That's better, been to the loo, blown my nose.
For the first time ever, then, yes - I drink too much and I have bugger all control over it. About a bottle or more a night for the last 20 years. Can't remember the last time I didn't. Never really been happy about it, but only recently have begun to seriously compare it to 'normal'.
I've just been through a nasty DV split from my partner and although my drinking habits didn't get worse, my thinking about it did, iyswim. I have been charging through the day just to get to 5 o'clock (or 4...) when 'normal' people start drinking, and then that felt as though my day had properly started. More and more I've been acting as though my actual days were just something to be tolerated and rushed so I could hide inside my house with the bottle. And I told myself this was being nice to myself, gentle, taking it easy after a bad time.
Except. My drink of choice is Cava, nice and dry. And last week I caught myself actually planning to have Cava for breakfast with some fruit 'because then it's just like Christmas Day and it will be a treat!'. Now I've told myself some bollocks before about my drinking habits but I was shocked at this one. Not just the how bad it is to drink for breakfast (I didn't, btw), but just how utterly contemptuous and dismissive to me this was from my own brain. I couldn't even be arsed to pretend to be charming and gentle and persuasive to my own self, but just offered up the first laughable shit that came to mind.
Which got me wondering about what other shit I was telling myself that I'd glossed over because it was more plausible than 'Christmas!'. What I found was that I just wanted the world, and me, to go away, to just stop. And that if I couldn't be asleep, then I wanted to be drinking. Not even 'anywhere but here', but not here, full stop.
So that scared me, and that's why I'm crying. And yes although that's how I feel, I know it's not 'right'. So as I can't feel worse than this, I thought I should try and step back from my own decisions and try somebody else's rules, if that makes sense. I haven't anything to lose by stopping drinking, and if I do feel better for it, then perhaps I'll be able to change other things too.
Oh, I'm bad with words - none of that comes close to expressing what I mean. Anyhoo. I had my last drink on Sunday, and my last cigarette on Monday. I am being immensely helped on my way by having a nasty cold and chest infection, which lessens the ability to do these things anyway, so I hope by the time I recover I'll have got a little way down the road to changing.
Sorry that's so long. And snivelly.