First Year

Promoted to the front page from the user blogs. I want to thank my friend Gatinha for all her contributions. I can think of no finer way to start off the new year than by handing a good friend and fellow alcoholic the first TDA 1-Year Chip ever rewarded. Congrats Gatinha, you earned it! Please find all her previous postings here at Gatinha’s blog.

At the beginning of 2008 I wrote my story here, and made the decision to try to achieve one year of continuous sobriety. For several years up until then I had months of sobriety, weeks of sobriety, days of sobriety, etc., interrupted by binge drinking which consisted of picking up two tall beers to drink on the way home from work, and a six pack of tall ones to drink at home.

I felt like I was managing my drinking, because I never drank on a night before I had to work. However, I paid dearly for each of these binges by being very ill the next day. I would sleep until noon and spend the rest of the day with rapid heart beats, panic attacks, and depression and so on. I would swear each time that it would be the last time.

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Well, I made it through one year of sobriety. I had always thought that if I could stop the binge drinking, that everything in my life would be resolved. I blamed most of my troubles on my inability to stay sober for any length of time.

What I have discovered is that it takes hard work to recover from a life that depended on alcohol when anything went wrong or to celebrate when things were going well.

Now I have to deal with life on life’s terms. I have to accept the fact that at times I might become depressed and that is OK. At times my heart will beat irregularly but the doctors assure me that my heart is fine. I start to panic every now and then when I let myself worry about what could or might happen in the future.

My worries and fears have not gone away entirely. I have to make a conscious effort to turn my life and my will over to God and trust that He can run things much better than I can.

2008 was a great year however. I have excelled more than ever in my work and have a second teaching job that I love! I’ve made new friends and have spent more time with my family.

An unexpected benefit of not drinking is that I’ve lost “inches” and one of my students described me as “hot” when we were doing a speaking exercise in Spanish in which the students were describing each other and the teacher.

I feel wonderful and am optimistic about 2009. Happy New Year to you, TDA, and to all of your readers.

Gatinha