Hi anyone who reads this. I have not been blogging much lately bc I have not been able to find any free time where I am not already too tired to write. This leads me to an interesting couple of thoughts. 1) How does working too much affect your recovery, 2) Is there a link between working too much and being an alcoholic, and 3) How do you stop working too much once you start? I'd like to tackle the first topic first...working too much is both helpful to my recovery (staying busy keeps my mind from tweeking out) but also seems to mess w/ my recovery in that once I stop being busy I am so strung out that I feel like a drink might really help. A good example of this phenomena occured this wknd...following what can only be described as a crazy work week I had a really nice dinner on Saturday night w/ my husband and some family...the place was cool, good music, night lighting, great food. No one really drank at dinner, good conversation. As we were leaving we had to stand in the bar area while waiting for someone to use the lady's room. As I stood there and surveyed the scene my eyes immediately got locked on a bottle of Knob Creek. There I stood gazing upon the Knob Creek as if she were a long lost love who I had forgotten until that exact moment and now could not believe I ever lost her. The good news is that I did not have any recall of taste which can really f w/ my mind but the bad news is that I stood there reminscing about how delirious I could get drinking it. Of course I felt bummed that I could not drink it anymore. I stood looking at the guy sitting alone at the bar and, for a moment, envied him. How I could envy a lonely guy at a bar is beyond me but a testament to my disease in full throttle. I snapped to in a moment but felt the effects of the Knob Creek encounter all night and into the next day. I realized eventually that I was tired, spent, emotionally fried from working too much and not taking time for myself. The result is that when I see a good bottle of anything, it looks better in this frame of mind. Much like how you should not go food shopping when you've not eaten all day bc everything looks good. Being in a bar or around alcohol when I am tired or run down is like that for me. What I would never want or think about in a healthy frame of mind looks dangerously attractive in a tired frame of mind. The truth is that I have to take better care of myself, have clearer boundaries between my work and home time, and stop eating m&ms and coffee for breakast and lunch if I want to feel healthy and strong and not think about drinking. My recovery is more then just my behavior, it is very much my thinking and when the thinking starts to get nutty--I can only assume that if left unchecked the behavior will get nutty too. Six months of this thinking later, I'll be sitting at the bar not looking at it. So, I have to stop. Speak up. Chill out. Get it together and then over and over again recorrect the weirdo alignment on my brain. Dont work when I am home, despite the desire to, don't eat m&ms for breakfast, despite the desire to, dont sacrifice myself for my job and my family, despite the desire to. I know I can and will make these changes--thanks to Knob Creek I know that I have to.
As far as how this all relates to recovery--isnt it so funny that the same braint that can drink despite wanting to stop can also work despite wanting to stop. It is as if my mind has a mind of its own and once it gets in over doing it zone--the actual behavior is irrelevant. Working can take me out of myself and my head just as quickly and almost as effectively as drinking once I could. I have to ask myself what I am trying to escape if I want to deflate this crazy balloon. I have to go right to the heart of the discomfort or sadness or confusion or risk going down the same path I've been down before just by taking a different route there. The crazy think about addiction is that you can take a different road for a long long time and only realize later that there is a shortcut right back to where you started if you are not careful. That is quite a lesson for this snowy day off (that I've alrady worked on) Monday. Think I'll take a run. xx
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