Don’t Be Such Addiction

i didn’t sleep last December. There was a lot going on.

That is what i told myself. I had 5 a.m. phone meetings 3 times a week with a sponsor in the States for one addiction, i was attending 3-4 AA meetings a week, working 35 hours, maintaining 6 blogs under 2 1/2 different personas, attending cultural events to write freelance journalist articles for 2 different web zines, spending time with my kids and new wife… I was too busy to sleep, so i dozed as few as 3 hours a night and cat napped whenever i could steal a spare 5 minutes. At the end of this experiment i fell asleep while talking to a client. My brain shut down in the middle of a sentence and i wondered what i was talking about when i reached the end.

On a normal work day, i make a pot of six cups of drip coffee to put in my travel mug and drink on my way to the office. Once there, i make a double espresso (instant) for my first meeting. i have another double espresso at 11 a.m. and another after lunch. Then another double at 4 p.m. i usually drink another 5 cups of filter coffee when i get home in the evening. For those of you too lazy to add, i drink between roughly 15-20 cups of coffee a day. This doesn’t include Coke Zeros.

i maintain 6 blogs, write short fiction, submit articles regularly to websites that publish about “Yeaman”, am trying to get the courage to begin rewriting a novel i finished a couple years ago and am revising a proposal for a nonfiction book. After getting home from work at around 6.30pm, i regularly stay locked in front of the computer until bed time, when i sit in bed and review movies i watch on my tablet. Because there is a God and he’s a geek, i have downloaded applications that permit me to write articles on my cell phone when i’m commuting to work and my tablet when i’m in bed. After the batteries die i have a notebook for articles, a smaller one for observations and another for notes while visiting cultural events.

Sleeplessness, caffeine, writing… You name it, i can find addiction in it. Fortunately, i was never one to experiment with hard drugs because even though i quit drinking, i can get addicted to absolutely anything. The argument could be made that in my early months of recovery, i was addicted to sobriety.

It all comes down to this:

My addictions define me, so i must choose them wisely.