Onwards, shall we?
Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Now, this is also probably why it took me so long to admit I actually was an alcoholic by any serious means. It's not that I couldn't go a day or two, or even a week without drinking. Because I could, going short periods of time without drinking was never a problem. I never depended on alcohol to get me through an average day, and I was always figured that being powerless over alcohol meant drinking day in and day out at every possible moment and what not. Like what you see on TV and Movies you know?
It turns out that, and it appears others around me figured this out long before I did, I did have a serious problem with alcohol and I was legitimately powerless. Not so much powerless over Alcohol, but powerless over any quick and easy coping mechanism I had at hand. Whether it was cutting or alcohol, fact of the matter is that there are certain emotional triggers that the second they hit, I turned to the easy way out. Cutting was more a conscious effort, but I'll fully admit that drinking was not. I've remembered every shot that took me past black out point. I have a very conscious and clear memory of looking down at every given shot and thinking "If I drink this, I'm not coming back tonight" and taking it anyways. And especially on that last night. As I went to drink, I knew it wouldn't end well. I knew I shouldn't be drinking. I didn't really want to. But I didn't know what I did want to do. What I should have done. And before I knew what I was doing, I was balls deep on liquor.
Fact of the matter is that I am, and have been, emotionally unstable. Whatever the reasons may be, I am. And. I've generally been pretty shitty about dealing with the extremes of it. I've had so many other issues that for the longest time I just ignored my emotions for as much as I could, and everywhere else I would just focus on other things that I needed to fix about myself that I did not like. And whenever I lost control, I would exacerbate it. For whatever reason. And with drinking that escalated. Bad. I don't know.
It's not something I'm proud of, clearly, by any stretch of the imagination. Nobody likes or wants to admit that they had little power over something. Especially not over something like Alcohol that is so clouded in public opinion. But fact of the matter is that I had built myself up my entire life to be an alcoholic, and the fact that I fell into it's traps is not a surprise. I just. Ugh.
This is the first step of AA because, even if my problem wasn't drinking all day erry day, my problem was that there are a lot of things I still can not deal with when sober. Not in the least. My gut reaction to too many things is to drink, and it's definitely still there. It hasn't magically gone away. Just like I still occasionally feel like cutting.
And that's kind of how I'm treating my journey not just through AA, but through this recovery period in general. It's about Emotional Sobriety. Meaning no "I need to stop drinking because drinking is bad for me and because I should" and no "I need to stop doing X or Y because it's bad for me" but it's "I need to stop the behaviors and thought process that were bad for me because I don't want to be that way anymore and because I am making the choice to fix what's wrong because I WANT to." Nobody's forcing me to do any of this. I could still very much continue on my path of self destruction and end up dead in a year. There ain't a damn thing stopping me from that. Not a one. It's me not wanting to be a disappointment, not wanting to go down that path, not wanting to do those things again that's important. And even more so, is me not wanting to live through the steps that lead up to those bad moments, it's an attempt at fixing things from the roots.
Thusly this step is all about admitting that these are problems. These are problems that, left to ourselves, we would be incapable of dealing with. And, I have to say. I definitely have problems that I, myself, am physically incapable of dealing with by myself. I am not proud of that. I do not want the world to know. But I do want to fix these problems. And will take whatever steps are within my power to fix these.
[27/27 Days Running Without Alcohol/Smoking/Etc]
[20/27 Days Going to the Gym]
[27/27 Days Running Taking My Meds]
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