Was making beef strogonoff for diner last night and used some of the little bottle of brandy I got for it in the dish and then had an Irish Coffee with what was left. It set off a craving for more which kind of annoyed me as I normally dont drink on Tuesday nights but as it was raining and the craving wasnt that huge I didnt go to the shop for more. It still peed me off a bit that I craved at all as usually now I decide when I drink and I have 3,4 or at the most 5 drinks and Im finished. In fact the 5 drink nights are usually after a 4 night break and as the weekend goes on I drink less and less.
Because the craving annoyed me I was thinking about it this morning and realized that Ive absolutly no right to be annoyed. The differences TSM has made to my life are huge, I rarely crave and I drink about a third of what I would drink if I wasnt on nal. Furthermore I never black out, I never wake up in the early hours which I always did drinking prior to tsm. eventhough I do on occasion get buzzed I still retain that clarity that is so difficult to explain. So all in all I dont know what qualifies as a cure but if I were to continue drinking at the level Im at now with no further decrease I would be happy with what nal has given me. Certainly if somone had showed me one of these current weeks when I was activly drinking alcoholically I would have cried with the want to be here.
Am I cured? No, I still have a ways to go BUT alcohol is mostly under control and the bigest gift of all is that I no longer fear where it will take me. Its lost its all consuming power and Im finally more relaxed about the place alcohol has in my life than Ive been in 10 years. The worry is 90% gone.
Ive noticed though that my addictive personality is now occupying itself with other persuits, namely stashing as many naltraxone tabs as I can ( i have 70 tabs and have ordered more- just to be on the safe side- I find myself counting them once or twice a week and calculating how long they will last) AND drinking coffee. I only ever drank cofee maybe a half dozen times a year and now I wake in the morning and crave it. Still its all better than the mornings I woke hungover yet craving alcohol and plotting nd planning how I was going to get my hands on it.
The human mind can be a strange place to live in- no doubt about it
