In my first 90 days I was between homes and living at my friend’s parents’ house. It didn’t take me more than an few nights to find all their wine, good expensive stuff. This really wasn’t an issue until my first day off from work, a snow day.
Snow days for me were drinking days. If the call came in the night before it would be a two day event. I used to walk through blizzards to get to the bars, or stock up on supplies and hunker down. This was my first sober snow day and I had no idea what to do.
The snow began to fall at night and it was bad. We got the phone call…work was cancelled. Slight panic began to set in. So in order to get out of the house, stay busy, and occupy my thoughts, I decided to start shoveling. It helped; then I woke up and started again. Looking around at all my work completed, and fearful of being done, I needed another plan. I realized I had a huge pile of snow on the front lawn. So I built a snow man!
I was exited to have figured a way around the alcohol problem, but when I talked about it with a friend he said avoidance isn’t always going to be the answer, so there has to be a better, more long term solution. Eventually I found that, but at the start of sobriety building a snowman worked.
