Imagine What Is Possible

Weekly Prompt: If you can imagine it, you can live it

Most of what you want for your life is possible, but you first have to imagine it.

When I was in the midst of the worst of my drinking problem, the one thing that kept me from getting help was that I couldn’t imagine life without alcohol. I’ve been a party girl since my teens. I grew up in a family where never was there an event that didn’t involve drinking. Birthdays, funerals, Sunday football, vacations, dinners out, holidays, baptisms, Friday evenings - heck, if there was something going on beyond the 9-5 work day, alcohol was involved. I took my first drink at age 14 and drank fairly consistently ever since. I was a “drinker.” Whatever that is supposed to mean? How in the world was I supposed to live life without a drink in hand? That world didn’t seem possible.

Even when it had become abundantly clear my drinking had become a serious problem, it took me another year to even begin to imagine there could be life without cocktails or a glass of wine. To be perfectly honest, imagining life forever without drinking is still really hard.