Between the Lines

I wake up and hit a meeting before work.
I'm feeling listless and ambivalent to the world.
I'm not in jail nor an institution so this is a good day but sometimes knowing that doesn't do much to improve your mood.

I hang out with some people from the program. More girls are hitting me up but I've demured and this is a change of pace for me.
I don't feel like the rigamarole of a new relationship, nor the balancing act and the lying just feels like it will be tiresome. It actually occurs to me I don't need another person cursing my name.
I've got some legal stuff coming up and some time away and part of me, deep down, the self-destructive part, I know is biding it's time until just before...wanting me to say "fuck it" and go on a monster run before going away.

But, having done some time before and gone in and detoxed cold turkey that way....it feels like a lot of work I'd rather avoid. That malaise/haze of the newly physical sobriety, goddamn, it's a struggle and it's exhausting and physiologically and mentally exhausting coupled with the odd sleep hours of jail and the shitty food.

Today's a normal day. I slept relatively early despite my late night work schedule and woke up physically rested if not mentally ill at ease.
It's my disease talking to me after a course of days of normalcy which as they grow in length feel out of place. I did my best normal person impression this weekend, at a social function, hanging out with normal people, working out, working at my job....but as it almost always the case feeling largely out of place.
I switched over and hit meetings, shared my feelings, and did some fellowship which has gotten easier to do as of late.

I'm mentally beginning to prepare for the austere conditions of jail and the calorie restriction and lack of outside stimuli.

Saw an add for Hennessey, clearly marketed to the black demographic. Always interesting to consider the reality vs the expectation of alcohol marketing. I see the larger legalization of marijuana as a crying out for self-medication for many alcoholics. I predict a surge in marijuana addicts anonymous meetings as some will switch one master for another and find themselves still unable to sleep, unable to escape the master's clutches wrapped around your throat, your mind, your life, your being.

The only time I achieved any real dry time from alcohol was with the aid of getting high but I always went back because when I got to where I couldn't sleep without getting high, in fact, the insomnia from that was worse than it had been at time of drinking every day....the daily anxiety was less intense than the spiritual ravages of alcohol but the nighttime inability to sleep was far more intense.
Always a slave, looking for a new master, a prostitute in search of a pimp, someone that offers security on the exterior but inwardly knowing you're debasing yourself and giving up all that is good in hope of some relief from all the mistakes and regrets and guilt and shame and remorse.
It's hellish and it's soul rending.....I'm at something like ** days back in from being out there....and still each day usually someone comes in...and that pain, that degredation....that broken-ness....it's something only an alcoholic or an addict really knows. I remember being in rehab and not trusting my counselor because he was one of us...and now I know I would never trust someone who's not one of us. I remember waking up on a ****** and the moment of abject and startling clarity that.....I was alone. Not in the sense that I'd fucked up relationships or whatever....but rather that....alcohol was creating that feeling in me and would eventually create that reality in my life. Drinking was going to take everything that was good in my life and even if it didn't....this is where it would always take me. To this dark and alone place deep in the depths of

Man, I do not miss those dark days. I was so battered by alcohol and being untrue to myself....goddamn it was dark. I was completely broken down to my bottom.
But I know the pain and the fear...just are not enough to stay sober.
I have to pursue sobriety, one day at a time, the way I've pursued my chosen sport. Whether or not I see the progress in a moment or in one day...which is rare, I have to show up and put the time and energy in if I wish to see the results and it's not even about getting things, or stuff....it's about not wanting to be in that place where I'm fucking alone and a million miles away from everything and everyone and any thing and any one. If you've been there, you know the personal hell I'm talking about. Sartre was wrong when it comes to people like us...it's not other people. Hell for alcoholics is ourselves.

Good luck and happy hunting,
  I'm still broadcasting from the underground but I can see some light.....and one day at a time, I'm walking this path toward being good again. I won't and don't have to be perfect, but that doesn't mean I can't be good again.

"There is a way to be good again," and if nothing else I never have to drink again nor go back to that fucking place.