the swash zone

When my master and I were walking in the rain, he would say, "Do not walk so fast, the rain is everywhere."   ~ Shunryu Suzuki It is day 312 of my sobriety journey. The past few days have been difficult. Dark. Tommy Rosen in his Recovery 2.0 talks about "the darkness of addiction and the light of recovery." I was diving into the darkness also known as social media, spending too much time in the anger and fearfulness of current events. Twitter has become a gloomy replacement for drinking. I realized yesterday that I was heading towards relapse. All the warming signs were there: anxiety, anger, mood swings galore, consuming large quantities of junk food, ignoring my sources of support, arguing with the internal committee who thinks drinking again would be great.  Whenever I get close to a big milestone, the committee starts holding loud, boisterous meetings, clamoring for attention, whining and cajoling, wanting to have "just one" drink. I appoint...

This then is life.  Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.  How Curious! How real!  Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun.   ~ Walt Whitman I can't believe it's been four days since my last post. I've been meaning to sit down and write something, but it's a crazy-busy time of year. I've also been writing Elsewhere, checking in with a community of wonderfully sober people. When I woke up this morning, tired from a poor night's sleep, I felt optimistic about getting through the holidays without alcohol. Even though I hadn't slept well, I was still waking up without a hangover. The most incredible thing about it was that I was sitting in one of my favorite pubs just last night, drinking water with lemon and enjoying some good food and great company, not the least phased about the lack of alcohol because I was having a good time. And now here I am, at barely past noon on this Friday before Christmas, thinking ...

No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.   ~ Haruki Murakami I stumbled upon this quote while looking for something else and it's changed the direction of where I thought I'd go with today's update.  To be honest, I'm never exactly sure where I'm headed when I sit down to write. Thoughts get transferred to my fingers on the keyboard and I follow along. The quote I opened with resonated with me because I have been struggling with myself over the past few days, and part of that struggle involves what a lot of folks in the sobriety community call "romancing the drink." No matter how many hangovers I suffered, no matter how many bad experiences I had or caused due to alcohol, there is still that part of me that thinks, "Drinking is fun!" or "Just one won't hurt!"  There is still a part of me that misses it and mourns it the way you would a lover who was nothing but bad for you...