Writing

I want to start writing my blog again. I’ve been gone, I see, for nearly a month, a frantic few weeks in which I’ve continued to grapple with my drinking.

I’ve been to several meetings, and spoken more openly to people I’ve met there. And I’ve been in email contact with some sober friends who are like lights in the dark for me. I have also tried to push help away – I don’t know why, some absurd attempt to control my situation, but I need the help and am trying to reach out more.

The painfully slow realisation that I desperately need to stop drinking is beginning to sink in.  I know it must be obvious to anyone reading this blog, and it is obvious to me too, and yet the denial is extraordinary. The ways I try to worm my way out of sobriety are quite astonishing: I don’t have a problem, everybody drinks; I can control my drinking; I don’t want to give up drinking; I am desperate to give up drinking. The debates continue. But it can be no coincidence that many sober bloggers, and sober people I meet, promise that it gets easier, the longer you succeed. I just keep putting myself through the endless cycle of day ones, a thoroughly exhausting and miserable test which it is almost impossible to do well in.

There was the end of a bottle of wine in the cupboard – I’d put it there yesterday to use for cooking. A few moments ago, I poured it into a wine glass, ready to drink it, then poured it right down the sink and sat down to write this post instead.