Last week i took a noble stab at sobriety. On Thursday morning, after four nights of some of the heaviest drinking i've done on work nights ever, i showed up to work hungover (as usual), cranky (as usual), sick (as i have been for the last 2-3 weeks) and miserable. I decided to get serious about getting sober and i didn't drink till tonight, 6 days later. It's a Berlin record! Thursday i went home early because i felt so shitty. Friday my body imploded and, although i went into the office, i only made it till lunch before i had to leave and lay in my bed sweating and shaking the rest of the day. By Sunday i was feeling okay again, in fact, more okay than i have in ages - i was perky! I went out for a coffee with a friend instead of spending the whole weekend wrapped up in a duvet feeling sorry for myself. Unfortunately the throat ache that has been lurking for weeks finally hit me that night and i necked a couple of painkillers, something i very, very rarely do. I am usually extremely reluctant to take drugs that aren't "fun", but the pain was so bad i couldn't sleep. Without alcohol being sick hurts.
Nevertheless, Monday morning i got into work feeling pretty good. Today was even better. Golly gee, it's great to wake up in the morning and not feel like shit. It's great to be able to hold a conversation without snapping at people or wanting to cut it short because oh my God the world is spinning and i hate myself. For two days i actually felt like a grown-up. Except today was hard. Not socially, which is usually the thing that exhausts me, but i was working overtime on a solution to a very tricky bug, and i left the office twitching and tense. I used to think that was an alcoholic thing. I had planned to try stay sober this entire week, to see how it went. Maybe i would spend my evenings doing something "productive" instead of making random Facebook posts, watching TV shows whose plots i forget 5 minutes later, smoking way too much, then passing out. Maybe i would get into music again, or write something meaningful, or start cooking real food again, or hang out with friends, or...
But the day was too much and after leaving the office the first thing i did was buy a beer. Shit. Fuck. It's not a failure. I didn't set the bar too high. I didn't set a bar at all. I am happy i didn't drink for 3 days (plus the weekend in between is 5, though the weekend doesn't really count). I am happy i broke out of the haze long enough to actually engage with a friend, and to reconsider what the fuck i am doing with my life. That's a good thing. The last week was a good thing. I was sober long enough to realize that i shouldn't define myself by addiction, i shouldn't try to romanticize "slumming it", feeling like i'm white trash trapped in an upper-middle class body, not really worth shit as anything more than a functioning alcoholic. But here i am again. If i can do 6 days i'm not even close to a serious alcoholic, so, really, fucking first world problems.
The only thing i really need to do is try to make this an irregular thing. The drinking. I have real shit i need to do that i don't give a fuck about doing when i drink, but i still need to do. I need to (finally) get my Canadian passport, so i can renew my driver's license whenever i next get back to Canada. I need to contact the Canadian tax office about why i haven't paid tax for the last 3 years. I need to buy some new jeans because one of my jeans has holes that would make an 80s metaler proud, and the other one is not far off. And they're my fucking work pants. I need to not be a complete dick to my boys. The long-delayed promotion is not far off and once it's official those guys don't deserve my hungover crankiness. They're good kids. Outside of work i need to define myself as something more than an alcoholic because that's shit. That's what 12-step cultists do. I have to be more. I must have more than that to achieve in my life. So today is done, it's too late, it's a thing. Tomorrow i will feel like shit. And then we start again.
