June 4, 2010: Sober Heartbeats

wandering the web, I discovered the sober calculator below. Which is a bit
fun--seeing your sobriety in days/hours/minutes. What caught my attention
though, was the changing number at the bottom of the screen it was going up 1 a
second.

It was counting sober heartbeats. I have had 5,699,700 and change sober
heartbeats since I quit drinking almost 66 days ago. Millions of heartbeats. 
Here, calculate yours:

http://www.reachingupforair.com/images/sobercalc.htm

I'll be honest, I miss having years of sobriety. Those years felt like a
security blanket, though admittedly not a very effective one, ultimately. 
Second, I don't like to think about what I did to my body while drinking--the
strain I put on it with the booze and not eating to avoid interfering with the
booze.

But in a bit, I'll have 6 million sober heartbeats. That's a hell of a lot of
healthy, non-inebriated thumps in my chest. That's a huge number to let go of,
and one I plan to hold onto