The Mile NOT High Club

10th June 2018

Day 22

Today I'm flying to Amsterdam to visit my sister and her husband Joe this evening for 5 days. I wanted to write about the weekend 'it' all stopped, or should I say started, I'm going to come back to this, but it's definitely the best example of a silver lining I've ever experienced.

I woke up before my alarm at 6.20am. Since being sober this happens regularly and I love it. I've always been a morning person but I think I may have lost my morning person to hangovers over the past few/15 years.

I got to the airport and it suddenly triggered my booze button, not in a way that I was desperate for a big fat wine but a realisation that airports had always been a boozy place for me, an excuse to sit in the lounge with the open bar sinking wine and Jack Daniels. It suddenly occurred to me that this was my first time in an airport sober!

I stood surrounded by restaurants and bars and tried to really work out what I wanted to eat, like I had one choice and it mattered. (I made it all about the food). Randomly shortbread biscuits popped into my brain. So that was that I hunted down shortbread, justifying the calories in my head by considering how many calorie-laden drinks I would have downed and headed to Pret for a cuppa.

As I was walking I texted my sister:

Me " Realised this was such a boozy place for me before, weird!"

Alice " Really?!"

Me "Yeah, which now I realise, maybe isn't too normal?"

Alice "It never occurs to me to drink in an airport as flights are so dehydrating already"

Me "It would never have occurred to me NOT to before"

I order my tea, the woman looks back at me smiling and says "this one's on the house"

It was as if the universe was giving me a big old message. I had that overwhelming happy feeling that sometimes fills me during these first few weeks of making the decision to remove drink and drugs from my life.

I buy this notebook, some stick on gems (wondering if I'll ever mature out of 'make and do') and board my flight. The drinks trolley comes up the aisle and I order another tea. The two women next to me do the same - and I have another realisation, ooooh, not everyone just orders wine on planes...

I land and there it is, I've done my first sober flight.