I had to skip SMART again this week. But I wrote to the facilitator, to let him know I'd be out and so he'd know I hadn't fallen off the wagon or whatever; and also to let him know what I would've shared, if I'd been able to make it.
I thought it would be worth sharing here, too:
On Friday, my wife and I went out to our local for dinner and drinks (I had O'Douls). I mentioned to her that I had recently realized that I could not remember the last time we'd had a fight, or even any sort of minor emotional dust-up, and asked her if she could remember. She realized she couldn't remember, either. Things have been really good for us lately; for a good, long while now, in fact. I hypothesized that this was probably a result of two recent changes in my life.
One of them is a bit involved to try and explain; it involves changes to the way I perceive and interact with her, and to the way I think about Love in general, and so it would require a good bit of backstory that I don't really have time to get into right now in order for you to really be able to understand it. Suffice it to say that the end result was that I'm no longer as emotionally fragile with her as I used to be, and that these changes began happening quite literally at the same time as I began to get sober.
And the other change that I think has contributed to our recent run of marital harmony and happiness is obviously just that: my sobriety. Drinking and taking drugs by definition alter your mood, and your feelings. They lift them up when you take them, and then they fall down when it runs out. And even if you're not taking them right at that moment, if you're doing it regularly enough, then the effect persists, and your emotions continue to go up and down, up and down, even when you're sober. And so one of the results of this extended period of sobriety, is that I'm finding that I'm less emotionally volatile than I used to be; I'm much more even-keeled now that I'm not playing chemical yo-yo with my feelings.
This prompted my wife to tell me again, as we were sitting at the bar, how proud she was of me for being able to stay sober for so long. And she added how proud she was of me, in particular, for being able to come out drinking with her and still remain sober. And, I replied back to her that, as always, I found it difficult to accept that praise. Because I didn't feel like I was doing anything. It wasn't as if being at the bar made me want a drink, and I was having to spend the entire time resisting this overwhelming urge. If that were the case, if I was struggling with urges, and then successfully overcoming them, then I would feel as if I had done something worthy of praise. But as it was, being at the bar didn't make me want to drink anymore than at any other point in my day. I just don't want to drink right now. I'm very much enjoying not drinking.
The other half of that coin is that I am very much looking forward to drinking again, later. We saw a bottle behind the bar that night, of Fireball whiskey; a cinnamon-flavored whiskey that we only just discovered last year, a few months before I sobered up. And with the seasons turning right now, and the crisp scent of Autumn in the air, I had the thought, "Oh, a shot of that would be delightful for Fall. That will be really nice to have again. Maybe next year?" I realize it isn't typical, but I'm lucky enough that I haven't yet had to say to myself, "I can never drink again." I didn't fall that far. I just didn't pay attention to what I was doing, and then realized that I was drinking too much, and that it had gotten a little scary, and so decided that I needed to stop for a while; for some unspecified period of time of at least one year. And so I've never had to confront that issue, or deal with all the grief and loss of "I can never drink again." I'm fortunate enough that I've been able to say just, "Not now, maybe later." And this is just so much easier to handle on an emotional level. And that makes it easier to stay sober. Because I can kick that can of "later" down the road indefinitely.
And that's where I'm at right now, and where I've been for a while: I don't want to drink right now, and I'm looking forward to drinking again, later. Whether that "later" will ever actually come is a mystery to me. I honestly don't know. I imagine it will again, but no one knows what the future holds. I don't know who I'll be after spending my first year sober as an adult, and I don't want to project who I want that person to be. I want to find out myself along the way. And I remember that when I quit smoking pot for a year (that time I had planned from the beginning to do it for exactly one year, and then smoke again, and see how it affected me - I designed the whole experience as a personal experiment conducted on my own brain chemistry), at the end of that year, I found it really difficult to smoke again. I had built up so much momentum towards staying sober over the course of that year, that it was really hard to make myself suddenly switch directions and do the exact opposite. Yes, I did want to smoke again, but a huge part of me did not want to, as well. And in the end, what finally helped push me over the edge was that I had set out from the get-go to do it for exactly one year, and then do it again and see what happened, and I wanted to fulfill that original intent.
I don't have any set time-period of sobriety like that this time around. I don't have any line of demarcation that I'm going to cross at some point in the future that will tell me that it's time to stop being sober. (And that was intentional, based on the lessons learned in the experience I just mentioned above.) So, who knows how long this will last? Who knows when that "later" will come? Who knows if that "later" will ever actually come, at all?
And more to the point, whether it does or not is completely irrelevant. Because thinking about that ephemeral "later" - enjoying the idea of it, looking forward to it - helps me to remain sober now. And even better, it grants me the ability to do things like go out to bars with my wife, and actually be able to enjoy the experience, without struggling against my desires. It allows me to accept my desires, and still keep moving forward, comfortably, without having to indulge them.
And to my mind, that's gold. That's pure magick.
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