I woke up this morning feeling like myself. I’ve been tired the last few days. Feeling “like myself”means my eyes spring open at 4:30 AM with an idea like a LED projector light over my head. This morning it was, sit up zombie style (I can go flat to sitting, rolling up vertebrae by vertebrae – Pilates mate…). With the words, “The It’s Better Than Drinking Addictions” on my brain.

Filling a basic need…

I was thinking about how people allow themselves a bag of doughnuts or a toke of cannabis, because “it’s better than drinking.”  And yet those yens come from the same basic, addictive need. Hollow? It’s easy to fill the empty spaces with ill-advised food, sex, pot.  You might smell like cooking grease or mango Kush, but at least you’re not going to make a scene at the family Christmas feast, right? RIGHT?

Anyway, I was all fired up to get to work super-early and get my ideas down before everyone else came in. But when I went out to get in my car, I remembered two feet of snow had fallen.  I walked to work yesterday to experience the winter firmament. And the snow plow came through my parking lot while I was a’ wandering… My pretty car was buried, with a three foot wall of ice behind the bumper.

I got in and started the engine. Remembering that I read somewhere, if the exhaust pipe was filled with snow, I would be asphyxiated and die. And then I got out with my $8.99 scraper and began to unearth my car. I guess the plows come out at 6, because a cowboy with a truck, plow and spotlights arrived like it was a race with prizes. He tilled the parking lot at 60 MPH, spraying an additional foot of snow onto my bumper. (And tale pipe!)

When your snippiness goes unnoticed…

So I am the only person out there, with my hands raised in an “are you kidding me?” gesture. Knee deep in snow and unrequited brilliant ideas, and he ignores me. Back and forth three times at breakneck speed. Looking straight ahead like he’s not burying a woman alive… What was I supposed to do? Jump in front of the plow? Dressed in black? He’d cut me in two with a snippy look on my dead face…

When he spun a yo out of the drive and onto another unsuspecting parking lot, I used my boots, mittens and scraper to dig myself out.  I am glad I was not hung-over. When I got to work I poured myself the first of what will be ten cups of coffee. Maybe someone will bring in coffee cake or doughnuts. I had a tough morning. I’ve got an article to write.  And java and crullers, are better than drinking…

Seriously?

The post A Snowplow and the “It’s Better Than Drinking” Addictions… first appeared on Waking Up The Ghost - Alcohol Recovery.