When you drink because you drink.
When you drink because you don’t want to drink, because you want to quit and clean up your act, but you just don’t know how.
When the brain starts to get used to the habit, becomes a fan, and conspires against you, creating the images, the craving, the solution that is so simple and so close.
When it’s like you’re living Groundhog Day, trying to drown what happened yesterday with the activity that will cause the exact same problem tomorrow.
The Cycle of Hell.
You don’t want to, but what else is there to do?
You fucking hate it, but something inside of you loves the temporary forgetting just that tiny bit more.
When the alcohol no longer brings you anything, really, but you still try to get back to the old days, the old feeling, the old sloppy joyful haze.
‘Am I an alcoholic?’, you wonder, and you know the answer.
You know that the answer is not about ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but how it keeps dragging you back into the thick, miserable mist.
You promise yourself to stop, but you don’t.
You don’t really sleep anymore.
You don’t connect anymore.
You don’t dream anymore, not really.
Where is the exit on the treadmill?
Where is the open window in the dark?
Where’s the light?
For me, it was the second of sobriety that turned into a minute.
It was the craving voice in my head that I learned to first fight, then accept, and then ignore.
It was about the moments that I didn’t give in, and the moment that followed.
Quitting the addiction was about learning to live right now.
Because only right now, I could stand my ground against the urge to drink.
Right now I could say ‘no’ and stick to it (just for this moment).
Right now was all I needed to get to the next right now.
And I got stronger.
Clarity returned.
Hope emerged.
And when I found out that I hadn’t really developed any emotional skills after age 14, 15, I took the right now to work on that.
That too.
There was so much I had neglected.
But it worked.
Because right now I could change a little bit.
Right now was comprehensible, doable, livable.
And that finally brought me here.
Still living right now.
The wrinkled, happy butterfly.
Change beyond recognition.
And so can you.
Start right now.
Stop right now.
Right, now.
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(Photo by @avec_noir, for Unsplash)