Came up with a strategy for dealing with drinking triggers:

1. If at home, drink 2 glasses of water, then read sobriety-related book.
2. If out with people, remind myself to use the time to socialize. Or try taking a more sociological attitude — Study the drinkers, their behaviors and attitudes, their similarities and differences to me. If I feel tempted or uncomfortable, go home.

The downside to this: Most of my life now’s avoidance — events, shopping, eating out, meeting people — because they all feel like drinking triggers. I’m trying to slowly change my mindset about drinking alone, since it really was a way of isolating myself from society — but when I encourage my sobriety by reminding myself of how I don’t want to go back to that isolated, lonely drinking, I think — I’m isolated and lonely sober too!

So maybe I need some other reasons, as well as some ways of managing and alleviating these feelings of loneliness — as simply hanging out with people doesn’t seem to do the trick. Today I had lunch with a couple married friends — the ones bringing up all that anger — and parts were enjoyable and nothing was terribly bad, but parts were uncomfortable too — and I felt more apart than a part of something. I still feel no friend will really be there for me  the way a boyfriend / lover would be — and am worried all my relationships seem to hinge on this sense of “deficiency” on my part.

Starting each day feels onerous.There are little pleasures, but I have too many anxieties — and each task feels like it could take all day. Much of me feels things shouldn’t be so hard — and I wonder why it is. What exactly is hard? Getting regular work stuff done every day is, apparently, kind of hard. Managing finances is kind of hard. Sustaining sobriety is kind of hard. Eating well and exercising is kind of hard. Getting done all the chores that come up in life are kind of hard. Mostly, the feeling of being overwhelmed is kind of hard.

I get tired fairly early in the night, which keeps me from getting things done — which wouldn’t be a problem if I just got what I need to get done during the day in the day — but I don’t, so every night’s a problem.

My head — still fuzzy. Will it clear up this week as I exercise, eat better? I need to keep more fruit around — and maybe apply sobriety techniques to the temptation to overeat — sometimes distracting myself, other times sitting through the feelings, just experiencing them until they pass instead of fighting them, trying so hard to outrun them —