Day 1 - This habit is going to kill me if I don't readjust...

I’m starting this blog, like others before me, because I really want to be alcohol free…..for a long time, for many reasons.  Forever seems like too far in the future to think about right now so, for me, it’s one day at a time.  SoberMummy recommends writing down all the reasons I don’t want to drink so I’ll start with that.

      1) My son has seen me acting “off”.   I never want him to see me like that again.  I’m hoping he won’t remember the handful, but still a handful, of times where he said “Mom, do you remember what you said last night?”  Yikes.

      2) I’m a female getting fat.

      3)  I don’t have energy to workout.  I hate exercise.  Add alcohol and any inclination to exercise is gone.

      4) I hate the self-loathing, repetitive record that I hear, over and over in my head, around 2am after I drink too much wine that evening before.

      5)  I hate not sleeping soundly through the night.

      6) I spend too much money on this habit.

      7)  I know it’s not healthy.  I agree with everything in Jason Vale’s book.

      8)  I’m tired of letting myself down, saying I can moderate, and then not being able to do so.  I can’t seem to ever stop at one glass, even if I don’t actually get drunk, but still, it always leads to two.  Or while it doesn’t at first, it eventually does.

      9)  I want to have more energy to focus on new things.  I need to “find” myself this year and I am looking forward to that!

      10)   I want to stop thinking about alcohol, it has become such a forerunner in my thoughts…..every morning I wake up wanting to quit, every evening I don’t care anymore.

      11)  I hate that I feel I “need” it to relax.  I need to redefine “relaxing”.

I realized this past November that I had been in this vicious cycle for years.  I have continually prayed “please let me stop drinking.”  I even went through a period of time where my feet were swelling and it scared me.  But every bloody time I went in for my annual physical, my lab work, ekg, etc were all perfect.  Doc had no idea how much I was drinking.  It was like a contest I won every year, seeing if the Doc would notice anything.  Hello, it’s been 6 more years than the swelling episode – snap – already!  I’m still drinking and I wonder why I am 28 pounds heavier …..I have my annual physical in 2 weeks...I think I'm about to be "outed" but we'll see.

I don’t often get “blotto-ed” but it was becoming more frequent.  I was starting to black-out an evening a week after 4 or 5 glasses of wine.   I started to lose count of how many times I couldn’t remember putting my son to bed.  I realized that I was “blacking-out” in the sense that my brain was not creating memories but I was still “functioning” to any onlooker. Scary.  Even my husband says that the only indicator that I “might” have had too much to drink is that I start to repeat myself.  Well, yes, if I can’t remember what I said/did 2 minutes ago, I guess that makes sense.

I went online in October and found http://www.mummywasasecretdrinker.blogspot.com/secretdrinker.com.  

Wow, eye-opener.  Very enjoyable capture of her experiences.  I love reading her posts.  This was when I started to admit I might have a real problem.  It was disheartening though in one sense…she was already more than 8 months into sobriety.  How on earth could I make it that far?  I needed someone at exactly my point, someone just starting, but I couldn’t find a good fit.  Instead I took her advice and read books.

In November and December I started reading the fiction and non-fiction books she recommended.  On into January.  I even read Jason Vale.  Loved him.  I mean who else would talk to you about drinking and tell you not to stop until you are done with the book.  So I enjoyed and agreed with everything he wrote…while I had a glass of wine in my hand….explain that one to me…..  Still, I did not stop.  So much for agreeing with him and following his advice…..it had sounded so easy!! 

I think the longest I had gone without wine in the last 10 years was about 5 or 6 days.  I didn’t get drunk nightly but almost always had an unhealthy 2 to 3 glasses of wine.  It took Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget by Sarah Hepola that I read in February to scare me into realizing that something is not going right in my brain when I drink and what happens to me may not happen to everyone.  I began to contemplate actually trying to stop.

In early March, before my husband came home from work, I had a long phone conversation with an old friend and don’t remember all that we talked about.  I drank a bottle and a half of wine while chatting and then hid the wine bottle I had completed.  I did all this before my husband got home from work at 10pm.  He came home and I had locked him out of the bedroom.  I never lock our bedroom door, but I guess I did that night.  I awoke (of course around 2am) to find him out on the couch.  He came back to bed and I was awake the rest of the night.  He’s never said I have a problem with wine.  He says that everyone needs to blow off steam sometimes.  But I knew I had a problem.  I know I have a problem!

The next day I drove out of town to see a relative and started drinking Pellegrino water at night instead of wine.  It was easy.  I couldn’t believe it.  I slept great those three nights and when I drove home I was ready to stay sober.  Other than some minor issues to include minor cravings, light constipation and taking longer to fall asleep at night, I really quit the drink pretty easily and uneventful.  I went 14 days.  Wow, I thought, I must have imagined everything.  I kept waiting for the withdrawal symptoms other than wanting wine every evening at wine o’clock.  I mean I must not have been “that bad” if I didn’t really suffer withdrawals.  But I missed sitting outside every evening with my husband and my glass (or 2, 3 or 4 glasses) of wine.  So I drank bubble water, he drank wine or beer.  I told him it didn’t bother me, and that I don’t want to control him. 

Then, my family came through town.  That first night, I didn’t drink anything except water.  In fact I poured my family some wine and poured water for me.  My mother didn’t realize I wasn’t drinking wine so it got comical.  I kept getting up and pouring more water and, lol, she thought I was pouring wine.  When we got up to drive out and go pick up take-out food she looked very concerned and said “are you sure you are okay to drive?”  Goodness….if that had been wine I had had in those glasses of water I filled every 10 minutes I would have been passed out on the floor due to alcohol poisoning!  I laughed, feeling supremely smug, told her it was just water and off we went.  I had an excuse to not drink as I had to pick up my husband at the airport later that night. 

The next evening my family and I were sitting outside looking at the sunset on a beautiful day.  They were having wine and I wasn’t going to.   Then it was like “what the heck”, I’ve done two weeks, a glass or two won’t hurt me.  I’ll just limit myself to two a night.  I never want to drink too much again.  I can moderate.  I had lost two pounds in two weeks and was feeling like I was finally seeing a number on the scale that I hadn’t seen in years. 

So for the next couple of weeks, I was eating like I was still rewarding myself for not drinking and started drinking up to 2 glasses of wine a night.  Boy, I was doing great….limiting to 2 a night was a breeze….Then it became 3…..  Then more family came to visit.  I stayed up and chit chatted, going through a bottle of wine just myself.  Again, nobody seemed to realize how much I had drunk.  I remember saying goodnight and getting up but nothing after that.

I continued to have a few more incidences of drinking too much – now, all my drinking was really too much, but I define this as having blackouts and it was becoming more frequent again.  All of sudden I realized I had gained 7 pounds!  Dang.  In 6 weeks.  Oops, wrong direction....Need to stop again.

Started working out, working on my diet too….but didn’t stop drinking….but wanted to.  Back to self-loathing at 2am.  Went out this past Friday and bought airline bottles of wine, 4 to a pack.  Figured it would help me really see what I was drinking and help me cut back.  Was just going to have 1 a day and I’d get 8 days out of these suckers.  Had 3 on Friday night and 5 last night.  Oh boy. That didn’t go as planned.

I think I really have come to the conclusion that I am not capable of moderation in my wine drinking. Did I just say that?  Ouch.  I don’t really like beer or hard liquor and don’t even really like red wine.  But I found over the past week I could still put away 3 to 4 glasses of cheap red wine…and didn’t really even like the taste. Danger sign.  Whatever happens, once I have completed that first glass of wine….I don’t/won’t stop.  It’s a pattern that has been repeating itself over and over and over.  I will likely never be able to moderate. 

The problem is that I don’t know that I am committed to forever, I know I should be, but I’m certainly committed to losing 12 pounds!  At that point I will re-evaluate and hopefully remain committed to the next 16 pounds.  And I may screw up again but hopefully not.  I would like to drink moderately but I don’t know if it’s possible to ever go back.  And yet, I know it’s horrible for me.  So I think I’ll just stick to abstaining and focus on documenting what I am going through each day.  When I hit 28 pounds lost (this is so highly unrealistic that I think this will occupy my thinking for a very long time) then I will evaluate the sobriety thing.

I want to be able to look back and see what was in my head at Day 1, 2, 3, etc.  I want to be accountable to something or it will be so easy to slip-up.  I want to focus on other things and not having drinking be my focus.  I’ve been reading the sober blogs for a few months now.  I hate to say I hope sometimes that people fail because I did.  Isn’t that horrible?  So I’m writing my own blog now more to focus my energy on my own positives for not drinking and not thinking so negatively.  I don’t know if anyone will even find this blog….not really sure how it works.  

So here goes…

Hopefully this blog will keep reminding me about why I am wanting to stop……

On a positive note, since last Tuesday, I worked out with weights twice, used elliptical machine for a 30 minute session, a 10min/15min session, a 45 minute session and also went on a 40 minute trail walk.  And it’s only Sunday.   And I haven’t worked out in months…..so I’m going to log my exercise too!  Oh and I switched from Splenda to Stevia in my tea. That’s a good move too, right?

Tonight is my first night without alcohol, Day 1!  Onward!!  Off to go throw down some Pellegrino water…..

HD