April 2nd in Posso's Prompts

“Addiction is a really hard thing to kick.” - Nikki Sixx

I have an affinity for addiction.
Ask some of my closest friends and family members and this is the list you’d probably get:
Arby’s
Dr. Pepper
Spending money shamelessly with little regard for responsibility
Emotional attachment
Alcohol
Acknowledgment

Oh, and that’s just the first few things my friend rambled off in the car, and that’s just from one person.

I have this knack in life where I continually feel the need to impress and be impressed. Sometimes it feels like my life is just a tv show and that I’m always trying to one up myself for attention. This has been both more noticeable and fixable while I’ve been living sober and out of the spotlight of my friends. The amount of attention I feel like I’ve needed this year has been funneled into writing posts and leaving it at that. It’s been a definite struggle being okay with not being internally gratified all the time. I feel the closest I’ve gotten to this is my failed attempts at finding someone else I’m attracted to. Lately it’s even been bad enough to look at a situation I’m in and say, “If I had whiskey right now, I’d probably make a terrible choice and have to live with the consequences tomorrow. It’d make for a great story though.” and then I remove myself from the situation. I’ve been getting a lot of “What, you think you’re too good to go home with me?” kind of confrontations, and its not that, I can honestly say I am happy not making the shitty decision of sleeping with someone just because they’ll let me.
I have not had a large beef and cheddar with curly fries and a large Dr Pepper in months. My heart is sad about this but my brain says it’s probably for the best if I want to continue getting healthy. The amount of soda I used to drink was terrifying and although I haven’t completely cut it out, I’m not finishing a 24 pack of Dr Pepper in two days anymore. Now that I have to worry about my finances with all the legal troubles I have gotten myself into, I’m not going nuts in bar slot machines and stupid bets where I am risking it all. The not drinking has been a definite game changer in not making terrible decisions and I can actually feel myself getting healthy, which has not happened much in the five plus years of cancer and other health struggles.
Sure, I thrive to find happiness and sometimes it is in unhealthy ways. Of course I wish I could go back and redo parts of my life, even parts of last year, over and show what could and would have been if I had decided to better myself at any point then. Once I got out of the extreme lows though, I realized that I needed something to get me out of the path I was taking my life on and although it seems like a pain in the ass right now, and won’t get any easier this summer depending on if I am in jail or not, I’m realizing that my life was one great big addiction and that I may still be in withdrawal but this year I feel like I am a better person than I have been in quite awhile.