THIS is an excellent reminder. Thanks Billy.

Wow! What a perfect description. Not so fun huh?

Thinking all the way through to the end has sure helped me. I've always been a live for the moment sort of girl. I want to feel good NOW and damn tomorrow!

Can really relate to this this morning. On a weekend getaway w mom. She drank last night, I did not. Last night kinda sucked for me because of the way she acted and sone things she said...but the whole time I just focused on accepting and loving her and our time together. This morning I woke early and went to the fitness room at the hotel, now I'm sitting in their little breakfast area waiting for her to wake up. I'm sitting near a window overlooking a creek and nature scene drinking coffee while Sinatra is piped in the hotel speakers....it's a beautiful morning, we could be chatting sober over coffee but she's sleepin off last night. She embarrassed and offended me last night, said she had a Great time! Then passed out. I'm not mad, just wishful that alcohol was never a member of our family.

That is what keeps me sober on a daily basis. Knowing that bad will come out of my drinking and not the good ol times I had.

Halzeden is a great book, I need to get another one, I lost mine.

Has the night before become less important to me and the morning after more important?

This question I can relate to.

What a great feeling these days waking up in the mornings knowing were I have been the night before and with whom I spent the night.

Waking up in a nice clean bed between two clean sheets .

The sheets don't stink of that stench of alcohol which was seeping out of every pore of my skin, or the stench of urine where I had wet the bed or the clothes I was wearing,or the sheets are not stuck to me by blood from were I had been scratching my body. my poor wife .

All I used to worry about when I was drinking is what I had done the night before and what lies I would have to come up with ,How I was going to explain how I had spent all my wages on alcohol,where I had been all night or weekend ,why I had been booked for my 7th DUI and to have to look at the discussed in my wife's eyes.

This I could write a book on.

And I do feel a new freedom and happiness because the night before has become less important to me and the morning after more important?

God Bless...

LIonel

My life in general is much less about instant gratification and more about appreciating that everything has consequences.

However, as a caveat I would say that thinking through the drink, focusing on the negative consequences of drinking etc, may work sometimes but they are not a reliable, long term strategy for staying sober if you are an alcoholic, or not for me anyway.

If they were that is all we would need and most of us would have got sober much earlier - how many times did you think about the consequences of drinking, make an honest promise never to do it again and end up drunk anyway?

This is because of the insanity that results from the mental obsession - the rational thoughts of thinking through the drink, consequences etc are eventually overridden by the insanity and we pick up a drink regardless and we never know when that point will be. That is my powerless, I cannot stay sober based on my own thoughts.