Addiction has been on my mind lately, because on August 13, around 4pm, I’ll have 13 years clean and sober. Kind of impressive, is what people say. I suppose so since it seems most people can’t (or won’t) do it. To me, though, getting clean and sober just seemed to be what I had to do since I preferred to stay alive.

I have to say, though, that I quit going to NA or AA meetings regularly years ago. I got tired of going to meetings and hearing folks talk about drugs and alcohol. Yes, it was in the how to quit them and how to stay quit. But at that point I had some 6 or 7 years clean and I actually knew how to do both, and talking about drink and drugs just made me think of them when I didn’t think of them otherwise. When I feel I need a reminder, I go back. The first years, though, I needed reminders constantly because the conflict in my head sounded something like this.

Yo, chickie, just WHY is it we’re living such a damned dull life sitting here knitting between meetings?

Um, I dunno really, but damn you’re right, this is boring.

Yeah, screw this knitting and meetings shit, let’s go out and party.

Uh, wait, that crap killed us once.

True. Well. So what now?

Let’s go to a meeting.

Life got unboring though. Probably the petro… wait… neuro-chemicals in my brain got settled down from being a cokehead. And I got in the habit of having a different sort of life than I did before I quit the drink and the drugs. It’s ok, you know.

I got in the habit of just saying no. Over and over and over. Screaming it if I had to, to be heard. Barring that, I started the habit of just literally walking out if the “no” wasn’t getting through. But I realized I really, really had it engraved in my brain when someone in an online chat room offered me a cyberdrink and without thinking, I replied, “No thanks. I don’t drink.”

So I don’t drink. Alcohol, that is. Nor do I do any recreational drugs. Nor do I abuse prescription drugs. Barring any completely unforeseen weirdness and mental collapse that I can’t fathom, I’ll make it to 13 years. Yippee. Double yippee because I always get taken out for Yummy Food to celebrate.

(Ok, I’m batty lately. Posted this as a page when I posted it, then had to drag it off here and make a post of it. Ugh. I think the bipolar meds really are eating my brain.)

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 6:53 pm and is filed under addiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.