Switches and triggers
This past weekend really taught me a lot about myself, in some fun and not so fun ways. I had alluded to, in previous posts, that I was bartending/managing and around the types of products and environment in which I would have consumed large amounts of alcohol. I say with very much pride, I did not cave and have any alcohol. But here is where I say I learned things about myself - and things I am really going to have to work on in the therapy - and all the small things that triggered and flipped the switches to want a drink. I didn’t realize how much I used alcohol to cope. First was after a long twelve plus hour shift of “working” I would have normally had a drink or two (or maybe three) until I fell asleep. It was a way of “relaxing my mind and nerves,” which I had to find new methods to do so and one night I slept maybe 3 hours because my mind was racing. Remember all of this is me relearning how to do somethings, also being nuero-spicy doesn’t help with the sleep and mind calming things. The second time a switch was flipped was by some of the actions of my coworkers. Boy oh boy did I want to just line up some shots and pound them back. This person always has a small grind of irritation to me, if I was an oyster the pearl inside me would be HUGE at this point, but it was the temper tantrums because they didn’t not like the answer they received or the one where they were told no because they thought they knew better about the bar space (they have never bartended nor bar managed ever) than the bar team. Then I realized a big one was boredom, that my down time when I had a bartender, and I was just managing, which resulted in me not having much to do made me want to drink - A LOT.
I didn’t cave in to temptation though. I found outlets to distract my mind and remove the ideas of drinking when they got a bit over powering. I worked on writing for a book that I have had in the works for a couple years now. I worked on recipes for this platform (coming soon, I am excited). I started reading a new book - do we start a book club? I also did adult-y things like book doctor appointments.
Finding these triggers and learning how to manage them was a huge step this weekend. It is all part of the journey.
Overall it was an amazing weekend of theatre, friends, art, and all around good times were had.
-A
