Day 150 alcohol-free!  Woohoooooo!  It’s been almost 5 months since my last Day 1. Almost 5 months since a voice came from out of the blurry night saying, “YOU need to do something about YOUR drinking!”  The next day, I started reading like my life depended on it (hmmm–I’ll bet it did) and here we are. That was finally my last Day 1 – the start of me staying sober. I’m so grateful, to the bottom of my heart, to have found Boom.  My little savior-in-a-laptop.

The farther I go in this journey, the more things get unpacked and unpeeled.  I’ve thought often about Day 1’s, repeated over and over–I’m on another site and there are categories of posts with one being “needing support.”  It’s helpful to read these posts on one hand, it’s frustrating on the other, and I’ve really been thinking about why these posts disturb me as much as they do.

Day 1 sober…

Day 1 again….  

Last Day 1 PLEASE!

Although this is the first time I’ve ever “formally” (for lack of a better word) tried to stop drinking, I’ve had 30 years of Day 1’s.  30 years of waking up in the night worrying about drinking.  Vowing to myself that I would stop.

Day 1 sober 😊

Never a Day 2 😔

Can’t hold on to sober ☹

Sitting in a hotel bar once after drinking all day and all evening, bawling my eyes out, trying to talk my husband into stopping drinking with me–him sitting mutely, comforting me, then the next day, life resuming as usual with nothing said about the night before. Sound familiar?

Going to bed at night, every night, worrying about how much we drink. Every. Single. Night. Waking up during the night.  Worrying, worrying.  Day 1 again. This time it will be my LAST DAY 1! Sound familiar?

Doing our taxes this year and really SEEING for the first time, the financial impact of our drinking. Arranging my life around drinking–asking pharmacists if this is the antibiotic that you can’t drink with because I don’t want that one. The old “one glass with dinner” answer to the doctor when he asks how much you drink. Thinking, as I pour a vodka the second I come in the door from working out…

This can’t be good for me but I’ll worry about it tomorrow.  

And then I do.

Worry.  

Sleepless.  

Day 1.  Again.  Over and over.  I get it.

Feeling shame and disgust just writing this out.

So I’ve had about 10,000 Day 1’s.  I get Day 1’s. I just didn’t have a place to write them down.  I understand Day 1.  I cringe at Day 1.  I know Day 1.

But here I am, on Day 150 alcohol-free! Sober at last and happily so. This is my difference. This site. Boom is the difference. This community of people like me make up my little savior-in-a-laptop. You all are my difference.  Long may it be so.

150 life-affirming, soul-healing, thought-filled days, one turning into another.  Proud and free.  I’m HERE!

Today, I read a great post in Boom that was shared from our Boozemusings blog. Will the fun be over if you stop drinking alcohol? Coincidentally, I was just sent the wedding pics from a wedding I was very involved with in July — SOBER🥳

I had dreaded that day from the moment I decided to stop drinking–worrying that I would be enormously triggered and would never be able to get through it. I worried I wouldn’t have any fun, that I would cause other people to not have fun and that I would stick out like a big ol’ boring sober dud of a beacon that day.

Well.  

How

wrong

I

was.

Instead, I had a great time. I drank diet coke and coffee and smiled and pretended I was super excited about a champagne toast (I wasn’t the only one to leave it untouched, and no one said a word.) I danced, laughed, visited with people, and enjoyed it all tremendously. The pictures are amazing!  Here I am, looking all happy and both eyes are open at the same time.  Whoops, here I am again, sitting at a table talking and my makeup is all still where it started out.  Aha, here’s the end of the event and I’m not hanging on my husband, I’m standing there all by myself.  Looking happy.  

In every picture of me (because who cares about the bride, right?  It’s all about MEEEE) I look like I am having a wonderful time.  I was, and I am.

It’s happy happy super duper 150 days today!

Life.

Is.

GOOOOOD!

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Life is too short to waste it wasted

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Make Today Your Day 1 sober

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