You Don’t Start From The Beginning…

Having a quiet rainy weekend here. House guests are visiting family in Central Oregon and the house has been quiet since about noon yesterday. Nice! For the first time in two months I had the kitchen entirely to myself, no one trying to barge by me to get hot water while I’m up to my armpits in raw chicken…..four more weeks til they move out….I can make it…

So in my attempt to begin socializing again, I invited my friend C. to have coffee with me downtown prior to my hair appointment. C. is my friend who is also sober, for the last 4 years or so. After catching up on all the other bits, eventually sobriety came up in the conversation– like it does and always will when you are talking to someone else who is sober.

C. went to outpatient rehab and then AA for several years, and she found that very helpful. I did not need to go, and chose blogging instead which,according to C., is sort of like virtual AA. But it worked for her. In the course of our conversation (I recall now that it came up because I asked her if her boyfriend drinks) we talked about what life was like before we quit and she shared some interesting/horrific things with me:

•  She was waking up at one point at midnight with what she called the “mean reds” and was unable to return to sleep unless she drank more.
• At the apex of her drinking she rarely remembered going to bed the night before
• She had fights with her (ex) boyfriend that she didn’t remember, and would blanket apologize for “what I said last night”– not knowing what that was
• She was told by other AA participants that if you start drinking again after you quit, you pick up where you left off.

Wrap your mind around that– you don’t start over, like when you were in your teens or your 20’s, you don’t work up to drinking too much. You don’t start climbing the stairs from the bottom.YOU PICK UP WHERE YOU LEFT OFF. And then press the express elevator button to go straight up to the penthouse, bypassing all floors in between.

C. shared that information with me to let me know what I might have looked forward to had my drinking advanced. And if I ever go back to it, that’s where I’m headed.

So I was like, HOLY FUCK: I REALLY DODGED ONE.

And I feel pretty good about that.

I had a conversation with my husband this morning while he was looking at my TripAdvisor profile (I’m a Senior Contributor!) and he said, “Wow, you sure are productive now that’s you’re sober.” And I said, yah, but we somehow got a lot done while we were still drinking, and he said, “Yes, well, we were some pretty HIGH FUNCTIONING alcoholics.” Hahaha! We laughed about that. I’m sorry, it’s just funny now. So I told him about what C. told me and we were like “Whoooaaaa.” Life is better now.

In other news, at the request of my fan (not a typo, that is “fan” singular), and in light of my new post-drunk productivity, I have written two of three new posts about Florence OR on my Oregon travel/lifestyle blog The Rain In The Trees and if you are interested in the Oregon coast you might like it.

Hope everyone is having/had a relaxing (or productive!!) weekend- whatever it is you needed, I hope you got it:)