9 days sober.

And I am on my pink cloud. I have heard this term to describe the wonderful feelings in the beginning. I have been fantasizing about my sobriety.  I have been contemplating how I am going to announce my 30 days. I have been thinking of how wonderful I will feel when I hit my 90 days. I think I have only gone 90 days sober once in my twenty years of drinking. And I crave the congratulatory remarks when I finally hit one year. I am imagining all the “likes” I will get when I announce it on Facebook.

I do the same when any new relationship starts.

I also keep telling myself of how my life will get better. Of all the things I can accomplish now. I will read more. Exercise more. My biggest passion in life is traveling. I told a friend tonight that I will be able to visit her more now that I will not be wasting my time in bars. She, who has also battled with drinking in the past, said “so you THINK!” A warning?

I do have this blog to keep up. I will put that on my list of goals. And I will travel. My drinking never before stopped my traveling. Ok maybe it has made me miss flights or buses. And I wasted days hungover instead of seeing sights. And I did skip out on a promise trip to visit a friend’s new baby last summer because a party came up that I “could NOT miss.” But I promise to try to visit more friends.

I listened to the audio book “Living Sober Sucks” the past two days. Tonight he suggested not telling most people why I am not drinking. He said to make up other excuses rather than “I have a drinking problem”. He said to say I have to drive (but honestly, that excuse does not work because people try to say “oh just one drink!”) He said to claim I am allergic to alcohol. People are not comfortable with that excuse. I agree.

I have already dealt with people not understanding.  I have had many friends try to convince me I just need to NOT get trashed. As if I could control it. I never plan to black out. I never plan on the mistakes I made. I have met people who don’t believe blackouts are real. They think drunks make up blackouts as an excuse to forget what they did. I guess if you never experienced one, it is hard to believe a person can look perfectly in control and functioning and not realize their brain went to sleep already. I used to joke that I wanted to install a drunk cam on my head to remember my night.

I think if people urge me to drink, I am going to say I have liver damage or a liver enzyme issue. If I start throwing out fancy medical terms, maybe it will sound plausible. And I never know. I might actually have damaged my liver over the years.

Mistake #2- a few months ago: I was visiting friends in another city. I had a flight at 6pm. I went on a lunch date that day. I thought I would leave before 3pm, get my bags, and head to airport by 4pm. Lunch started with margaritas. By 3pm, I called the airline and changed the flight to the next morning. I paid $150 to change the flight just so I could continue my drunk afternoon.  The date by that point included the guy and I sharing a table with a drunk women in her 60s. The three of us went to a jazz bar. I switched to rum and cokes. My date disappeared.  I got mad and called friends to come pick me up at 8pm. (Later the date told me he went to his house one block away to charge his phone and came back but I was gone.) I do not remember much at my friends’ place except them harassing me to tell them the time of my morning flight to set the alarm for me. I do not know if I continued drinking there. Probably. I woke up at 4am still drunk. I was still drunk when I arrived home that afternoon. Wasted that day and money.