It's a hot day in Melbourne: 28 degrees; thats about 82 Fahrenheit Not totally stultifying but warm enough to feel a bit hazy. I did some gardening this morning before it warmed up and filled my green waste bin with prunings and weeds. I was going to go to church again but felt ambivalent; last week when I went an AA guy who i know who goes to church started ranting AA-speak to me, ie: You don't have to like the meetings, you just have to go to them; You need a sponsor etc etc. Then when he told me I was gossiping when I made mention of a man who is awaiting a court case for rape, a man who is quite mad and vile. This is why I don't attend meetings in the outer east. Hillbilly country. So I wasn't in the mood for another dose of my churchgoing AA 'buddy', hence I skipped church and gardened instead.
The 3 AA meetings I have attended have been quite good; it's just not the recommended dose over a two week period. The commonly held view by "older sober members" (ie: people with several years sobriety who are inclined to be revered and listened to as if they are some soothsayer or modern-day Yoda) is that the "newcomer" must attend at Least a meeting a day; get a home group; get a sponsor; do some service work; start doing the 12 steps. Well fuck that.
I've done these things (also known as the suggested things) in the past and it didn't keep me sober, much less sane. I find if I go to an 8pm meeting and get a lot out of it then I can come home on a high and not sleep for several hours afterwards. Sometimes members go out for a coffee after a meeting: at 10pm !!!! My mania needs little encouragement to rise up and regular boring early bedtime routines are important. Thus i've decided I'll only do 2 night meetings a week, and either one or two day ones (the day ones aren't as plentiful and often Mums bring their kids with them, which is fine, except most of the kids have ADHD or are ratbags and ruin the meeting. Then again I was bought up in a Von Trapp family type of discipline, so I acknowledge I have a fucked up view of kids. But anyway...).
I haven't imbibed and have felt less like doing so than when last I wrote. One interesting thing: I have more energy and my depression has improved since I quit drinking. I know alcohol is a depressant, but the effect has been notable. I can now watch a DVD without getting disinterested after ten minutes, whereupon I used to fast forward to the end. Now I happily watch them as they come.
I haven't yet improved many other aspects of my life, like exercise and diet. I still drink too much caffeine. My smoking has worsened. It's as if I'm trying to compensate for the alcohol in some ways. I spent $80 on lotto tickets last week. Ridiculous!! There's a $100 million jackpot on the Tuesday Oz Lotto and I have spent way too much time daydreaming about how I would spend it. So I guess thats the next to go: the lotto tickets. That's not too hard, less hard than smoking and diet. I can manage a good diet in bits and pieces. Just can't sustain it.
I'm awaiting getting a home-based outreach worker assigned to me; ie: a professional like a social worker who visits once a week to help me get my life in order. Like a substitute carer. Usually I'm deemed too "high-functioning" to be eligible, but being long term unemployed along with the alcohol making things a bit of a train wreck I qualified. I decided to stop drinking 2 weeks ago because I simply couldn't wait any longer for the worker to be assigned to me. They'd probably recommend counselling which might help but I know for me AA is the most effective solution, even if there are nutters amongst its members. I mean I'm a self-confessed nutter but some people I've met have been beyond the pale, not in a psychiatric sense, more a personality thing. Of course there's a fair few who, like me, have a dual diagnosis. Anyhow.
It's 10 to 5pm on a languid Sunday afternoon. Lots of people are taking tomorrow off work seeing as Tuesday is a public holiday for the running of the Melbourne Cup. It's a bit bizarre to have a holiday for a horse race but there you go.
