Thinking about things backwards.....

I have to give credit to Kris for this thought, but I'm happy to steal it! In regard to me and the eternal bugaboo of potential relapses, people tend to think of everything backwards. I find everyone is worried if I have stress, get depressed, have a bad day, get angry, stub my toe, or don't like my lunch that I might relapse. In fact, I never drank because something bad happened to me. I know that was the reason I gave at the time (e.g. I was sad about going to the dog house, I had to do the taxes, I was depressed, etc...), but I've grown to understand myself much better. I didn't drink because something bad happened to me. I drank because I was emotionally and mentally compromised and ill equipped to cope with the bad things that happened to me. Consider this---- much worse things have happened to people than I ever experienced, yet some of those people didn't drink. The reasons I did were medical, mental and emotional, but one of the big factors was that I was so messed up inside I couldn't deal with even minor bits of adversity. In short, please don't worry about me so much if some small thing goes wrong- that was never the cause of the problem. It is much more important to focus on my big picture mental and physical health and well-being.