I screwed up…. big time.

Hello Everyone,

Well, I’ll be blunt. I relapsed.

Last weekend I was on the way home and something happened. The only way I can describe it is my rational brain went on automatic pilot and the old me took over. I stopped to buy some lotto tickets and saw the wine counter and sure enough, I picked up the bottle, brought it home, and drank it.

The next day I woke up hating myself and promised it would never happen again. I thought about my sponsor and cringed at the idea of telling her, so I didn’t. I figured I could handle it on my own and no one would know. It was that old circular thinking creeping back up on me already after only one bottle.

Sure enough, the guilt I was holding inside myself drove me back to the bottle that night again. And the night after that. It’s now Wednesday and I drank every night this week. I even took the day off work yesterday and drank all day.

This morning I woke up at four a.m, feeling sick and ashamed and depressed, and admitted to myself that I couldn’t keep the secret if I wanted to get back on track and stop drinking. So I wrote and told her.

I felt like such a loser this morning. I was so disappointed in myself and I feared the disappointment of my sponsor. I felt all that hard work I had done went down the drain.

I knew what had happened. I had let myself get overburdened with stress at work, got emotionally involved with my dear M to the point where his needs were more important than mine, fixated on my money problems, worried myself sick about my housing situation and various other life issues.

This in itself is not the problem. Many people have stress/emotional issues. My problem as an alcoholic is that I didn’t reach out for help when I should have. I became a recluse when I should have been calling my sponsor and getting more involved with meetings and with other alcoholics.

I stopped blogging. I spent all my time alone. I took the whole burden of my worries on my own shoulders thinking I could handle it, forgot all about my higher power, and denied myself the smallest relief of anyone else’s helping hand or support. Of course it was only a matter of time until I picked up a drink.

When I received my answer from my sponsor, it made me cry. But not because I was sad. I cried because I was so grateful I have a friend and a sponsor like her. She wrote to tell me that she was not disappointed in me at all, that sometimes people falter as hard as we try and we can’t expect perfection, only hope for it.

She told me that she knew I was being very hard on myself right now but try instead to be forgiving, and to ask for help. She urged me to remember I am not alone and that I have a huge support group if only I would reach out.

And she cautioned me not to give into despair or think I am unfixable or unsaveable, (yes I know that’s not a word but you get my point). In the end, she gave me hope and relief that I am not a loser or a monster, just a human being with flaws who screwed up. Now it’s time to pick myself up, dust myself off, and try again.

T- over and out