Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife by Brenda Wilhelmson

Author:Brenda Wilhelmson [Wilhelmson, Brenda]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: recovery
ISBN: 9781616490003
Goodreads: 10904015
Publisher: Hazelden Publishing & Educational Services
Published: 2011-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

This afternoon, I chaired the women’s meeting I hate. The woman who was supposed to give the lead didn’t show up and since no one else volunteered, I was stuck being the talking head.

“What book should I read out of?” I asked the group. “Is there a topic someone wants to discuss?” I thought about making honesty the topic and discussing my carpentry dilemma, but then three women said they wanted a meeting on the First Step, which is the Step that we admit we’re powerless over our addictions and that our lives had been unmanageable. Since I’m seriously kicking around the idea of drinking in Budapest, I figured it was a pretty good topic for me, too.

During my lead, I fessed up and told the women that from the time I’d gotten sober, I’d planned to drink whenever I was in Europe.

“This back and forth thing—should I? shouldn’t I?—is driving me crazy,” I told them. “I went out to dinner with my husband and told him what I was thinking. He frowned and said, ‘That’s up to you. I’m not going to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do.’ But his face said it all. He doesn’t want me to drink. And I’ve been thinking that, no matter how good the bottle of wine is, no matter how expensive, I’d be selling my hard-won sobriety cheap if I took a drink. I haven’t had a drink in almost eight months and it’s been hard. There have been many times I wanted to drink but didn’t. I haven’t been numbing out every night with booze. I’m not drinking in front of my kids. I haven’t been hung over in a long time. I don’t want any of that back. If I drink in Budapest, I know I’ll find more good reasons to drink when I get back. I know myself. I’ll be right back where I started. So there, I’m glad I just worked that out. Thanks.”

I can’t believe how relieved I feel. There’s something very therapeutic about hearing yourself say what’s running around in your head. It’s cleansing and clarifying. It’s bizarre.

I went home and finished fixing dinner. We’d invited Liv, Reed, and Seth over and I’d made a beef tenderloin stuffed with a creamy horseradish sauce laced with bacon and mushrooms. I’d also purchased some nice red wine to go with it earlier in the week. Buying the wine had tweaked me a little, but uncorking it tonight didn’t bother me a bit. Watching Liv drink a martini and a glass of wine while Charlie and Reed got tanked didn’t bother me, either. I felt fine. Purging myself at that meeting had done wonders.

[Monday, August 18]

Max had his friend Walter over and the two of them spent a lot of time on the computer researching how to get a patent for a four-way pencil Max “invented”: four pencils of different colors poking out of a hub like spokes. After poking around, Max found himself on the Paper Mate site and clicked on a link to a patent attorney in Virginia.

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