The Delicate Art of Getting Sick While Sober

As I sat before my computer planning a blog post, I sneezed for the (maybe) fifteenth time today. There are plain ole, dusty sneezes and then there are the sneezes that are loaded with warn of an impending cold. At some point in my day my sneezes changed from harmless to noxious. You know the kind with accompanying throat burning and that lovely flavor in back of the throat followed by a mad dash for Kleenex. Of course my mind has wandered toward a stiff tumbler of whiskey today. I don't necessarily freak out when I give passing thoughts to alcohol. I'm a freaking alcoholic! Just because I've stopped drinking doesn't mean that it never crosses my mind. Usually the thoughts are a sign that something is wrong. And, once again, the thoughts proved correct. I am catching/have caught a damn cold. Ugh...

In my former life I would've already -been- to the liquor store with the grand delusion of nipping this cold right in the bud. Three days later, in the throes of a full blown drunken binge, I would have starved that cold to the point of complete bodily destruction. Dehydrated, achy, and pathetic, I'dve then proclaimed the cold to be the "worst" ever and spent another seven days trying to get well enough to leave the house. This would have likely been followed by a trip to the doctor- antibiotics to clear up bronchitis from chain smoking cigarettes while sick and drunk. Ridiculous, right? I did just that every time that I had a cold or the flu for decades.

Now I am left in the wake of that lifestyle, my mind quite conditioned to searching out an alcoholic solution to common woes. Neuroscience suggests that our brains create shortcuts called neuropathways to the responses that we repeat until it is "natural" for us to respond in specific ways. We condition ourselves to respond and the brain remembers. In fact, the brain creates shortcuts to get on with our usual responses in a more quick and efficient manner. These pathways never go away. The good news is that those pathways (if we wish to change our behaviors) can get smaller when we create new pathways with new, improved patterns & responses. In order to create strong, new pathways to healthier responses, we have to keep grooving along. We have to continue to perform the better behavior until that pathway is as strong or stronger than the old pathway. Then the old pathway shrinks from lack of use, and the brain redirects its shortcut to the new, healthy behavior. It becomes simpler to do the right thing. Still, it takes a lot of work to change a behavior that has become second nature to us. The more difficult that it is to do something differently than we once did, the more strenuously the new pathway is formed. While all of this work to change our destructive behaviors is surely difficult, it is VERY therapeutic for me to know that every single time that I fight the urge to drink, and also change my behavioral response to that desire to drink, I'm creating strong, new pathways that will be second nature to me over time. *this is me smiling*

SO, yeah, I'm looking straight down the barrel of an impending cold. But now I can take care of myself with vitamin C, hot tea, cold meds, early to bed, and curbing the damn cigarettes instead of burning rubber to the nearest liquor store and destroying myself for the next week. I also learned something today. I learned that the combination of a few, seemingly harmless sneezes combined with a sudden desire to drink may just mean that I am catching a cold. I can react by starting self-care even faster.I'm learning that there is a huge difference between self-care and self medication.