Back once again with the renegade master. (Live Typing)

Addiction Fast Forward Live Typing My Story Our Stories

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I’m back to square one yet again. My gambling and alcoholism has consumed my life for the past few months. I’m lucky enough to be one week sober again. The fog has lifted a bit and I’m beginning to see that my relapses are getting more frequent and my sobriety is getting less. I’m in a worrying place. I can see now why they call it a progressive disease. The shame gets worse, the anxiety and fears of life. The carelessness. I’ve always given everything in life about seventy to eighty percent of an effort. This is a trait from my teens, I didn’t even bother to show up to about thirty percent of my leaving cert exams. Even this website today doesn’t get my full attention. I had targeted to write fifty pages of articles and have stalled for a while at about thirty five. I have nobody I need to be accountable to, that doesn’t help. Yet having lifted from the fog into a fine sunny day today I’m beginning to realise I can be accountable to myself, my family and services that have helped me along the way. Hopefully I will begin to show them the respect they have shown me. I’m fortunate enough that they haven’t given up on me….yet. That day will come if I continue to drink and gamble. I will be considered a lost cause. From reading Atomic Habits I believe that one hundred percent is unachievable. In AA they teach you to aim for spiritual progress, not perfection. I’m going to give myself a ninety percent chance of getting things right. I will connect with others through three meetings a week. I will engage with my addiction counsellor and I will most importantly try and be a disciple to myself. I need to start looking at my gratitude too. I have a fridge full of food for the first time in weeks, I could even afford my guilty pleasure of a few bottles of Coke Zero. There is a comforting silence in my apartment these days too. I no longer fear my doorbell ringing. My biggest fear at present is some court dates coming up. I need to remind myself there are consequences to my addictions. Court cases are only one of them. I also need to man (or woman) up and face my consequences. I had my bags packed this week, I was planning on running away to either Dublin or Belfast. Running back into homeless services and addiction too. I can see now that my consequences can be manageable and I can’t hide from them any longer. I am going to be given at least a year’s worth of summonses for my actions. Most of them are minor things like telling the guards I’m going to kill myself, others are for sleeping on the streets after as the song goes ‘a cart full of beer’. Maybe I should take some advice from that song too, ‘take your time and stop rushing like hell’.