11 weeks, WHAT?!?

For the year and a half that I struggled with countless day 1’s, I would see people post numbers like that big, flashy “78” up there and it just wouldn’t compute. It was like I had asked for directions to the gas station and someone said “yep, just take a left at the tomato and it’ll be right past the cyclone dump.” Um. What? No sense at all.

But here I am, 11 weeks in. Miraculous. Truly. I don’t think I have a single iota of space left in any of my cells, as they are all full to the brim with gratitude.

For me, something shifted around 2 months (right after making it over the massive Christmas hurdle which turned out to be a mere speedbump for all I’d been dreading it). All of a sudden, the focus was no longer just on the thought “Do. Not. Drink.” Somehow, through some bigness outside of me, my brain started opening up to the possibilities of what lays beyond drinking.

I’ve been listening to Super Attractor by Gabby Bernstein and working on a [mostly] daily yoga practice. I’ve been dreaming about the future and getting excited. I’ve been able to notice all the tiny beautiful moments in my day (like listening to my two-year-old mimic an opera singer on one of our kid albums – never fails to make me laugh out loud). The muddy quagmire of early sobriety is finally starting to get rinsed off and I can see a little farther every day.

The cravings are not gone, but I haven’t spent even a second seriously considering giving in to them in well over two weeks. It’s more just like a knee-jerk afterthought, a vestige of former brain activity that still lingers in my consciousness. They are brushed off so swiftly, it’s barely a thought.

It’s also not all easy. I am still learning to manage anxious episodes, still wake up grumpy some days with little reason and struggle to break out of it. My sugar addiction rages on and leaves me feeling much the same as my booze addiction used to. But, there is light again. There are sunbeams on my face, so even though things can still be hard, the warm glow of sobriety softens the edges in a way I could only ever dream of.

My point in sharing all this is mostly for the newbies out there. Keep going. Keep suffering those day 1’s. There’s no magic rule for WHEN it’ll be your last day 1. Mine took the better part of two years. But there will be a last one. I can truly say now from experience, and not just on faith, that the suffering is WORTH IT. It took longer than I wanted but it was worth it.