When I very first quit drinking 8 years ago, I did actually attend AA meetings every week for six months or so. Initially, I was just so scraped raw, so exposed in sobriety that every contact with the world felt like a blow, and I was terrified of people. But that passed with all the rest of the side effects of alcohol.
It was MAGNIFICENT. An epiphany. An unveiling. A few weeks after I quit, I woke up in the morning, and I didn’t feel sick. I continued through the days, and I kept waking up NOT feeling sick! I didn’t realise that the rest of the world, most of the time, didn’t have to function through nausea and pain. I had become so used to feeling this way that it was a sudden and breathtaking surprise when I continued not to.
I felt good, and I felt good and was not actually drunk. These two things had been mutually inclusive for so very long that walking around not feeling like I was dying was a novel experience. I was used to having to be staggering around to feel normal.
Ok I just thought about it and I will have to retract that paragraph sort of. I had stopped feeling good when I was drunk. That was part of the problem. It just didn’t fucking WORK anymore. I got drunk and I could still feel just as much of the pain and shame. And of course I jknew that I had given in to it one more time; that I had been that weak, that I had given up and slipped so much closer to the horror of my shame and self disgust proving again that I had betrayed my potential. That all of the sacrifice and pain that existed because of me was worth nothing because I was worth nothing.
Anyway. I went to AA and this guy had a great face. I sketched him during a meeting. Someone wanted to use it in an AA newsletter or something, but he wasn’t happy that I had drawn him so I figured he wouldn’t like me to publicise it.