Another Day One - Day Two: totems and magic

The only thing I don't like about the idea of starting a blog is the inevitability of my giving up on when something else takes my interest. I started a blog about my dog when I first got him. It was going to be good, but I only wrote about five posts. I knew a guy, now dead, whose blog stopped in 2014 and still hangs there floating about cyberspace like an old smell.

And of course, since I am naming this blog Another Day One, and am hoping to check in regularly as part of the process of my own sobriety, the idea of just dropping it or losing interest feels dangerous, as though my newly sober state depends on my keeping a record of it.

I'm not religious but I am susceptibe to symbolic, magical thinking. If I had supernatural beliefs I think I'd have been a pretty good priest, and I like the idea that you get honour and respect without having to work very hard (I know some priests work very hard, at least I assume they do). One example of this is when I was living in the UK some years ago and beginning to really recognise that I had a problem with alcohol. I was suffering but I didn't understand the problem, and I thought I could solve it with magic. Not supernatural magic, but by a sort of symbolic and reverent way of living. I found the old silver dove pin I had been given for my Confo and I invoked the help of the Holy Spirit. (I don't actually believe in God, I rationalised, but I can believe in the idea of Goodness.) I took to carrying around in my pretentious briefcase a stone taken from my child's grave. I am a decent human being, was my argument, how could I dishonour the memory of my son by drinking? Another time I took to carrying a glass keyring that reminded me of my determination to succeed in sobriety, and represented the dangers of relapse.

None of these things worked, and their failure made me feel worse. I'm pretty sure the Holy Spirit or the ghost of my dead son do not care at all if I take a quick swig from the sherry bottle over Christmas. When the keyring shattered on the bathroom floor, however, it was hard not to read too much into it.

So I'm cautious about starting a blog because I am wary of symbolic gestures. The blog then has to have a purpose: not just to record but to be a part of my recovery. I do think that being able to look over these thoughts may be encouraging, or a reminder of the danger I face if I drink.

Part of my problem, however, is that when I relapse it seems to come from nowhere. It's not a determination to self-destruct, it doesn't fester or ferment inside me (that I know of) before it froths out. It feels like simply carelessness: six weeks or so into a period of happy sobriety I'll find myself just casually getting a beer. I'm not sure this blog can help with that, but I'm going to record my thoughts on this subject tomorrow, and you never know, maybe the act of articulating and recording them will in fact perform some kind of magic.