Day 591

A quiet day around the house made a good start to the new year.

Nothing particularly special just quiet reflection and puttering: a little cooking, a little cleaning, a little laundry. I always make a few resolutions but I never talk about them because they're only for me.

Many, including some people I know, have made sobriety a resolution and I wish them every success possible. It seems really overwhelming at first and the voices try so hard to pull one back into the drinking fold - the ones from actual people all around and the even louder mental ones. I know they pulled me back so many times I thought it was just a flat-out impossibility that I'd ever be a non-drinker. Thought it for years, in fact...and thought I wouldn't be able to have any kind of a fun life without it either.

I was wrong. 

At first it's hard as hell - the voices are loud, the change is huge and after the second day you don't _keep_ feeling physically better enough for it to be the big motivator.  Treating yourself as if you have the flu and doing the barest of bare minimum anything plus eating whatever your heart desires is a good way to go. Some people like replacement drinks; some don't - I already drank a lot of iced tea but the entire first two weeks I made sure to fancy it up at night with a wedge of real lemon and a splash of seltzer water both as a special "good for you - you're doing the hard thing" and to satisfy the evening-ritual component of it all. If your "now it's my relaxing free time" started, like mine, with the making of the first drink, then making a nonalcoholic first drink helps.

Ferpitysake don't try doing anything ELSE. None of this diet-and-exercise-too turn-my-whole-life-around stuff.  Been there, done that, crashed and burned big-time. If you drink enough to be reading a sobriety blog then JUST quitting drinking is going to be plenty enough resolution.

Everybody's path is different and they're all tough but the farther along you go the easier it gets. For me Days 4 and 10 were the very hardest...but just past 30 days and again around 50 days were also very vulnerable times for me.  So vulnerable that even after I decided I wanted to quit "for real" I had several attempts fail in that zone.  Getting past the two-month mark though...that's huge. Three is even better. I didn't use AA but now I really see why they say "90 meetings in 90 days" because once you get to the three month mark it's a whole new world.

It's worth it.  No matter what the Drink Now voice in your head says to the contrary. There are times it's hard, times it's easy and times it's just plain boring but life just becomes so much more _live-able_. All the other problems are still around - as Robin Williams said, "I'm still the same old asshole; I've just got fewer dents in my car" - but they become more manageable when you don't have the constant up-and-down of drinking messing with your mind. I know that sounds like Pollyanna bullshit garbage because I used to think "ghAWD what bullshit garbage" too...but then one day I looked around and realized "y'know....my life is just plain working better these days."

Sleep gets a lot better too. Not right away -- I'd have to go back through the archives to see when -- but boy once it does that's a huge plus right there.

In fact, I'm going to go get some right now. Happy first day of 2018, all.