Saturday, February 18th

Things you get done when you do not play computer games for eight bloody hours. You go to the gym. You bake cookies. (Sadly, the cookies are pretty much inedible. It was so long since I’d used this recipe that I forgot they need to be baked at least ten degrees higher than the recipe says for half as much again time. So, rather than baking a batch of cookies I mostly just wasted a stick of butter, but that’s not the point.) You make yourself a nice risotto for dinner and feel so pleased with yourself that you are sitting at the table to eat a proper meal – instead of eating popcorn or a grilled cheese sandwich in front of the telly – that you decide to reward yourself by opening one of your bottles of sauvignon blanc.

In other words, you have some sense of accomplishment at the end of the day.

An interesting observation. I did not go on the Facebook scrabble page after posting yesterday’s entry. I felt no particular need to do so. (Hardly surprising after the shock of the previous day.) At no point during the day yesterday did I feel the pull of the invisible cord between the computer and me. There was no “just one game” moment in the middle of the afternoon when the urge is usually strongest. According to the counsellor I started seeing around this time last year (in my attempt to tackle depression without meds) this mid-afternoon pull for computer game junkies is a known phenomenon. To be honest I don’t remember why. At the time she told me it was better than nothing to know I wasn’t alone in this struggle. Not much better, but something.

As I was baking the inedible cookies in the afternoon, I found myself thinking of Mike again, of his struggle with alcohol. I found myself remembering that line all alcoholics know by heart: One drink is too many, a thousand aren’t enough.

Yesterday I did not have any fix at all. Yes, I confess, there was a moment after posting my entry that I thought about going on Facebook – just to see what friends were up to (oh, ha, ha) – but I didn’t. And never felt tempted after that.

Early days, but a good start.

This is going to be a short entry. Unlike the other day, I really do have places to go, people to see.