Fourth day and This Naked Mind

So I made it past my regular "two day break" from alcohol and entered into new territory--not drinking past two days in one week. I wonder what my body is thinking. I hope it's happy. I slept so well last night and the night before. I can see on my fitness tracker that there are fewer awake times and more prolonged sleep periods and I can feel it. I hate the feeling of waking up after even having two glasses of wine. And the groggy, irritated, tired, old feeling lasts all day until I have the next drink that evening. I only felt good while into the first glass of wine up to the dreaded half bottle moment when I had to stop. Such a short period of time to actually feel good everyday--three hours, two? And the rest of the day shot to recovering from the poison, which masquerades as a salve, a balm of hurt minds. But like Macbeth, I know, that balm isn't wine, it's sleep. And alcohol ends up being akin to the memory that one killed someone, terrible guilt that keeps you up at night.

After reading a few quit lit blogs recently, I stumbled upon this book and podcast, This Naked Mind, which is newish--I hadn't heard about it in 2014 when I first did the four month booze quit. At that time, I read the Jason Vale book, Kick the Drink Easily. That was helpful at the time in quitting, for four months. I found that indeed, I could kick the drink easily. I started drinking again because I felt that I could always quit again if I wanted. The question is, did I want to quit again? And the answer today is, yes, I do. Only because when I drink I can't really stop within reasonable limits because it is a drug that builds tolerance quickly so that it's impossible to quit and you have to drink more and more in order to feel normal. No way to live. So here I am again.

I went for my walk yesterday and started listening to the Naked Mind podcast on my new non-Apple blue tooth earphones and heard two interviews with former drinkers. Pretty relatable though these two women were so different in terms of socioeconomic class and background. I am looking forward to listening to more of these profiles/stories/interviews. It's shocking how similar the stories are but I like how Annie, the host, picks out significant themes from each of these stories to delve into some of the key issues of alcohol addiction that we fall into. Her approach is one that borrows a lot from Cognitive Behavioral therapy using scientific studies to back up the powerful ways our minds can learn to talk back and think back and push back against unquestioned beliefs about alcohol and its role in our lives. I signed up for the 30 day alcohol experiment to learn more and to strengthen my commitment to quitting for good. I already feel so much better. Simply sleeping better and waking up without that fog of alcohol over me during the day is worth it.