How The Heck Are You 5/19: Regrets Revisited

“The key question to keep asking is, Are you spending your time on the right things? Because time is all you have. ” 
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

I've been thinking a lot about my How The Heck Are You post from yesterday, and questioning if I was being honest about my regrets. The thing about regrets, is once you start tracing them back, wishing you'd done something different, it never stops. If I'd never started drinking at all, I wouldn't be the person I am now and I finally like the person I am now. Would I like the person I would be if I hadn't struggled with drinking? Would I be as proud of myself? Would I choose not to fight as hard for things I want because I didn't know I was strong enough?

See what I mean?

I stumbled across the quote above this morning when I was looking for the daily MM facebook post and I guess I would have to say that I wish I hadn't spent as much time fighting to keep drinking. Because, while I might have lived more life in the 30+ years I drank, I've grown more in the 6 years since I quit. 

But, then again, I realize I needed every one of those struggles and battles to come to the decision I made to quit.

See what I mean?

 So...ok, one regret-I wish I would have reached out for help earlier, I wish I hadn't struggled so long on my own because it was the support of others reminding me to keep going that kept me on the path I needed to be on.

Thank you guys, I love you.

How The Heck Are You?

Falling Into Christmas

I subscribe to the WFS newletter and received this gem in my inbox this morning. I wished I would have received it earlier, before the madness of the holiday got in full swing, but it's not too late to salvage the most important and reverent days of this holiday. I think it interesting that Jean (Jean Kirkpatrick died in 2000 and this was taken from the WFS archives) says we should use our painful memories to bring us the joy that we sought so long while drinking. But it is so true, those painful, excruciating memories are so often the only things standing between me and a bottle of Jack Daniels. I love also that she describes herself as someone that fell into Christmas trees, she's my kind of gal.  If anyone of you would like information about how to subscribe to the WFS newletter, I'm your gal. 

Now, how about we quit making new painful memories and start repurposing those old ones? Love you guys!

Christmas Cheers?Christmas Blues?

Jean Kirkpatrick, Ph.D.

      This is the time of year for families, for relationships, for friendships to get together.  It is also a time of merriment.  But, most of all, it is a time of worship for a large part of the world.  Yet this is so often muted or forgotten in the mad pace of the Holiday Season.

      This is also the time of year when it seems as if the whole world is drinking.  Every time I turn around, someone is suggesting I have a drink.  Everywhere I go I see bottles of liquor, wine and beer.  Everyone seems to be drinking or talking about drinking.  Where was all of this free-flowing alcohol when I was drinking?  Did it flow as freely then and I missed it?  Or maybe I was the one drinking it without knowing it?  That’s possible!

      And all this leads me to ask, why do Americans celebrate this holiest of all periods with alcohol, alcohol, alcohol?

      Every Holiday Season I am reminded of those many terrible years when I put so many persons through hell, myself included.  I can remember, even now so many years later, the shakes, the hangovers, the remorse, the guilt, and the empty promises.  “No, I'll NEVER do it again.  I’m so sorry I ruined your Holiday,” I said, as I wondered where I’d get the money to get a drink to recover.  Or who I would visit to get the drinks I needed, and craved, and lied for.

      Oh, I thought it was so hilarious to help friends trim their Christmas trees and then fall into them accidentally because I was drunk.  That was funny... wasn’t it?  Now, all these years later, I feel disgust and pity for that drunken woman who was a disgrace to herself and to any who knew her.  I also feel great compassion, for there will be so many like her this year... next year... and all the years to follow.

      There is little humor connected to a drunken woman, yet I let myself be conned into thinking that I was the life of the party.  Never did I see that I was the fool of the party, that my actions were simply indefensible on any other grounds than that I was sick in body, mind, and spirit.  Yet that still did not, nor does not, take away the ill feeling, the sadness, the unhappiness I caused so many others.

      These musings of mine do not much help those of you who are still suffering during this Season.  I want to help you, for I feel great compassion toward, and for, those of you who wish the Holidays were over because of the temptations that surround you.  And I feel even more compassion for those of you who are unaware of the temptation that you might so innocently succumb to.  “Awe come on, just have one.  It won’t hurt you.  And, anyway, you can’t be the only one without a drink to toast the Season, can you?”  Oh, yes you can.

      Although this Season is tough for you, never let yourself be conned into believing there is nothing you can do.

      There is a great deal you can do.  There are symptoms we can observe and then take actions to counter them.  If we are edgy, or feel uneasy, or are ill-tempered, or angry often, or are depressed more than ever, or fatigued, or eating when not hungry, or very nervous, or generally out-of-sorts, now is the time to examine these emotions very carefully.  These feelings oftentimes mask our deeper subconscious feeling of wanting to drink.  We feel left out, not one of the crowd, sometimes we even feel rejected, but we don’t permit ourselves to know that we are reacting in sublimated ways.

      Early in the Holiday Season it is advisable for all of us to review our feelings about drinking and about all of the alcohol flowing around us.  Are we feeling good about ourselves or do we feel, that at any moment, we will ‘slip,’ let temptation overcome us?  Are we able to think clearly and realistically about our terrible days of drinking during other Holiday Seasons and now feeling true happiness for our sobriety and our good physical feelings, to say nothing about our mental and spiritual feelings?

      Oftentimes the most effective deterrent to our ever drinking again is the way we are able to remember the sad, and terrible, and awful, and unhappy, and sometimes, tragic times of years gone by.  These painful memories should help us to feel the happiness and joy we should be celebrating now.

      Those days of endless pain and constant recurring remorse are over, gone forever.  Now, this Season, we are able to feel good about ourselves.  We know that we are in charge of ourselves and our actions.  No one in this world can make any of us drink... only we can do that.  Now is the time to know, beyond any shadow of a lingering doubt, that we are alcoholic persons who cannot drink for physiological reasons.  We have a disease that is treatable and we are doing just that.

      Today, during this Holiday Season, we take charge of ourselves and know the truest joy and happiness in this Season.  We are confident about ourselves, and we know that we are truly blessed in our ability to handle ourselves.

Let's Talk About Audrey

While we're on the subject of hang-ups, let's talk about Audrey Kishline, or Audrey Conn, as she later preferred to be called.  I'm a little late to this discussion and there are all kinds of other opines out there about her life and death and what it all meant.

Here is mine.

I first "met" Audrey when she was doing the talk show rounds in the late 80's or early 90's, when Moderation Management was being formed.  I have this image of her imprinted on my mind (apt or not); short permed hair, high waist jeans, polo shirt, big glasses, pushing her toddler in a push toy of some sort down the sidewalk. "Geek mom". The kind of mom who I imagined had her kids' science fair projects planned out years in advance.

So unlike me, who was usually found to be screaming and pulling at my hair the night before every science fair.

"Whaddaya mean it's due tomorrow?"

I could not relate to that woman on the TV at all, but I liked what she had to say.

I could keep drinking.

I remember checking out the book at our local small town library, I remember thumbing through it. Reading the daily limits, the weekly limits, and then the 30 DAYS WITHOUT BOOZE.

And that's all I remember. I think it's probably one of the few books I actually managed to return to the library. Probably before it was even due.

For another twenty some years I stumbled down my thorny path, busily convincing myself there were roses somewhere in those brambles.

Then I decided I was tired of wondering around torn and bleeding. So I started this blog. And I started visiting the message boards.

And late one night, I remembered Moderation Management and decided to see what presence it had on the world wide web.  Bam! There it was.

That was in August of 2010. I'd heard all about Audrey's tragic turn of events and the accident that took the lives of two innocent people by then.  I found her story tragic and, maybe even a little despicable. But that didn't keep me from exploring MM.

When I joined, Audrey was not even a member.  But then about two years ago, maybe it was three, a new member showed up on the mmabsers mail list. I had done my one year stint of trying moderation by then and found that it was not the choice for me, and I was in the pink cloud stage of early abstinence.  I jumped on the big welcome wagon for this new member who seemed really upbeat and bouncy for someone new to the perm abs game.  I was a little more accustomed to the downtrodden and desperate. Like me.

I don't remember how long it took me to figure out that the new member was Audrey, but I can tell you when I did, I wasn't pleased.

And I let her know it.

How could she still be struggling with drinking, after what she did? How in the hell could she still be drinking?  I asked her. I said a few other things. Like, "I just don't know how I feel about this." (That was helpful, huh?)

I was chastised a little bit by the other members. Who was I to judge? That wasn't my job.  As for Audrey, she talked about her new hobby--juggling--her new website, her interviews with Sheryl, the woman whose husband and daughter she killed, the impact statements she and Sheryl participated in.

She dropped in on a few mmabsers chats. She was always upbeat, which infuriated me for some reason.  I kept mum and said nice things on the computer screen while I rolled my eyes and wondered when she was going to announce her new book, or show, or whatever....

Then she disappeared again.

Then I read about her suicide.

And felt sad and bewildered and disappointed and a little guilty. I could have been more supportive, but I'm not sure that Audrey was looking for support when she was at mmabsers.  She never seemed to reach out for it.  Maybe she was trying so damn hard to juggle all those balls, afraid if she let one drop, showed a little weakness, the whole world would come crashing down. Again.

So my feelings about Audrey are a bit ambiguous, to say the least.  She's not a hero in my eyes.  But I am so damn grateful she had the courage to buck the tide and start MM.  I might have found my way to recovery through other means, but, "Damn," I say with a tear in my eye and a catch in my throat, "I'm glad that in a round about way she introduced me to the people who people MM. I wouldn't have wanted to take this journey with anybody else."

So, again, my point?

Audrey had nothing whatsoever to do with my recovery.

MM had everything to do with it.

So don't get hung up on Audrey's story when you're looking for HELP.

If you're reading this and thinking, that maybe you're not ready to quit completely, or if you've tried to quit completely so many times, or if you just want to gain back some control, don't talk yourself out of trying MM because of one woman's tragic story.  MM has a whole lot of other members with a whole lot of different stories.

Mine is one of them.

P.S. I wanted to set one thing straight about Audrey's death, I owe her that much and more. Early reports stated that she was found with two empty bottles of Vodka and countless empty bottles of prescription pills and she hung herself.  According to family members, there were no booze or pill bottles found.

I also want to share a truth about Moderation Management:  It does not pressure its members to moderate. It provides tools and support for them.  If a person declares that they have chosen to permanently abs, as I did, they accept  and offer encouragement and support for your choice. I never once had someone try to talk me into trying moderation longer or harder and I've never had someone suggest that I try it again.

A Survivor's Story

I remember my parents pulling up to the drive-through window of this state line bar, it was the last day of our vacation and we were on that endless drive home, forty miles left to go.  They bought a six pack and then sat in the parking lot drinking beer and smoking cigarettes while we whined in the backseat about the heat, the drive, the smoke, our siblings' encroachment on our space.  They drank two beers each and then they started the car and drove the remaining bone weary miles home.  It was the 70's and our parents remained doggedly uninterested about the effects of  drinking and driving and second-hand smoke. 

I always wondered about the why of those beers in that hot dusty parking lot. Why didn't they just keep driving and wait until they were in the swamp cooler comfort of our own home?  My best guess is that my parents were bidding a last sad farewell to the carefree, careless days of vacation, or maybe they were drowning their sorrows of leaving the cool, verdant mountains for the vast stretch of nothingness in which we lived.  They needed that one last taste of sky blue waters.

I rarely remember my parents going to a bar or beer joint in our hometown, there were the random and sparse evenings out with friends and maybe an occasional Friday night at the VFW, but, by no means, would Mom and Dad be considered regulars at any of the local watering holes.

But vacations were different.  Every day when the heat descended and the fish quit biting the Hickey clan loaded into "Old Blue", our station wagon, and headed to town where Mom and Dad would settle into a duct tape scarred vinyl booth at a local beer joint and us kids would hit the nearest general stores with our sweaty, stink bait scented dollar bills burning holes in our jean shorts.

Eventually, money spent, we slunk back into the beer joint and threw ourselves, one by one, into the booth and commenced pouting the appropriate amount of time required to drive our parents to the desperation of throwing coins at us for the pool table or pinball machine.  They gladly paid the ransom for just a few more minutes of dark, smoky respite from the endless tangle of kids and fishing lines that defined our family vacations.

Scarred floors.  Barmaids with terrifying hairdos and sassy mouths.  Sitting at the bar with my ice cold bottle of Dr. Pepper.  Spinning bar stools. A painted lady on the floor at Joe's Place in Cimmaron, New Mexico.  A creepy  two-headed calf with beady wall-eye stares in some nameless bar in Red River.

My parents kicked back in a booth, laughing over cold beers and a smoldering ashtray.  My mom with a bandanna in her hair and rolled up jeans.  So young.

I treasure those memories, they are as much a part of me as blonde hair, green eyes and my inbred, deservingly under appreciated, Hickey sardonic drollness.

I miss those places.  I can't but help miss them.

 But miss them is all I can do.

When I rolled by that bar on my own last stretch of vacation a few days ago, I felt a rueful melancholy smile lift the corner of my mouth.  I had a kid stretched out in my backseat asleep, my grandchild, and I would no more think of pulling into that parking lot and drinking beers than driving on home...not lately, any way.

I drove those remaining empty miles to my hometown to drop the grandkid off and to spend the night with my oldest son.  Later that afternoon I headed to Walmart to restock my supply of Diet Pepsi.  As I was pulling two liters off the shelf by the gross, an older woman turned her cart into the aisle.  We glanced at each other and then took longer looks.

"Mary Kay, isn't it?" she asked.

For my whole life I have been running into this woman and she always calls me by my "baby" name and she always says the same thing.

"I remember when we lived across the street from your parents.  Your mom and I were both pregnant with you girls.  Such good times."

I nodded.  I've heard it so many times before but I never tire of hearing it.  We exchanged the usual.
"Where is ?"
"How is ?"
"Can you believe how this town has changed? And not for the better."

Skirting, skirting, skirting.

Finally,

"We lost Jolene, you know?" she asks.

I nod.  I did know.

"She drank a lot."

I nod again.

"I did too.  For a long time," I say.  It is the only meager comfort I can offer, my clumsy attempt to tell her she wasn't the only mother who lost a daughter. It wasn't her fault.

She patted me on the shoulder.

"It happens."

Good-bye Sweet William

My best friend from high school died a week ago, I hadn't talked to him since our tenth high school reunion, and I hadn't talked to him for the ten years before that.  So all in all, I went 26 years without talking to my best friend.  I tried to remember why.  I couldn't remember any big fights or falling out, try as hard as I could.

Then I remembered.  He called one day and I didn't return his call.  A week later, he called again and I didn't return his call.  No big reason, I was eighteen, suddenly pregnant, suddenly married, trying my damnedest to stick in my first year of nursing school.

Then a month went by and I thought, I should call William, but he's going to be so pissed off at me.

Then a year went by and I thought, I should call him, but what can I say?

Then ten years went by and he walked into our tenth year reunion and it was as if no time at all had passed, as if I'd returned all of those phone calls.  And we made the usual promises to stay in touch, and we did.  For that whole weekend.

In recent years I had this fantasy of walking into his liquor store in Wichita, Kansas, yes he owned a liquor store, ironic, huh?  Anyway, I had this thought that some day I would walk into his liquor store and it would take a minute but then he'd look up from the register and that look of recognition would flash in his eyes and he'd jump over the counter and he'd hug me and we'd hop in his old '58 Chevy that we used to drag main in and we'd head to the Taco Tico for his nightly bean burrito that he ate every night of our junior high and high school lives.

I'll never get to do that now, I should have done it when I dreamed it up.  I tried.  I was actually in Wichita a couple of years ago and I actually drove around looking for his liquor store (this was after I quit drinking so I wasn't looking for a bottle) but I didn't even know the name of his store or where it was located.  I guess I thought fate would somehow steer my car toward a storefront that had "William's Liquor Store" etched in the front window.  Of course, I never found it.

Yes, I could have called him, but what would I say?

I have a terrible history of walking away from or letting go of people when my focus changes.  I hate that about me, I view it as one of my biggest flaws.  One that I need to make more strides in overcoming, as my recent two month disappearance from this blog demonstrates.

I know now what I would say to William.  I would say,

"I'm sorry I haven't been there for you all of these years, I'm sorry I never got to know the man you became.  The fact that life keeps trying to convince me that I have more urgent, more pressing issues to take care of is no excuse.  There is no more pressing issue, no more urgent "thing" in need of my attentions more important than a friend who supported and loved me through the most trying of times. I will do better."

"I promise."

P.S.  I'm sorry for the "Sweet William" title, I know you hate that.

Green Up!

A woman hired a contractor to repaint the interior of her house. The woman walked the man through the second floor of her home and told him what colors she wanted for each room. As they walked through the first room, the woman said, "I think I would like this room in a cream color."

The contractor wrote on his clipboard, walked to the window, opened it and yelled out, "Green up!" He then closed the window and continued following the woman to the next room. The woman looked confused, but proceeded with her tour. "In this room, I was thinking of an off blue."

Again, the contractor wrote this down, went to the window, opened it and yelled out, "Green up!"

This baffled the woman, but she was hesitant to say anything. In the next room, the woman said she would like it painted in a light rose color. And once more, the contractor opened the window and yelled, "Green up!"

Struck with curiosity, the woman mustered up the nerve to ask, "Why do you keep yelling 'Green  up' out my window every time I tell you the color I would like the room?"

The contractor replied, "Because I have a crew of blondes laying sod across the street." 

Update:  I was belly aching, again, at mmabsers chat the other night, bitching that my pink cloud had floated off and that sobriety had become...mundane. Stretch, yawn stretch.  Which is just ludicrous in light of my last post.

One of my fellow mmabsers said, "There is a saying in AA about keeping it green." (Do you see an obsession with AA developing here?)

That hit home.  I've been wandering around, looking for my pink cloud, but I was doing nothing to bring it back.  I wasn't blogging, I wasn't reading blogs, I wasn't participating on the message boards, instead I was just like the drinker I used to be, pouring booze down my throat, knowing that it was making me miserable, but being too damn ambivalent to do anything about it.

"You have to work the program."  Uh-oh, there it is again.

I ran into the lady that I mentioned in my last blog, the one that reached out to me through a friend. We were both at another fundraiser and I did my best to avoid her.  Why did I do that?  Was I afraid that she was going to run up to me and grab me in a choke hold and start shoving the big blue book down my throat, page by page.  I had just complained to my friend that I feel like such an outsider these days, that people were either alternately avoiding me or else they couldn't wait to tell me how much they'd been, or not been, drinking lately.  It makes me sad that people are afraid of me and avoid me, and here I was doing the same thing.  But to be truthful, she seemed to be trying to avoid me too, as if she was regretting the advance she had made.

Anyway, I felt bad about being so ungrateful so I decided to act like a normal adult and respond to her kind offer of support the way grown up people do these days, I contacted her on facebook.

She wrote back this morning and said she was glad that I had wrote, that she and another woman were forming an AA group in Progreso, (a short 6 mile hop instead of the 40 minute trek to Merida) and she'd love for me to attend.  I wrote back and said, "I'd be happy to."

"Green Up!"

Mountains

Last night my brother, sister-in-law,  nephew and I were returning from the cancelled fireworks show in our little mountain town.  The windshield wipers were slapping at the rain and my sister-in-law and I were singing along to "Chapel of Love" on the radio as we turned onto the "bumpety" washboard road up to our cabin.  It was full dark but you could see the hulk of the dark mountains in the night cloud mist.

I thought of those settlers that had lived in the group of log cabins up the road from our place more than one hundred years ago.  I thought of how those mountains had stopped them in their tracks and kept them from getting to where they wanted to go.  The promised land of California or Oregon or Washington, where the soil wasn't stingy and full of boulders, where the winters didn't last most of the year, where people could hang onto the promise of spring.  I thought of how even in the dark, you can feel those mountains looming over you, threatening at any moment to crush you, both physically and spiritually.

And I thought, I can't believe I'm singing along aloud to the radio with other people listening and I haven't been drinking.  And I can't believe that I my brother and sister-in-law brought my nephew back to see me after their last visit.  The visit that spurred this blog and my recovery, you can read about that catastrophe here in my very first blog Forgive Unto Thyself .

To give you a short synopsis, that visit started with me giddily drunk and playing ballerina across the stream, breaking my toe while trying to rescue an escaped flip-flop.  Somewhere in the middle of the visit my sister-in-law threatened to hide my bottle from me, I just smiled woozily at her and then promptly puked up the dinner she had just fixed as she sat beside me on the couch (nice, huh?).  The last three days of the visit I was in withdrawal and couldn't get myself out of my bed in the loft of our cabin while they tip-toed down below.  Did I mention that my six year old grandson was also visiting?

Suffice it to say, that I wouldn't have blamed them if they never came back.  But they did come back. Because, since that last visit I have climbed me some mountains and I've moved or torn down the ones that were standing in my way. 

 Mountains don't scare me anymore. I am no longer trapped in the dark, waiting for that crushing blow to come. 

I know how to climb.

Juggling

I just wanted to let you all know that I haven't run off and joined the circus (although it is circus season down here and if you think circus's in the states look a little rough around the edges, you should come to Mexico. Shudder!), I'm just juggling priorities right now and trying not to drop anything.

How wonderful!

To have a life. To be busy.  To have a purpose.  To have a reason to get up in the morning other than drink!!

To be sober!

I am so grateful.

Now to change my train of thought in the middle of the tracks, as I'm wont to do.  A member posted on the moderation management board the other day that she was grateful for the struggle, she was grateful that at least she had a desire to change when it seemed so many didn't.  So many seemed to be happily drinking themselves to death.  (not her exact words or intent, I'm taking artistic license here).

I wrote back and said, "Don't be too sure.  You don't know that those people don't wake up every day and say to themselves, "Today is the day I'm going to quit. Today is the day, I'm going to take back my life." only to fail once again."

That was me.  It may have looked like I was just a drunk who didn't care while deep down, underneath the blood shot eyes, splotchy skin, shaky hands...I was consumed with the desire to change.

I remember there were these two guys I knew in high school, I'll call them Bubba and Butch.  Bubba was your typical muscle brained athlete who liked to pick me up and dump me in the trashcan or body slam me on the wrestling mats, that was his way of showing me that he liked me.  Butch was the stereotypical dreamy bad boy with big beautiful green eyes, long feathered hair (it was the 70's), soft lips (yep, I know for a fact they were soft) and, down deep, a heart of gold.

They were teenage hard partying boys, that grew into adult hard partying men.  They did drugs, a lot of drugs, they didn't go to college, they held and lost multiple jobs and women.  I liked them a lot but I always held myself above them.  I was better than them. I didn't hold out much hope for either of them.  I figured they'd go through life stoned and wind up as shriveled shaky old drunks at the ripe old age of 49, minus the majority of their teeth, on a liver transplant list. If they were lucky.

I lost track of them through the years but lo and behold, through the magic of facebook, I found them again a couple of years ago.  And guess what?  They had sobered up and cleaned up their act and there I was flushing my life down the proverbial shitter of alcoholism.

Alcohol doesn't play favorites and it doesn't matter if you're rich, poor, famous, infamous, brilliant, or just an average Joe, there are no advantages.

If Bubba, Butch and I can do it, you can.

Lightbulb Moment

Hey Gang,
I've been getting a lot of pleas lately, I know you've gotten them too, I remember when I made the same desperate plea. That plea for a magic bullet, a turn of phrase, a cataclysmic event, an awakening.  What was it that made me finally, for the umpteenth time, for the last time, decide to quit drinking.

So I went back through my blogs and found the date, July 6, 2011.  If you look at the top of the blog I wrote that day, you'll see "Day 11."  I had already gone 11 days without drinking, but when I started those 11 days it wasn't with the intention of giving up drinking for good, it was with the intention of completing a 30 day abs in my pursuit of moderation.  I'd made about twelve attempts at a 30 day abs in my year of trying to moderate and never completed one.

July 6, 2011, is not my sobriety date though, I had one relapse since then.  A stupid relapse, one with the stupid intention of trying to change someone else's actions.  It didn't work, but at no time during that relapse did I fool myself into believing that I could live my life in anything but a totally sober state.

Here is my blog from that day:

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Another Life Choice

Day11
This is going to be a quickie.  We all have things we'd rather be doing on a Sunday than read my blog.  Sunday is for new beginnings and it is a new beginning for me.  I have made the decision that the only route left for me to take is total and permanent abstinence from alcohol.  I joined a new message board this last week, Women for Sobriety but I'll admit I still wasn't convinced.  Then someone responded to my introductory post that she got exhausted thinking about all of my Day 1's, Day 10,s Day 19's.... so I went back and read back over my blog this last year. Come on, who was I fooling? Only myself.  Was one more stab at moderation going to be the ticket?  I don't know, I never will.  I just don't want to waste any more of my life on any more "one more times".  As Andy Dufrain said in the movie Shawshank Redemption, "It's time to get busy living or get busy dying."  I know which one I'm choosing.  I may stumble a long the way but I won't be attempting moderation again, it's a done deal.

I have heard from several people that they are starting their individual journeys today.  Whether that be moderation or permanent abstinence, you have my best wishes.  Just remember, if you fall get, back up, if you stray down a wrong path, turn around, if there's a boulder blocking your way, go around it, climb over it or tunnel under it, and listen to your internal GPS, it knows where you need to go.
Safe Travels, my friends.
So today I'm out there doing my best to travel light and leave the burden of alcohol by the wayside. 

Someone's comment that she was exhausted just thinking about all my stops and starts (Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, whoever you are) was my magic bullet, my wake-up call, the knock upside my head.  No cataclysmic event, no lightning bolt, just a calm, almost analytical, acceptance of the facts.   I cannot moderate.  I am an alcoholic.  I cannot drink.

How about the rest of my fellow bloggers?  What was the "thing" that turned your tide, set your world right side up?  Care to share?  It could be the silver bullet someone is looking for.
Put your "magic words" in my comment section or share them on your own blog, someone is looking for them.