I am now 13 days sober. I am happy with the progress I’ve made so far. My lovely wife and I have reconnected to a place we haven’t been since before we had kids. We haven’t had kids at home for a few years, but the alcohol was a major issue / distraction.

Life at home

I have an opportunity most people never get. I am at home with no responsibility from my work. I was on call everyday for many years. Now I have staff that take call, but I am the final fall back as I am in charge of my department. So I have to sleep knowing I may get called that night. Most nights I don’t get called, but just knowing it may happen is an issue since I have been on call for so long. Also during the day I would get calls or support tickets coming in many times a day. Since I work from home now due to COVID, it has really caused a lot of stress. Let me rephrase that… I do work from home, but that really wasn’t the issue, it was my drinking every night starting between 4 – 5.

I have realized that my life consisted of work and drinking and not much room for my lovely wife. Maybe we would send 30 minutes together at night, but most nights I’d go to bed at 6:00 and go to sleep by 8:00.

I was so selfish and I didn’t see it was due to my drinking.

During this time of rehab / getting my life back on track, I work from 7am – 10am. That time is specific and not changeable as my managers has put those limits on me. They also don’t want me to take any calls and don’t want me calling anyone. This has been an amazing time for my lovely wife and I to reconnect.

From 10am to 9:30pm my lovely wife and I are together non-stop. That seems like a lot, but we had always been our own best friends. We loved talking and spending time together. All of that stopped with my drinking. We never thought we’d ever get it back. Many times over the past 8 years we both have said, if we can’t live together, we wouldn’t leave the other, but we would just live separate lives under the same roof. It got bad at times. My drinking didn’t make my life better as I had thought, it made it worse. I was more tired, more angry, more unhappy, and less thoughtful. Inside I knew all of these things, but I just pushed it down so that I could continue to drink.

The time with my lovely wife over the past week has been a real eye opener. We still have it! We still love talking and spending time together. We are happier than we have been in a long time. I have stopped watching TV, mindlessly being on the Internet, mindlessly looking at my phone, etc. That time is now my time with my lovely wife. Honestly my relationship with her is the only relationship that really matters in the end. We have gone from saying, we will live separate lives in the same house, to having lives that have quality and hope.

I compare the past few weeks to taking the red pill in the Matrix. I suddenly saw the damage I was doing to my relationships and myself. Now the sky is the limit as I have an extra 5 hours a day in my life that I didn’t have when I was drunk.

I love my life!