How Motherhood Keeps Me Sober

I was in a bar last night. A grimy, gross bar –- the kind of bar where you’d shudder to see daylight hit the upholstery. I went to use the bathroom and my first thought was that I can’t BELIEVE I used to do cocaine off those surfaces. Now that I have eight years clean and sober, I am able to go to bars on occasion. I don’t treat it lightly –- I’m not in one without a purpose (a friend’s birthday party, perhaps), or for very long. I usually know to leave when people begin to reach the level of drunkenness where they are circling and retelling the same stories over and over. But on this particular night, the bar was feeling a little too inviting. I was remembering the pleasant burn of that first cocktail on a cold night, and the memory wasn’t scaring me like it should. I wasn’t in danger of drinking, exactly. But a drink sounded good. I did what I was taught when I got sober, and played out the tape. Yet none of it ― the fight I’d surely get into with my boyfriend, the way I knew I would want to keep on drinking and drinking after everyone had else had had their two drinks and gone home ― seemed so awfully bad after all. None of it was the thing that stopped me from heading up to that bar and ordering something with vodka in it, the expensive stuff because why not relapse in style? What does stop me from drinking is knowing that I would eventually fail my son. I am an alcoholic. For me, that means that when I drink...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news