Commit to Action

There’s nothing like a drink to end the day to celebrate a job well done. That’s what earthlings can say and most of them can get away with it. Most of us have lost that privilege because we used to celebrate no matter how the day or the night before went. It was our wont to escape reality and if we did actually do a good job in the mocus state did we even remember what it was that was so good?  I doubt it.  

The week between Christmas and New Years can find us at a loose end. We might be for example in the middle of making our resolutions for 2012. Some of them might include a new diet, an exercise regimen or even in the case of those still sick and suffering the declaration to stop drinking. Resolutions rarely work because we usually lack the commitment to put those words into action. And let’s face it resolutions although the concept is a good one usually falls on deaf ears: our own.  I found that it can help to tell our significant others that we have made these resolutions and in this way there is a social proof underway that we not only can’t disappoint ourselves but those we have made that commitment to as well.  However, in the case of stopping the drink public announcements are just not strong enough and the only way we can put our words into action is to take it to a higher power. 

Now a higher power doesn’t mean that you have to expose yourself to religion or even start gong to church what it does mean is that there is a power greater and it just so happens it’s not us. We can join AA or we can see a member of the clergy or a CASAC counselor or a therapist. We don’t have to do it alone because there is no token economy that gives us a commendation for doing it alone. If we are in a rowboat and the oars are provided we use them if we are to get anywhere other than where the tide takes us.  

The week between Christmas and New Years can be the one where we start to take action and put down the drink without ceremony.  Get dry and sober right here right now.  

Why Not Right Now?

Thinking about drinking this holiday season? Because in the back of your mind you’ve told yourself that that after New Year’s you will turn over the proverbial new leaf? And since it’s so close by somehow it seems like a real promise. In this way we can still take our comfort in a time when our drinking will get lost with the other earthlings that are over indulging too.  We love to compare because it deflects us from looking at our behavior of a self-will run riot.  

Trouble is that as there is no particular time to stop drinking. We make dates on a calendar in our delusional mind that give it more significance than right now. We lose ourselves in promises we’ve made over and over and broken more times than we’ve tied our shoes. 

So no one will notice if we wait until January to start what needs to be begun today except ourselves.  I can only tell you from experience not wisdom that there’s no time like the present to stop and the significance it will have next year will be better than any New Years resolution we’ve made all our lives.  

Tears of a Man

At a party last night my friends gathered to mark a dual celebration of Christmas and Birthday of a dear vulnerable man with the heart of a lion who sheds tears like the falling rain. I loved the transparency of his emotion and instead of erasing the tracks of his tears they made their way down the creases in his strong countenance like a winding river.  I thought here was a man who found his balance between his anima and animus and the lucky woman at his side watched in love feeling both his tenacity and tenderness. 

In my drinking life I had often felt the urge of my lachrymal glands but I would always stifle them thinking I had lost some of my masculinity but it was only regret that I was experiencing not true emotion.  That’s how dysfunctional my drinking life was oblivious while intoxicated and filled with regret and empty promises of a sober lifestyle.  I don’t miss drinking only the unlived life it kept me from.  

Kill 'Em With Kindness

I have mastered the heartache and heartburn being with my relatives on the holidays. Kill ‘em with kindness as it makes me forget all the transgressions I imagined they perpetrated on me and softens some of the emotional crimes I pulled on them.  

The 5 Dollar Martini

It has been a long time. 22 years ago my drink of choice, which was an Absolut dry Martini on the rocks with a twist, might have cost a 5 spot, but today 15 dollars might not fetch the premier vodka Grey Goose. 15 bucks can you imagine that? Maybe some of you newcomers might know firsthand just how costly it is to drink these days. A considerable hole in the pocket it would be even in today’s dollars to be drinking alcoholically.  

My spin instructor was talking condescendingly about a restaurant offering this retro price of 5 skins for a martini as if it was heresy to imbibe anything but the top shelf brands. I thought to myself maybe that explanation might be just a bit snobbish but she is an earthling and can afford the high price of alcohol because she might just have one. But for us pros after the first drink we knew it didn’t matter if the vodka was Grey Goose or Smirnov and our pinky wasn’t raised as we gulped down the toxic clear elixir. Our goal wasn’t how to drink elegantly but only to drink as much as our liver could process and do it with the least amount of paper disappearing out of our wallet. 

The 5-dollar martini might be a thing of the past and as long as I stay stopped the price will never change.