Still a work in progress (a post about sugar) ...

I have to be honest, sometimes I feel like a fraud because I’m not in the slightest bit ‘cured’ when it comes to dealing with emotional shit.

I figured out early in sobriety that much of my drinking was about wanting to avoid tricky emotions. Yes it was also about me wanting things to be fun and upbeat all the time.. but mostly it was about me being an emotion avoider.

Now I’ve taken the booze away and learned how to live without it (and discovered it’s entirely possible to have fun without it – yay!) I am left with the reality of living as a fully raw & emotional human being.

And sometimes I’m ok at this and sometimes I’m fucking awful at it (pardon my french). This weekend I was awful at it. It was a busy stressful weekend of me alone with my 3 boys.. just normal busy life stuff.. running around.. dealing with bickering and fights..cleaning & cooking.. just normal stuff, I’m not moaning about my life.. but what did I do..?!

I did major dysfunctional sugar binging every evening – felt sick going to bed and woke up in the mornings with the same awful feelings of guilt and disfunction that I used to have when boozing.

HELLO???!!! It’s the same behavior pattern as when I was boozing!!

I know sugar is not as bad as booze and for those of you still dealing with alcohol cravings you’d be right in thinking “what’s she worrying about?!” … but what it says to me is that I haven’t fully worked out how to deal with those strong emotions (life stuff) without reaching for some external ‘thing’ to help me cope. But the ‘thing’ isn’t helping, it’s destructive!

So I’m just fronting up and saying I am still a work in progress. I do have a big sugar problem, I’ll be honest, and I use it in the same way I used booze i.e. in times of emotional stress.

I am 3 years sober on Saturday and while that’s huge on one hand, on the other hand it’s not much in the grand scheme of life … and given I avoided emotions for 20 years it’s going to take me more than 3 years to ‘bed in’ new ways of dealing with stuff.

So I’m going for a Sugar-Free September and I know there are a bunch of Living Sober members who are with me on this. I’m going to stare down my sugar-cravings and starve my Sugar Witch to death.

Please – if you are early in sobriety then go hard for the sugar, do whatever you need to get you through early sobriety. You can always deal with sugar later….! It’s more important for now that you get that shit booze out of your life.

But for those of us a bit further along.. maybe this is the next step in getting to a calm place. Because I just don’t like how I feel when I adopt these shitty behaviors. And I’m not going to settle for anything less than Pure Unadulterated Sober Nirvana!! Or something close to that anyway….

Love, Mrs D xxx