Xa

Yesterday, after a couple of days of agonizing debates between the committee members in my head, I changed my handles on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr. After I started posting about going to an AA meeting publicly on this blog, I began to have some misgivings. These misgivings are rooted in two things: a sense of self-protection and the debate around anonymity in recovery. I’m really new to this and I don’t know how people will react – although the cat is out of the bag for the most part. ...

After going to that AA meeting on the 23rd of September, I decided that I needed to commit myself to sobriety. I knew that this meant getting past my angst with the first step. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. See, I truly didn't believe that I was powerless over alcohol. And I was positive that my life was not unmanageable. As I mentioned in my last post, I had not lost anything. I wasn't "at the bottom." I still had my wife, my house, my car, my job, my son. I had everything....

I haven’t written about this yet for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t put any artificial time limits on myself – I didn’t want to declare that I was taking a 30/60/90 day break from booze. Secondly, I wanted to see how this worked out. Finally, I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame. I’ve learned that I don’t have to be ashamed because I’m taking positive action to make my life better. I’d been suffering for a long, long time and I secretly knew it was time for a change, but I couldn’t bring myself to make the change. On September 21 of this year, I woke up full of regret. The night before, I’d had several glasses of bourbon, several beers and half a bottle of wine. I didn’t count my drinks anymore, but I knew it was a lot. The recycling told the story. I was fuzzy on the details of the night before, but I knew we’d had some family over for dinner that I’d cooked and I was reasonably sure that we’d had a good time, that I hadn’t been an overt ass or hurt anyone, and I didn’t burn dinner. I may have served steak that was so rare it was blue in the middle though. ...