Lapse...

So, I think I relapsed.

Accidentally.  Without even knowing it.

That sounds absurd, but it's the most logical assumption to make, given the evidence.

I had no trouble staying sober at Dover, and though I recognized on a couple of occasions that it would've been nice to have a drink or something, I was never stressed by it, and it didn't interfere with my ability to enjoy myself in the slightest.  In fact, the one notable difference between this weekend and past trips was that this one was noticeable easier for me.  I'm normally exhausted by the experience, but this time it was just a nice little vacation; I never realized how much of that exhaustion was apparently due to the booze, etc.

So, I had a great time, and was feeling wonderful.  But then, a day or so after coming home, I suddenly started to feel really down.  It started when I couldn't sleep properly.  But it just got worse from there.  I ended up getting severely depressed, and completely exhausted.  I couldn't sleep enough, and yet I never felt rested.  And I had no energy, no drive, no ambition, no desires; at best I was numb - at worst, I was completely miserable and pissed off at everything.

I had a few different guesses as to what might be causing this condition, but as I resolved them one-by-one, with no change in my mood, I had to try and form new theories.  Which is when I realized that what I was experiencing felt like the exact same depressive period that follows a relapse for me.  And that's when I remembered the sleeping pills.

I took sleeping pills the nights we stayed at Dover.  One pill each night; half the recommended dosage.  I wasn't taking them to get high.  I was taking them for their intended purpose, to help me sleep.  We were staying in a flea-bag hotel, and I was wide awake in an uncomfortable bed, and I had a lot to do the next day, and needed to get an early start.  I didn't think anything of it at the time.  Because I was thinking of it as "medicine" and not "drugs."  But in hindsight, it became obvious - of course I got high off of them (they altered my brain-chemistry to the point that I was rendered unconscious, for fuck's sake), and so of course I was going to experience the same depression afterwards that I experience whenever I get high off of anything; the reason why I took them is completely irrelevant to my brain-chemistry.

So, I've been suffering through that since we got back, and am only just now starting to come out of it.  That's one reason why I haven't posted anything for a while.  (Work is the other half of that, but that's a whole other post in and of itself.) This one has been particularly difficult to deal with, because it's been accompanied by strong doses of self-pity and righteous indignation.  Normally, I know exactly what I did wrong, and I know exactly why it was wrong, and so a part of this depression feels like a deserved punishment; I knew what to expect, and I did this to myself, so I really have no right to complain about it, and should just shut the fuck up and take it like a man.  But in this case, I don't really feel like I did anything wrong.  I didn't truly relapse in the sense that I didn't give in to my cravings and desires.  I didn't even have any cravings or desires!  I was just trying to solve a problem I was experiencing by taking a medicine designed to alleviate that particular ailment, and is available at any local convenience store.  And now I have to feel like complete shit for two weeks??

And the worst part is, I didn't even get to get high!  If I'm going to have to suffer through this period of misery, I should at least get the enjoyment of having a drink or something out of it.  That's only fair, right?  But in this case, I didn't get the drink; all I got was the hangover.  And that just feels so wrong.

Those thoughts kept running through my mind, and it became really difficult to not have a drink.  To know that all I would have to do is have one drink, and all this pain would simply vanish for a time, and I would be allowed to feel good again for a short while - that was really hard to resist.  Especially when I felt like I was already paying the price for it; it felt like I'd earned it, in a way.  But I was able to maintain perspective, and remind myself that having a drink would only prolong the inevitable, and make it worse in the long-run.  And set me back a few months.  (I really didn't want to erase all those Sober Days from my tally and have to start back at zero again.)  And, thankfully, a part of me wanted to suffer through it.  I have that stubborn desire to build endurance through gritting my teeth and taking pain lately, and that served me well here, again.  As horrible as the experience was - and perhaps even because it was so horrible - I wanted it to be over as quickly as possible, and I knew the best way to accomplish that was just to try and keep my mouth shut and suffer through it.

I also ate whatever the fuck I wanted for two weeks and gained several pounds, but again, that's a whole other post, entirely.