I don't have much to say except that I've now been sober for sixteen weeks.  Those of you who read this teensy blog may be concerned when I don't post -- has he slipped? Was there a DUI? Etc.

Nothing so gloomy or remarkable has happened. I've been enjoying sobriety quite a bit -- not closeted away from alcohol (my roommate drinks and keeps liquor in the house) or in danger of imbibing at a bar or restaurant (have been out many times and have bought my friends drinks while sipping on Diet Coke myself).

 I haven't been attending AA meetings. I would attend them if I had found a meeting in California that I enjoyed. None of them so far has had the infectious charm of the meetings I used to go in my last long sober inteval.

 What seems to have happened is that my impulse to drink has been lifted. My body doesn't crave it, even though I have the normal aches, pains, anxieties, and moods of a man my age. I'm not sleeping perfectly, but I know that the oblivion that comes from alcohol wouldn't leave me any more rested than I am now, and in fact I'd probably feel less rested.  

I'm not on a "pink cloud" -- I know that feeling from before, and I'm not feeling it this time. I do think I have had a "moment of clarity" -- a brief period when I could see very clearly that I was on the brink of drinking myself to death and/or losing everything.  That vision seems to be sustaining me.  The clarity seems to sustain me.

 I very much like this business of being vastly more efficient in my work and in my life, losing weight easily, making progress in stuff that matters. The rewards speak for themselves.  I won't say I've never felt the impulse to drink -- I've felt it faintly, like the echo of feeling you have for a high-school romance, but there's nothing at all compelling about going back to where I was.