moderate, occasional amounts without feeling that intense discomfort? It’s still a long way to go before I have to cross that bridge – for now I’ll just enjoy the peace that comes from the perfect alignment of my beliefs and actions at this present moment.
Theme Tune: Confusion by ELO