Beginning to see how I was back then

[hooboy]

I'm in my 40's now. In my 20's and 30's I was an alcoholic. Since about age 38, I've calmed it down a lot, with stretches of teetotalling sobriety, but there were always moments that I thought I'd be able to come back to it and just have ONE. I don't need to tell anybody here that that's a lie the mind tells you - the myth of control. The past few months, though, I feel like I've really turned a corner - it helps that I see physical ramifications if I even have one serving of alcohol (roseacea flares up) - and I don't feel the desire for inebriation any more. (My next challenge will be going to a contract in the spring - my work is networky and dogged by socializing - something I don't do much, but there is an assumption there that everyone drinks. It's almost woven into the fabric of the work; I think it's just everybody's haphazard coping skill, but what do I know? Maybe every other person there just has a perfect handle on their drinking and is a perfectly balanced, functioning person on the inside. Ahem.) Anyway, the main reason I'm writing here is that I'm starting to see clearly, and with a bit of distance, how others might have witnessed who I was in the depths of my addiction, and how they might have felt seeing me that way. I think of my own dysfunctional parents, or of my younger sister, and I'm feeling what they must have felt at the time: this helpless shock at how stubborn and determined I was to continue in my own despair. It's kind of crazy that it's only now that I'm thinking about how my actions and behaviours during that time affected other people - because I've been so mired in my own feelings of self-centred despair that others feelings have been kind of secondary. But it's kind of heartbreaking, to feel what my sister must have felt when it was at its worst. So - feeling kind of sad and a bit ashamed, but also it's nice to feel something, and to reflect on these things. AND I'm sober, so that's good.

[brownblob]

Life is a struggle, but it sounds like you are growing and making progress.