Good Saturday morning all!! We are having some beautiful spring weather this week! When the days get sunny in the spring and the temps start to climb to the 70 ish mark, I start thinking how nice it would be for hubbie and I go find a patio and have a drink or 2. Sure would be nice. For me, that is a dangerous path to embark upon.

I am at 81 days sober now. I am getting close to completing my first HSM. I am at a point where I am feeling pretty strong and healthy. A point where I can easily begin to think that maybe I am strong enough to control my drinking. Then as I think harder about this, I have to ask, why bother? What is so unpleasant about life that I would want to dull my senses?

Also, as I approach 90 days, I am becoming more aware of other things and caring more about things I cared about before. That has taken this long, that didn’t happen as soon as that last hangover was gone. I can see why inpatient rehab is often 90 days. I always wondered why they needed to be in so long for alcohol!

When I look back over my life, my times where my self esteem was best and I took the best care of myself – in every way – was when alcohol had a very small role in my life. The times when I was drinking regularly look dark as I look back and those are the periods where I lacked confidence, was lazy, ate too much, the list goes on.

I didn’t realize this until now because the change in me didn’t happen the day I put down a drink and then change back the day I picked up a drink. It is much more gradual and takes more time than that. I guess it took a lifetime pattern of that for me to see the correlation. It is pretty clear to me now.

Springtime, so symbolic of new life in the Western Hemisphere, will carry that same meaning to me this year.

Thank you for your support HSM community!