This morning I awoke disappointed from a dream filled with confusion. I was in Miami, where some old friends of mine from high school now live, helping to take delivery of some goods for several different enterprises. I was in a loading area, but I could see the bar owned by my friends just yards away. It was a simple Florida style counter with seating for about eight people. It reminded me of something out of a western; small, efficient and to the point. People came here to drink.
Someone near me asked what the large pallet beside me contained. I explained it was vodka. Cases and cases of vodka. There was every flavor imaginable. He chuckled at the amount delivered and told me where we should store the precious freight.
As I began to move the boxes some questionable looking characters pulled up and told everyone to leave the area immediately. My friends had sent them to transport me to safety. There was danger approaching, although now I cannot remember what the danger was. It feels like violence was the cause rather than a severe bout with Mother Nature.
Regardless, I told them to go on without me because under no circumstances would I leave the bar. I could almost taste the bitter vodka I was so close to consuming and would rather die with with the delivery than leave it and be without. Come what may, I would go out of this world happy with my old friend in hand.
I'm not sure what happened after that. I awoke in my bed beside my patient, loving husband with a chest full of anxiety and a heavy heart. I did not need a dream therapist to help me interpret what the dream meant. Today I was six days sober after an eight year love affair alcohol and, more specifically, vodka.
I'm still not sure what exactly pushed me to the point of breaking where I finally knew I had to get help. All I know is five days ago I sat in the intake office of a rehab treatment hospital looking at the prospect of spending up to two weeks without seeing my children or going home. That was the moment I knew this was the last time I would quit drinking.
I have spent the past days on a leave of absence from my job detoxing from both the alcohol and the anti-anxiety medication I was self-administering. The combination over more time could have been lethal. I have had physical withdrawal to a certain extent, but more than that is the severe mental and emotional withdrawal I continue to experience. Feelings of shame, guilt, regret, sadness, anguish and despair fill my days and my nights.
The doctors tell me that these feelings will continue for some time, but that the periods of acceptance will slowly begin to seperate the dark times a little more each day. I am finding that to be true.
I do not know what the future will bring to me, but I know that I am committed to staying clean and returning to the ways of the "old" me....the "good" me. Through the fog I am beginning to see that no matter how bad I feel right now, there is surely Still Some Good Left.
