My eyelids peeled back, sticking a bit to the contact lenses left in one night too long. The back of my throat burned with that delightful “yeah, that’s right…smoked too much again, didn’t you, jerk?” feeling. So much for quitting. Again. I attempted to roll over and stand up but my head decided that was probably not gonna happen too quickly, and was nice enough to tell me so by hitting itself with a 20 kg sledge hammer. 13 times. The girl in the bed still sleeping was slightly familiar. “What the hell” I thought, “I didn’t touch a drop of alcohol last night.” Actually, it had been 13 months, 12 days, and 9 hours since I’d had a drink. Not that I was counting.

After manoeuvering myself (slowly) out of bed and stumbling to the living room, I revived my laptop’s screen and checked the date and time: 13:45, Sunday Oct.1 2006. Yup, it’s today. It was time to figure out why i felt like the losing side of a head on locomotive battle. I stopped. Wait a second… Girl in the bed?