I just want to feel the sunshine on my face. It’s been a little dark where I’ve been hiding. This is the first time I’ve really heard an inner child screaming, “I’m not going in there, you can’t make me!” so I knew it was exactly what I needed to do, while at the same time offering myself forgiveness and comfort. Part of me did not want to come back here, to admit that I started drinking again.

It started the evening of Father’s Day. “Both of our Daddies are in Heaven,” I said to my husband, as I poured a shot of apple whiskey for each of us. He had been creating a post about his dad and was having big emotions around that, and I felt inadequate in comforting him. Sadly, there is always a sense of relief when I break my sobriety and join back in the way it was.

For that reason, I think HARM reduction is the only thing that will work. I can’t change my environment, and I failed at altering my reaction to it. I can control how much I drink when I practice HARM reduction. Each time I say I’m going to be sober, when I break that promise to myself, it is worse than if I was just doing HARM reduction – it is 6 or 7 glasses of wine instead of the 3 I allow myself when on my HARM reduction “diet.”

In any case, I suppose the hypomania I posted about could have been brought about by staying up too late a few nights in a row and drinking too much. Then two days later I had a day of depression where I slept all day. I haven’t had anything to drink the last two days, it just hasn’t appealed to me; all the excess of the previous days made me sick of it.

So I suppose I can look at it like I failed, and this is all getting very old and boring to read about, back and forth, and she thinks she can stop and there she goes again, but I have to be realistic. It is better to drink less than more, and in practice, HARM reduction is what helps me to do that. I’m not going to make any more promises I can’t keep, I just have to get real about what I can do in this moment. One moment at a time.