Savor School

I...need...to...slow...down.  I seek to retrain myself, over the next 8 weeks, to savor.   I am not thrilled by the prospect of getting deeper and deeper into my cups and finding myself to be a rip-roaring alcoholic in just a few short years.  Ask any of my friends.  I'm not dramatizing.  I am by all means a problem drinker.  ...And almost everyone wants to put the same big band aid on this social transgression and offer the same big solution:  go to rehab (or at least to AA, where you can be in good company with other transgressors), and there's nothing wrong with that.  AA has a ton of merit, and rehab is probably a good move for many, but (and here's where the experimental element creeps in...*), I don't want to.  Why I don't want to could fill up a few blog posts and probably will, but for right now, let's just suffice it to say that I see sobriety not so much as avoidance of a certain substance forever (alcohol is a substance in my book) as it is a commitment and willingness to practice present moment awareness.  For me this means that I am willing and set to step back from the machinery of incessant thought about feelings and other occurrences in my life and just shhhhhhh for a moment and be still.  Thoughts will still come, they always do, that's the nature of the mind, to generate blah, blah, blah about what's going on, but I endeavor, over the period of the next 8 weeks, to retrain myself to notice when I've drifted out of the present and am mulling over past occurrences and future possibilities...and simply come back.  The almighty savoring follows naturally, and I'll have more on that after this word from our sponsor--Edible Confetti--"the best-tasting confetti in the world!!!"

*I may still end up in rehab, and so be it, but first I want to try this.  Mastery over my lovely wandering mind is where I'm headed anyway, so lemme just give it a go.