detoxblog@wonderwinds

It is also Pennsylvania's Democratic primary day, so in theory today would be a great day to plant a candidate but I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to mix your activities like that. At any rate, Hillary is winning Pennsylvania and Barack is winning the nomination and the earth is losing ... well ... everything. Everything except of course the ability to shrug us off like dandruff if need be.

It is also the day my counter officially goes to 3 months straight and sober.

Been a while since I put anything up here. Kinda figured I should because I dunno once you start something you should finish it, but there really is no "finish" to this as far as I can tell. I mean, it's not like if you go three months or three years or three decades you're magically 'normal' again. But without any activity focused specifically on detoxification I'm not sure what I would be putting up here.

Maybe something about how frequently I hit on the overpowering urge to get shit faced blind drunk without ever hitting on a desire to have a drink or two? The first 2 days back at work sucked. Holy shit I seriously thought about bagging this whole sobriety thing then, but (believe it or not) I'm better than that. Then out of the blue while talking with a former girlfriend - bam - I wanted to get likkered up. But see that's boring to write about because it comes and goes and that's all there is to it. Not like I do anything about it or to somehow prevent these thoughts from popping unbidden into my head yah?

I guess in retrospect I could have been writing about some of the gains I perceive that I associate with the whole straight and sober thing. Like for example it is amazing how much money I don't spend on stuff even though doing the math doesn't spell out how being heavily intoxicated costed me what I seem to be not spending now. For example figure a liter a day average. That might be a bit higher than historical reality, and on work days it was certainly less, but on off days it was not uncommon for me to drink more. So at a liter a day and about 25 bucks for a 1.75 liter bottle I figure that works out to 14 bucks a day for bourbon. 25 bucks was a good price for a big bottle, and freqently I was buying smaller bottles (more expensive per unit measure yah?) so on balance I think it's reasonably close to say 14 bucks a day or about 100 bucks a week. On booze. Maybe that sounds like a lot but shit my "big bills" run me 3000 a month plus the credit cards plus the consumable bills plus food, so throwing another 400 a month into the mix (or extracting it from I guess) doesn't feel like that much of a change.

But wow my money stuff is way on track again. Like, I got a bit of a cushion in checking and savings now. Not much, but some. I got the mortgage paid up 2 months in advance which is cool. They send me a bill as soon as they get a check from me, so I turn around and send them a check as soon as I can. The next bill is due when it would have been due, so right now I don't have a mortgage payment due until July 1st of this year - and not overdue until like 2 weeks later - and who knows how long before they foreclose my sorry ass out. So wow I got some cash available and some time 'banked' where I don't have to shell out on the biggest of the big bills. Due to straight and sober? Dunno but for a fact things were getting much worse and now are obviously tracking in the right direction.

I guess I could also write about how I'm not really changing my evil ways anymore. Kind of a risky thing there given that changing the behaviors is critical to changing the end result, but wow I'm probably even more isolated and anti-social than before. I'm just not likkered up anymore. Gotta do something about that but dammit I have no idea what to do or how to do it. "Get out and meet people" but fuck I really don't like people.

Three months by the way is also the minimum time frame I established for myself before I would look into finding a job that doesn't suck so bad. My current job with Intel isn't the worst fate in the world of course. It pays great and the work is really easy. Actually, I barely do any work and they are pretty much okay with that. Mostly though it sucks because of that: I don't earn but maybe 60 percent of the wage I make and I'd rather earn my wage and deserve a bit more. Don't wanna go down that rant path too far, but yeah it's been three months since my last drink and it's been a bit longer since my last full blown drunk. Time to get on with life a bit and to me that begins with a job I'm not ashamed to take the money from. Hello Utah? What's up? Yeah I'm doin' all right and was wondering if I could come over and maybe we could have a little talk about the future...