This week I mark 2 years of sobriety and the last of the small dates to note it.

After this there are only the large dates at 5 years, 10 years, 20 years and finally 40.

I wasn’t sure if quitting would take or not and honestly I was concerned that I couldn’t.
I had no idea what the extent of my addiction was or if I would need to seek outside help to quit, which would never have happened. I had managed to quite tobacco years before, that was brutal, so I wasn’t sure what getting off the booze would look like. I just felt, deep down, that I needed to quit.

Anyway, for me it began after a particularly rough night of excess. I wouldn’t call it ‘hitting rock bottom’, just another random week night of too much cheap vodka from a plastic bottle.
The early morning commute in traffic to work the next day with a raging hangover, the recovery during the day in a dingy beige cubicle lit in cold fluorescent light and an even longer commute home in more traffic was my tipping point.
I started that night.

I set small goals and kept adding to them.
I told myself that if I could do 1 day without drink, then I could probably do 2 days.

And if I could do 2 days, I certainly could do 3.

If I could do 3 days, I could make the effort to do a week.

1 week then 2.

2 weeks then a month.
This was a big one and I felt that at this point the real hard part was over for me.

1 month turned into 3 months.

3 months turned to 6.

6 months, a year.
This felt like an accomplishment.

Last year, the covid year of job loss, home loss, moving, lifestyle upheaval and so many other things offered many excuses to get off the wagon, to say ‘Fuck it!’ and tip up a bottle again.
But it didn’t happen.
And this week is now 2 years.

I’ll check back again at 5.

\m/

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