Working with booze 5 nights a week has served to desensitize me to a lot of old triggers. I don't get that panic of handling it, serving it, talking about it, or generally being around it much anymore. The smell of wine sometimes gets to me a bit. I have found that the smell of a bourbon or good scotch still hits me fairly hard. Its just such a strong, distinct scent that I can pick up from a foot away. It's a very warm smell that I can almost taste. This usually lasts for a split second before I remind myself that it's simply not for me any longer. I remember the burn of it going down and that distinct spreading warmth of it... Then I remember my inability to speak after about 8 ... And how I never knew when or how to stop. I mean never. I remind myself that from my first swigs out of a bottle of Jack (my first love.. Many more and differing bottles followed) I never drank like my friends and it was an instant intense obsession. How dark in made my mind and world. That smell reminds me that I am truly an alcoholic and always have been. But, man, that smell still hits my soul.
-- Edited by Col on Saturday 25th of May 2013 11:13:25 PM
Aaaaah yes, ... 'smell' is one powerful sense that can make anyone make a 'double take' ... ... ...
As the book says, if we are in fit 'spiritual condition', we can go and do things with impunity and that we will 'recoil' from alcohol when it is present ... so it is we practice our principles daily so we can leave the past, in the past ... ... ... I can re-claim the pain of my past in an instance, but that is not a sign of spiritual growth ...
I was, however, walking through the Kroger bakery yesterday and the smell of them baking fresh sweetbreads of some kind, hit me like a ton of bricks ... I was standing beside a display of 'Krispy Kreme' doughnuts ... ... ... uh, ... somehow when I got home and was putting my groceries away, there seemed to have been a box of doughnuts that had jumped into my cart ... oh wow, they didn't even make it to Sunday morning ... ... ... what is that??? ... lack of will-power? ... man, I just had to have a cold glass of milk, well, and the box of doughnuts ... ... ... like, RIGHT NOW!!!
I think I'm hopelessly in love with chocolate and sugar now ... forget the alcohol ... at least I remember savoring the flavors of life now ... is it okay to be a bad boy once in a while?, heck, I was here at home, alone ... no-body saw me ... HeeeHeee
__________________
'Those who leave everything in God's hand will eventually see God's hand in everything.'
I identify with both of these posts. Ha. For me, it's the smell and sight and sound of hoppy beer. I don't experience it often these days, but if there was one full sensory temptation that could drag me in to my living hell again and again, it was the hoppy IPA. It makes me hate being an alcoholic more than I already do, and having such strong and childish yearnings for it only affirms I have the disease. Like you, though, the second I smell it or see those whimsical, cartoony boxes, I return to what it felt like to drink six (or nine) of them, be unable to taste anything anymore, and wake up feeling like my stomach was rotting from all the carbs and carbonation. Yuck. Also, Pappy, I LOVE chocolate. My taste for it really only developed over the past couple months. I have found that, as someone else recently mentioned, a candy bar helps me when I'm having a bad craving. Twix, man. And other foods too. Getting sober is the best thing I have ever done for my palette. And the rest of my life too, of course. Hope you're all having a relaxing, chocolate-filled weekend :) -Adam
__________________
When every situation which life can offer is turned to the profit of spiritual growth, no situation can really be a bad one.-Paul Brunton
Good post Col and good responses...scary for me because relapse is the big one of those "yet" events for me. I do go thru the compulsion when the smell and then the memories which are triggered just after start playing the "you can escape just one" game with my head and fortitude. I seem to have built up a wider taller wall between me and my favorite beer, San Miguel of whatever rescipe yet the hard stuff is harder and I have to exert more tension and force to come away with no itch at all. I've been alcohol free since 79 or late 78...doesn't matter it has a nasty lurking game. So far HP and I lead the score. Even the title of your post caused my sniffer to start practice. ((((hugs))))
