Three Years

Today is three years after my last binge and my last drink. I'm still sober. I haven't updated in a long time (almost a year, in fact), but I'm glad I remembered my account info and password, because this blog helped me get through the first year, and because even though I'm relatively open about my alcoholic status, I can say things here that don't quite feel appropriate anywhere else.

So, my last year has seen some changes, all of them good. I'm a certified personal trainer now. I lift weights for fun and I help other people improve their health and be more comfortable in the gym. There's a lot of sales stuff in the job, which is a constant struggle because I am not a sales guy, but I do well enough to keep a full schedule, so that's nice.

Still with my adorable long-suffering partner. We've been together for 6 years and change now. I am convinced that if I had kept drinking we would not be together today. There's this scene in an early Simpsons episode where Maggie is briefly adopted by the Flanderses, and at the climax she has the choice between the Flanders family, standing in a field with rainbows and butterflies, and the Simpson family, standing in a feotid swamp with grey skies and reptiles lurking about. I feel like if I look at my life with and without booze, there's the same divide.

Obviously the foetid swamp option is the one with drinking.

This year I finally felt strong enough as a sober guy to try my hand at rugby again, with mixed results. The summer brought me into contact with some of my old teammates, all of whom drink like fish. It was strange and uncomfortable...there are people from that time that I can still hang out with and there are people with whom I have absolutely nothing in common. At one point, I gave offence by refusing the round of drinks someone had bought. I mentioned I was not drinking and he said "Oh, I do that from time to time, it really helps make the buzz better when you start drinking again." I mentioned that I wouldn't ever drink again, and he said "Oh, well, you're young." So, I won't be calling that fella up any time soon.

So, those sort of moments come and go. The most common thing I notice about the guys who are still drinking is how much even just 2 or 3 years has aged them. Gonna brag a bit here, and it's mostly genetics I'm sure (my own parents look great), but I'm 37 and people often - like daily - say they think I'm ten years younger. If I were still binge drinking 4-5 nights a week, I know that wouldn't be the case. This whole paragraph is irritatingly smug, but I won't erase it. So there, Internet. I'm smug about being 3 years sober and I'm not ashamed to say it.

Somewhere out there on the web is an article that says it takes about 3 years of sobriety for an alcoholic's brain to return to completely normal functioning, and that's where I am now. I have a normal functioning brain. That makes me laugh, because there's precious little that's normal and functioning about me.

I still get insane cravings for booze. All summer I would almost be able to taste an ice cold beer on a hot day. I vividly remember the acid-dryness of red wine. When I gargle with mouthwash I'm reminded of the vodka burn. I wish I could say I knew I will always be strong enough to say no, but there is no certainty. And the fact that I'm not certain is exactly the reason why I have to always stay sober. There is exactly one drink standing between me and ALL THE DRINKS. So long as I can see that one drink for what it is, I should be in good shape.

Being sober is the best thing I've ever done. I wish it were different. I wish my major life accomplishment were better than "somehow I eventually learned how to avoid making all the worst possible choices," but...it's also a damned hard thing to do, too.

Something I say to myself and my clients a lot: it's what we do on our worst days that gives us what we enjoy on our best days. I say this to remind people that going to the gym when you feel terrible is the only way to make sure you go to the gym all the time. Being sober on the terrible days is how I will stay sober on the good ones.

I hope everyone out there is staying safe and finding joy where you can. If you're trying to get or stay sober, I wish you all the best. It's hard but it is worth it. For some of us, it is the only way to live.

Take care,

Marc

2 years, 7 days

I meant to stop by on the 5th to mark my 2 year sobriety point. But I'm depressed and anxious, and busy learning that I don't need alcohol to fail at things. School is a bust right now. I had a slow, quiet meltdown during the 2nds semester and the end of term passed with me managing to not submit a single assignment to any course, and right now I am still too paralyzed by anxiety to do anything about it.

The straw I'm grasping at now is that I'm going to start learning how to be a personal trainer, like at a gym. I've been on the sober road and the fitness road for the same length of time, and it's clear to me that one hinges on the other, and so I have a hope that working in that industry will be fulfilling to me while also paying rent.

I think about this blog a fair bit, as well as my Zombunist blog (which will see a revival here, as the host I moved to is now defunct), so maybe I will start posting more. I'm working part-time these days, but I feel that I should start treating my home office like a home office, eg, with a schedule and daily responsibilities and so on. Should that happen, I think having a weekly blog post (or bi-weekly if I split time between here and Zombunist) will be a part of it.

In sober news, well, still sober. I managed to quit weed for 8 months (January to August, with 2 "relapses" while on vacations), then started smoking a lot of it hardcore until about 2 days ago. I haven't decided yet if I'm quitting again. It wreaks havoc with my life, though not as much as booze ever did, so I need to either manage my use or avoid it all together. I am in serious denial about how difficult it is for me to say no to pot. When the subject comes up, I get snippy, which is a sign to me that I'm not being honest with myself.

I still have drunk dreams, though not very often. At my lowest points I've certainly been tempted. But so far, I've been able to remind myself that I have no control, and that the only reason I ever do want to drink is to get drunk. And once I'm drunk, I'm a timebomb.

These days I'm questioning everything about myself and what I want. I don't know what I want. I'm not even sure that what I've wanted in the past even makes sense. I don't even know if any of this ("this" being my life and what I do with it) matters. I've got no purpose, and I feel like even if I had a purpose I would not be equipped to take on the challenges involved. This is not a fun place to be.

But. Still sober. Let's see what my 3rd year of sober adulthood brings me.

Time and Sobriety

I'm still here, and still sober. Things are going well. Sometimes it doesn't feel like they are, but that's a matter of perspective. I'm in school now, I have a part-time job that I can handle, I start meeting with a psychologist tomorrow to get a handle on my anxiety, I'm in better shape physically. I'm doing okay.

I think tomorrow marks 18 months of being sober for me. I've also been truly sober (no pot) since January 1st 2013...my New Year's Resolution (one of them, anyway) was to give up pot for a year. This is the longest I've ever gone since my childhood without being intoxicated. It feels good. I want more of it.

I've had some crazy nightmares where I find myself drinking, I wake up horrified and ashamed, once the dream was so real that I was sure I had been drinking and just blacked out. These dreams are unsettling, but they remind me why I'm doing this. No matter what, no matter how long I stay sober, I know that I cannot handle even one drink. Those dreams are an alternate-universe version of me, a universe where I fail more than I succeed, and what's worse, a universe where I've given up on trying.

I'm lonely, but it's a good sort of lonely, I think. I'm using this time to figure myself out, to build up my foundations that were shaky or never built to begin with. I like being this kind of lonely, most of the time. But it's still a loneliness...I still find myself longing for people who understand what I'm feeling and what I'm going through. These sober blogs are the closest thing that's come to that (since I don't do groups). I want to find a bunch of weight-lifting buddies, actually, because there's a lot in the fitness community that's affirming for a sober lifestyle...but it's hard to find my niche, because drunk or sober, I'm an oddball. Also, I've got issues with straight jocks, on account of my having grown up a gay nerd....natural enemies in the grand scheme of things (though I know there are exceptions out there).

I wonder why I'm feeling so melancholy while I write this?

I'm in a new and different phase of being sober, though, from my first year. I know that I can't ever drink, and that's not as important-seeming as it once was: there's so much more to life than booze, which I always knew but never really felt before now. And I have a new perspective on time...I guess not washing away memories with alcohol every other day helps to show just how MUCH time there is, really.

My first ex and I had dinner the other night, for the first time in almost 10 years (I should say here that things are lovely with my current boyfriend....almost 5 years of being together now, and I'm very happy with him, as happy as I could ever imagine to share my life with someone). We ran into each other on the street, he told me that he is going in for heart surgery, and asked if I'd like to have dinner with him (no nefarious scheme involved: he is engaged to someone). I think he wanted some closure, and while it's been a while since I felt I needed anything from him, I did feel like it would be fitting to see how he is.

The 4 years that we dated, we drank. We drank like fish. He introduced me to the "Texas Mickey", and we polished one off of whiskey between the two of us in a weekend. We were late to his best friend's dad's funeral because we were hungover. We celebrated the beginning of the year 2000 by getting wasted and having a HUGE fight over Babe 2: Pig in the City. The night we broke up, he threw a glass vase at me that shattered all over the floor, and punched a hole in the door of our apartment before I called the police on him.

We only glossed over the fact that I'd been sober for 18 months. He was still drinking, and he assured me that he never drank that much these days. Maybe not....but in other ways he hasn't changed much. He told me how at his last job he got so frsutrated that he punched a hole in the office wall. He kept saying how much he'd changed, how he had things figured out, how I wouldn't even recognize his life....he said those same things all the time when we dated 10-15 years ago. He has a big heart, but he always seems to be stuck in a loop, where he is always learning "so much" about himself, but it's always the same lessons.

I'm painting a terrible picture of him, and at least some of it must be because I feel comflicted about our relationship, and about some things about myself. Have I changed? I think I have....but how do I know? I feel like I'm more mature, but am I in the same loop? Am I any better?

My sobriety is based in a few different motivations. There is a part of my being sober that comes entirely out of a survival instinct, and I think my first year of being sober was guided by that, a fear that my drinking would lead me to death, either of myself or of all my dreams and my self.  Now, though, there is also a desire to be a better person. I want to do right by the people I love and the people who love me. I want to contribute to society in a meaningful way. I want to be a good person who can be proud and happy with the way he lived. I am in a new stage of my sobriety. The questions are bigger, but they are good questions. I'm willing to stay sober and figure out the answers to these questions, because I have a feeling that it will be so very much worth it.

Sober at the Gym

Still sober, at 14 months.

Judging from the blogs I've read, it's about at this point that a lot of ex-drunks decide to take on some giant challenge, usually physical in nature, like running a marathon or entering a triathalon, and I guess I'm falling in line. I want to be a bodybuilder.

So, okay, maybe that's a little bit out of left field, but I've always been "into" muscle. My parents got me a weight set to use in high school, and I've had a gym membership my whole adult life, though whether or not I used the membership depended on whether or not I was hungover. Last year, one of the reasons why I wanted to quit drinking was that I've always wanted to be in better shape, but I knew that drinking was keeping me from doing that. At the time I quit drinking I also made a commitment to go to the gym as consistently as possible, and, with a few ups and downs, I've managed to do that.

Right now, I'm 30lbs lighter than I was this time last year, and I've lost about 8 inches off my hips and 7 inches off my waist...I'm not shaped like a barrel anymore, and I feel like I've barely been trying. I've also started learning about the bodybuilding lifestyle, and the more I learn the more I realise: I want in.

For me, a huge part of getting and staying sober is setting up positive routines. A lot of these are physical, so excercising regularly, eating well, getting enough sleep (and these are the key factors in bodybuilding). I've seen that when my routine is disrupted, my mood goes downhill, and thoughts about self-destructive behaviours like drinking creep back in. What has always pulled me back, each time that I've felt myself slide, has been getting back to the gym. In all honesty, the gym might as well be my AA, my "higher power", because when I go it's an hour or so completely free of worry or angst, and just getting the blood pumping improves my mood pretty much for the whole day.

The trick to sobriety and to bodybuilding is the same: consistency. To be sober, I have to be sober every day. To build muscle, I have to eat well, sleep right, and excercise regularly. With both, you can't rely on history or hopes for the future to succeed, the only thing you can do is make the right choices in the moment, and let the past and the future take care of themselves.

So, I've hired a personal trainer (hired him in September, actually...and he's great), I'm reading what I can, and I'm setting goals, and maybe, in 3-4 years, I might actually find myself on a stage in some amateur competition.

This year, the second year of my sobriety, is going to be a big one: I'll be in school full time, I'll be working towards this new goal, I feel like year two is the year to dream and act big, and to take on giant challenges that I could never have dreamed of when I was drinking. Any of us who've been sober know that your world opens up when you look past the bottle, and now is the time to find out just how huge my world is now. Where are my limits? I don't know, but I'm excited to find out.

Super Brain

Still sober. Most of the time, this isn't even a big deal. Having made it through a year has shown me that I have everything I need to stay sober. I've survived the seasons, the holidays, the annual ups and downs, and managed everything without a drink. Now I just have to keep doing the stuff I've been doing, using what works and discarding what doesn't, and keep it up. It does take energy to live a sober life, but it takes MORE energy to live a drunk one, so I'm ahead of the game.

In general, though, there isn't much to say. I plan to keep this journal forever, because my life will always have moments where the difference between drinking and staying sober seems interesting to me, or moments where I'll need to let out a primal scream to the internets about frustration. One day I'll tell my mom something about my drinking, maybe, and I'll blog about that. Or when I visit my step mom who likes her wine very much, I'm sure that will inspire an entry or two. But in the meantime I don't have much to say.

Oh, except that I think being sober has given me a super-power: incredible intelligence. Not really, but I've been feeling somewhat smart lately. Part of it is that I had my final exam for a psychology course I took over the summer, and got a 95% on it (and I finished it in 25 minutes - 80 multiple choice questions, with time to review), but just in general I've been feeling more bright, a little more swift in my thinking. I like it.

I heard somewhere that it can take about 4 years for the brain to completely recover from prolonged alcohol abuse: it takes that long for the synapses and support cells and connections to get to a place where the brain works just about as well as it would have without killing all those brain cells. If so, I've had a full year of my brain rewiring itself, growing back where my drinking had pruned it. I've also been more physically active and eating more healthfully, which also have a positive impact on cognition. It's been a subtle change, but I like this new me. I'm better able to understand complex things like relationships, I can see other peoples' points of view better, I'm better equipped to handle anger and frustration and - especially - boredom.

Who knows how much this is just psychosomatic, a placebo effect where I feel smarter because I want to feel smarter, but I like feeling this way, and I intend to enjoy it.

2000!

As an added bonus, yesterday I crossed the "2000 page views" marker. I know that's nothing on the internet, but it made me feel good to see the numbers creep up.

And the rest of yesterday went fine, I don't know why I was making such a fuss. The boyfriend and I shared a toast, and then later on I went over to a friend's house where a few of us hung out and watched TV and talked. It was nice.

And that's all I have to say for myself this morning. Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, everyone!

One Year Sober

Well, the internet makes everything better, I guess. Writing my post last night, and getting comments here and at a forum (unrelated to drinking) that I frequent, plus a healthy hour of yoga this morning (I am one of "those guys" now, with the yoga mat. This could be a horror story for hard core drinkers: if you ever stop drinking, this is what you become! Muhahaha!) have improved my mood. I'm not so much sad anymore as "contemplative" and "introspective" and "meditative" or something. I can ease back into feeling kind of melancholy again, but I'm also well-placed to ease into "content" or "pleasantly centred," so I'll take that.

*

Just over a year ago, I flew back home to Halifax for my brother's wedding. I was still drinking, and if you had told me that in less than a week I would begin my longest period of sobriety in my adult life, I would have been extremely skeptical. I'd been thinking about my drinking a lot, but not in any specific way. I was coming off of a very difficult summer where all of the high points had turned out to be low points, and I was not very happy.

Despite the fact that no one involved in the wedding had any idea what was going on until the very last minute, it was a beautiful day in the end. The bride was 25 minutes late, as is her right, and she was beautiful. My brother looked like my brother, a bit of a cad, but one in a tux at least, and a gentle and caring and funny guy, like he's been his whole life. My mom, who is a minister, officiated the ceremony, I read a poem, they said their vows, we took pictures all over the church and then us wedding party people went off to take more pictures before the reception, and everybody had a good time.

Afterwards, us guys went back to my brother's place to chill for an hour (turned out to be three hours) while the bride, my new sister-in-law, got ready with the maids of honour. Us guys shared some pot, had a beer or two, and toasted my brother and shook our heads, amazed at what he'd gotten himself into. When the bride was ready, we regrouped, took more pictures, and then it was reception time.

And then, for me, the whole day went downhill. First, I had to moderate my drinking, because I had to give a speech for my side of the family, and I wanted it to be a good one (and I hadn't written it yet!). I watched as everyone got tipsier and tipsier, and I just nursed my drinks, getting drunk, but not as drunk as I wanted to be. Not even close to that drunk I wanted to be.

I gave my speech, and it was good, and then, suddenly, I felt stuck. I was anxious. I was hyper-aware of myself. I had to represent the family. I couldn't get loaded, what if I did or something awful? But I wanted to drink. I wanted to drink so badly. The whole evening, the only thing, the ONLY thing I could think about was how much I wanted to get drunk, to just leave that party, go someplace private, and drink until I got where I wanted to be. I hated everyone who was drinking. I hated everyone who wasn't drinking. Every thought I had was twisted by wanting a drink. I was miserable.

Eventually, my boyfriend and I went back to our hotel room, and the next day we flew back home to Toronto. I felt awful and guilty and horrible. What had just happened? My little brother had just gotten married to a truly wonderful woman (I love my brother, but there is a very convincing argument for the idea that she is a little bit better than he might deserve), I'd had a chance to connect with family I hadn't seen in years, everything about the day had been perfect....and I had felt miserable. What was wrong with me?

I knew it was the drinking. Weddings are crazy, stressful, emotionally charged events, but I knew deep down that none of that mattered. What mattered was that I was miserable only because I had felt like I couldn't pour enough booze down my throat. What mattered was that if given a choice between that wedding or staying at home getting drunk, I knew which I would truly prefer. I vowed that day, my first day back, a Sunday, to moderate my drinking and get it under control.

But then, three days later, Wednesday night, the night I liked to watch Survivor on TV, I bought a 12-pack of beer and was getting drunk by myself again, as if I'd learned nothing at all. I don't even remember how I made the decision, but at some point that evening, I stood up, walked to the calendar in the kitchen and wrote "last drink" on it. It was October 5th.

*

Since then, I've had to face the truth. There is no "moderation" for me. There is no "getting this under control." If I drink, I lose control. that's a fact. It's a hard fact, but I can't change it.

On the surface, I don't know how much has changed. I'm not suddenly living in a mansion or getting promotions left and right. I'm actually unemployed, so, maybe there's a cautionary tale somewhere in this, ha ha. But I do feel better. Overall, averaged over the year, I'm better. My first entry I said I wanted to be a better person, to be smarter and more caring, to be successful in my career and my relationships. I left my job, but that was to pursue my education, and I think that was a good choice. I think I'm meeting those goals. I think I am smarter, more caring, and I think my relationships are stronger, too.

I am better.

*

This morning, my boyfriend left a note on my computer's keyboard. It says, in part:

CHEERS to a full year of sobriety! I am so impressed with your control, discipline, and self-care. I am glad you've found the love for yourself required to stay strong for a full year.
 

 I am caring for myself. I am learning to love myself. I am discovering strength and discipline within myself.

This is what a year of sobriety feels like. It wasn't as bad as I was afraid it would be. There were pleasures and surprises I never expected to find. I am learning what living really means, and how precious my life really is, and I'm learning to savour and respect the moments I have, because each one is unique and special and will never come again. I am learning to see and feel beyond the superficial, to not be as afraid of the depths. I am learning wisdom.

Looking back, one year seems like such a short time, and the year ahead feels like it could last forever. I'm eager to learn what a second year of sobriety is like, what surprises and lessons the universe has in store. What will I learn, about myself, about the world? What next?

My name is Marc, and I am still Dry.