Day 3. The Pendulum solution

Embracing your painful past to unleash pleasure and joy in the present

Let's take a walk in the garden of goodness and evil shall we, where we are offered pleasurable and not so pleasurable things. Today we learn about duality whereby one thing cannot exist without its opposite. Being drunk cannot exist without being sober, gin cannot exist without tonic, good/evil, hot/cold, right/wrong and pleasure and pain.

We learn about Dr Freud's Pleasure Principle and that compelled me to do an inkblot test.

Can anyone else see a vagina and a penis or is that just me? What would Dr Freud say? Madam, have you been drinking? and Madam would say, no, i haven't had sex for 3 days......I think that was a freudian slip.  I actually havent had a drink for 3 days and i've lost count of when the last time it was i had a nookie.  Seems like sobriety is occurring in more ways than one!

So alcohol has this amazing ability to releive pain and create pleasure almost instantly,  Interestingly though i don't drink to escape anything, i did drink because i enjoyed it. This puts alcohol right in the centre of duality - in the centre of the pleasure/pain bubble.

Over the past 2 days, we have begun to associate so much pain with drinking alcohol that we want to shift our feelings towards having so much pleasure from not drinking alcohol.  This messes with my inkblot mentality, because throughout life, there are 2 things we as humans want to do. One is to avoid pain and the other is to have pleasure. And today we have to put so much pain back into our life that the balance tips out of this duality towards ongoing pleasure and the sobriety that comes with it. we have to associate so much pain and feel it, so it changes the way we think. We have to invite all that pain in and make it feel welcome. Hello pain, here come in, take a seat, get comfortable....can i fix you a drink? Fuck, i need a drink to comprehend that!

So while i wait for my cup of tea to cool, let's look at what we had to consider today.  Our Theme - how we have to set our pendulum going towards being alcohol free, the all or nothing, where we don't set any other goals, until we have completed this program - guess that means having that goal of doing this dusting this week is out, Our greatest gift - the realisation that our association with excessive alcohol has been holding us back from achieving great things and the pleasure principle.

So how do we make all this happen?  here's how.

Action 1. review our before me notes
Revisit the things and moments that were my rock bottom. Use all 5 senses to experience this.

Action 2. review the new you
Revisit the person you want to be and the things you want to do. Use all senses to make association with this.

Action 3. Your plan to overcome temptation
How will i walk in the garden of good and evil and what will i do to keep me on track. So here's my strategy and the beauty is, it's something i can add to at anytime.
- document how i feel when i have feelings of cravings come to the surface
- revisit my vision
- revisit the before me
- drink soda water
- do a visualization
- make a chart to recognise each day that i don't have a drink and cross it off as i move towards the goal
- I've also created a brainstorm of other things i can do with my time. Seems like blogging has come to the fore.

So how did i fare today?
9.27am - didn't sleep well and am getting sick with a cold and have a headache.

that's it, that's all i needed to jot down for the day. and with that, i am off to slumber.