Coming to Terms with my Special Needs

My booze cravings are just through the roof. It’s pretty much all I think about these days, how bad I want a drink, how desperately I need a drink, how much I deserve a drink for all my hard work.

The thing is, I can’t stop thinking about drinking, I never could. I want a drink so bad. But then I have one, and I still can’t stop thinking about drinking. I still want a drink so bad. Repeat until I’m laying in Harborview. So I have to draw the line somewhere, and the only ‘where’ I have any willpower is before I ever start drinking.

So I have to admit it to myself, and as I do I feel a combination of triumphant self-truth and debilitating shame and embarrassment: its been 4 years and it hasn’t gotten easier. Shows, quiet nights at cafes with friends, dinner with family, holiday celebrations, good times with my best friends: If there’s beer, wine, sake, cocktails or shots, I’m staring at it. I’m obsessing over it. I’m imagining exactly what it tastes like, and it tastes like exquisite relief. I’m letting the scent fill up my senses. If people are having a good time with drinks involved, I’m wild with the idea that’s what I need myself to have a good time. If people are abusing alcohol and getting sad or sloppy, I’m wild with self-protective instincts, help-others instincts, and smug superiority combined with the self hate that comes when I’m feeling smug superiority. In short, it gives me panic.

So to all my friends and family I say, thank you SO MUCH for the party invitations, for the dinner invitations, for the honest extensions of yourself and your camaraderie. It means the world to me to know I’m not abandoned by default of being sober, no fun anymore, of being tired and alone and scared. I will come join you when I can, if I can. Maybe we can get lunch some time.

But I just can’t deal with booze right now. At all. Maybe ever. And I know there’s one thing in this life I have to protect as priority #1, and that’s my sobriety.