Saturday morning

Only 9.30am but I thought I’d write early today to let you know how I got on last night at the drinks party. As I drove to the event, I tried to imagine myself drinking a glass of prosecco; I even wondered if I could sneak in a glass before my husband arrived at the party as he was coming straight from work and would be arriving separately. See that word ‘sneak’? All at once, I realised that I was beginning to hide what I wanted to do about my drinking, and as I walked into the party, I had a moment of clarity and knew that I wasn’t going to drink. I went over to the makeshift bar and picked up a glass of elderflower, and that was that. No prosecco, no desire for prosecco. I chatted to various people and when my husband eventually arrived, he had a beer and shortly after we went home.

The other plan which I’d been brewing in my mind all day was that post-drinks party I was going to celebrate my sobriety by opening a nice bottle of wine. It’s time to stop all this sober stuff, I thought, and go back to normal. But when we got home, this suddenly seemed like the worst plan ever. We didn’t open the wine. We drank some AF fizzy stuff instead, had supper, and watched a film.

I didn’t want to drink. And I didn’t drink. And here I am on Saturday morning, Day 35, and with an unexpected determination to continue on my sober way, even though I spent so much time yesterday planning its destruction. Dinner party tonight seems less of a hurdle than before, as though I’ve mentally shifted into a new place. Don’t want to sound complacent, and 9.30am thinking is always very different from 5pm thinking, but I do feel different today.