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Looking back but looking forward too.

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It took me quite sometime to be able to say goodbye alcohol. Well, it took me six months. I’d like to say I never wanted to drink after that but that’s not true. In fact I think it took me almost all of my two years to really accept drinking was part of my past. But at six months I couldn’t really imagine a path back to it. And I think then I truly accepted that since I’d had mostly a happy and contented period off the sauce, it was only my addiction that would entice me back. No other good reason, no way I could have convinced myself that life would be better or more fun if I started again. I knew the truth by then. The truth being that my life was infinitely better without alcohol in it, but that my brain would occasionally try and tell me otherwise.  When I first stopped drinking I couldn’t even write the words in my journal - I’ve given up drinking and I will never drink again. Imagine, not even being able to write that down in my perfectly private journal. But to celebrate making

Two years, two whole years.

Happy two hear soberversary to me! I wanted to write something to celebrate. But what to write about? Well, obviously it would be about how I got sober after forty years of grog having its foot on my throat. It would be about how my life has changed, about how fucking miraculous it is that I’ve actually managed to do this thing. About what a surprise this sobriety gig is. About how, at the beginning, you don’t really know what you’re getting yourself into. About how you wish and pray - which I took to at the end such was my desperation - to be able to stop drinking, how you imagine things must be better if you could only do that one thing. Give the bloody stuff away. Stop it, when at that stage it feels like a freight train out of control. Like it has a life if its own and you are just an unwilling passenger, hanging on for grim death. Yes, it would be about all of that. I won’t rehash my story, it’s on the Tribe website if you care to read it. I might publish it here at some stage. I’

Welcome. What am I doing here?

Hello Friends 714 days free.  Welcome to my blog. I’m Trish, Australian, 59 years old, retired but not retired as I care for my husband who lives with a traumatic brain injury.  I write here because holy shit, at 57 I gave up the drink. I still can’t really believe I did it but I did. Giving up alcohol, when it’s been like a foot on your throat for decades, is a pretty miraculous thing. My husband, after coming out of a 3 month coma, had to learn to walk and talk and live again. When I came out of a forty year relationship with alcohol, I had to learn to live again too. That’s no exaggeration.  I’ve never considered myself a writer, but I’ve been drawn to writing many times over the years, as a way to get my feelings out of my head. It’s cathartic, such an amazing way to clarify the swirling thoughts that can go round and round, festering and morphing into an experience of life filled with anxiety and worry. All my life I’ve been very adept at anxiety and worry. Now I’m not. I used to