Huge building. Was two floors when it was a bar/restaurant. Not sure they use both floors for the dispensary though. Stones throw to Wrigley Field.
$CRLBF
We may be anonymous strangers on the internet, but we have one thing in common. We may be a world apart, but we're here together!
Welcome to the 24 hour pledge!
I'm pledging myself to not drinking today, and invite you to do the same. Maybe you're new to /r/stopdrinking and have a hard time deciding what to do next. Maybe you're like me and feel you need a daily commitment or maybe you've been sober for a long time and want to inspire others. It doesn't matter if you're still hung over from a three day bender or been sober for years, if you just woke up or have already completed a sober day. For the next 24 hours, lets not drink alcohol! This pledge is a statement of intent. Today we don't set out trying not to drink, we make a conscious decision not to drink.
It sounds simple, but all of us know it can be hard and sometimes impossible. The group can support and inspire us, yet only one person can decide if we drink today. Give that person the right mindset! What happens if we can't keep to our pledge? We give up or try again. And since we're here in /r/stopdrinking, we're not ready to give up! What this is: A simple thread where we commit to not drinking alcohol for the next 24 hours, posting to show others that they're not alone and making a pledge to ourselves. Anybody can join and participate at any time, you do not have to be a regular at /r/stopdrinking or have followed the pledges from the beginning. What this isn't: A good place for a detailed introduction of yourself, directly seek advice or share lengthy stories. You'll get a more personal response in your own thread. This post goes up at: US - Night/Early Morning Europe - Morning Asia and Australia - Evening/Night A link to the current Daily Check-In post can always be found near the top of the sidebar.
Oh lord. There are so many ways to write what should be my most important message. I think part of my delay has been the daunting task of trying to picture how to structure the telling. It was a a kind of hell to live through, and if I cant organize that into something useful to another fellow sufferer (drinker or anchored to one), then it will be one more massive fail to throw on the pyre. Because that's who this is for. Most people have problems. Sometimes those problems are as massive as a personal black hole, consuming everything in ones life down to the very light itself. It can be hard to come back from a blackhole. Science says it's impossible in fact. Actually science used to say the same things about my type of affliction. Head back 60 or 80 years and doctors wrote my kind off as 'hopeless and untreatable'. To be restrained to a bed in a mental hospital for the rest of ones days.
I am an alcoholic. That is a line I've said countless times over the years. The first bunch of times would have had a sarcastic fearful self denying tone. Or would have tried feebly inserting the word not in there, to see if that lie could be sold. After a time I would accept it, and on occasion own up to it, but always in such a surrendered self defeated way. I remember clearly when the first person who I both cared about and respected the opinion of, told me she thought I had a drinking problem. She even approached it then with a 'let's try to figure this out for moving forward' spirit. For which she was repayed with damn near a decade of really getting to know addiction, alcoholism, deception, reckless behavior and more stress response than is healthy to cram into a body. (Maybe a good lesson here is have your eyes wide open as to what you may be signing on for if you decide to "help" someone).
I wasn't a stranger to alcoholism at 20 something years old when the above proclamation was made. I watched my father struggle with the same bottles for most of my formative years. His tale and his father's tales are similar. How far back does that go I wonder. I'm the oldest of three boys, and thankfully neither of my brothers has been ensnared as thouroughly. They may not have had to struggle with booze like I did, but both of their lives were shaped by it. The science on what role genes or heredity play is still slowly emerging, but I'm satisfied to know that there are some ways to be put together that make certain things intolerable to some folk. How I am put together
... keep reading on reddit ➡I said please
