The past few months have been about my exploring what my relationship with alcohol is going to look like. What do I want it to be?
Say whaaaaattt? Even as I read that I'm wondering, logically, why I even want a relationship with that bad dude. Why do I want to be with someone who cheers me up temporarily only to then beat me down, chew at my self-esteem and assault me physically.
Because it's a drug. Okay, so realistically, I'm saying to myself I don't want to give up this drug but I don't want it to be in my life very often. Pathetic on so many levels.
Honestly, I just don't think I'm strong enough to commit 100% yet and I admire all of you who have made that final decision. It seemed easy for 125 days and then I just couldn't honor the commitment anymore. I don't want to make promises to myself over and over that I can't keep.
Standing back and looking at how I drink has given me a lot of cause to be very honest with myself. Last week I tried to do the rule thing. This week I'm going to do the admit thing.
My Truisms:
1) I really don't have wine cravings very often anymore so that's good. I've kicked the habit of needing to have it every night.
2) When I have a craving, usually stress involved, my drug of choice is white wine. This is what I have been exploring and messing around with.
3) From now on, IF I choose to drink white wine, I WILL have the whole bottle. I say this because I will, I won't stop, or if I try white wine and exercise extreme control, I can do it for a few days and then it's bottle up!
4) I'm going to be more mindful of thinking through the drink with white wine. Instead I have been thinking through the drink of two glasses, thinking I can do it. Sometimes I pull it off, sometimes I don't. I'm no longer going to visualize two glasses of white wine, I'm going to go all the way through to how it feels if I drink it all, thinking about how I will feel the next day.
5) I'm not going to promise to myself that I won't drink white wine. I'm just going to do my best to drink very little of it, instead of trying to incorporate it in some way, because I know I will drink the whole bottle and it's just darn unhealthy in so many ways.
My whole life I drank just to numb out. I've never appreciated the taste of wine. Oh, occasionally I've noted a good bottle of wine tasted better than my cheap shit but I still drank it the same way, with the same intentions so it was never worth the cost to buy more expensive wine.
I never drank during the day, never wanted wine until after 5pm. Occasionally on a Sunday I might have a glass by the pool in the afternoon but if I did that, then I would continue on through the evening.
I never needed alcohol to function during the day. I felt weird, even when drinking nightly, when people would have wine at lunch or encourage me to. I just knew that it would make me unproductive the rest of the day and I didn't want that. Didn't want to be sleepy.
On those nights when I wanted to quit I would still drink. I might have a beer. Never had two, felt too bloated. I might have a scotch and soda. Never liked the taste enough to have more and still felt deprived. In other words I was not drinking by drinking.
The effect I get from white wine is what I am addicted to. I don't get that effect from red wine, beer, hard liquor. Champagne usually just gives me a headache but that's probably closer to the effect for white wine. But again, I'll stop without drinking too much of it.
I struggle so much with thinking I can never have alcohol again. I'm just not there yet.
Last night, I was cooking dinner. Hubby came home and poured a good glass of red wine, left it in the kitchen and went outside. I took a sip, mindfully. Swished it around my mouth and it was very smooth. He poured me half a glass as he was hoarding the rest for himself, rightfully so, and I sipped on it through the evening. I found myself sipping it so as not to waste it. I could feel a slight mellowing effect on my body. But very different than white wine. No feeling of needing to finish rapidly, no big buzz.
Can you be addicted to one type of alcohol and not another? Is it possible to admit that and moderate only with the other types? I don't know.
So stay tuned....this is what I'm trying now....If I drink white wine it will be a bottle. I'm wondering, how much I will drink if I remove just that option and only "allow" it on rare occasions. If I think through how it will affect me, decide that's not what I want.....will I still do it often? Or when the white wine witch speaks to me, can I kill it with a beer or glass of red? I don't know. All I do know is that I am addicted to white wine enough that when I feel I need it, I down it. That's what I want to avoid.
To end on a positive note.....some how I have changed my relationship with exercise. Yesterday I got all dressed to work out and had client calls come up so I never got to it. I was bummed when it was late afternoon and I needed to start working on dinner prep and had never got a workout in. I NEVER have felt like this. Off to do a workout after checking out a few more blogs!!!
HD
Nice to see you writing again!
ReplyDelete"Can you be addicted to one type of alcohol and not another? Is it possible to admit that and moderate only with the other types?"
Yep. Lots of people moderate more easily with one drink (usually not their "usual") than with another. When I was trying to learn how to have one drink (not five), or two drinks (not seven), I found it easier to practice with beer for a long time. Not that that’s the only piece that I was working on, but it did help make some of the other bits a little easier as I figured them out. Hop onto the MM forum and ask that question, and you’ll find some interesting personal experiences! Lower alcohol content is usually a factor, but so are things like sweetness, taste, and (probably most importantly!) old habits.
That being said, my personal sense is that why we drink also matters. I switched from wine to beer a number of times over my long drinking career, usually because I was "trying to cut back.” It worked for a little while, but because I was still drinking to get drunk, I’d eventually end up seeking out higher and higher ABV beers, and drinking more and more of them, until I eventually was drinking just as much beer as wine.
"I don't want to make promises to myself over and over that I can't keep."
This is one of the biggest reasons I opted for moderation over other options. Failing over and over again kills my motivation. It just totally halts any progress for me, and I desperately wanted to make progress! I needed a way to regularly succeed, and then build those small successes into a strong, sustainable trajectory. Which included learning how to allow myself to make mistakes, but contextualizing those mistakes in the framework of a larger plan (gosh, that sounds so nice & deliberate…I promise, I was a panicky mess for most of the early stages!).
Congratulations on doing away with the daily drinking habit! That’s a big one, and I bet has provided a significant reduction in your overall consumption. Not to mention, freeing up evenings for all the other fun stuff we can do. Keep up the good work, and I think you can amaze yourself with what other triumphs you can add on that pile.
As far as drinking the whole bottle, I can understand how that goes. Have you considered buying your white wine in smaller sizes? Around here, you can find ‘four packs” of single-serving wine, or mini boxes (three glasses of wine per box, or about 450 ml). I know, that’s probably sounds like an unsatisfying option in various ways, but at least it’s better for your health while still accounting for the tendency to finish the whole container during an occasional f-it splurge.
Laughing... if you read my first blog post I had attempted to buy 8 small bottles to last all week. 3 one day, 5 the next. That was my rock bottom catalyst. But maybe having demis (half bottles) on hand (1 at a time) just for the f-it moments instead of more than one or a full bottle would be a good idea.
DeleteI agree that for me it started out with a certain type of wine. It was red for me. But as my drinking progressed it became white or on bd days, vodka mixed with diet soda to mask the calories. Now its wine- red, white, rose--- Im not specific as long as its quality. I will definitely miss white as I loved the crisp fruit flavors.
ReplyDeleteAs for where "Lentil" is, I can demolish the 4 pack of small bottles without thinking. I don't care the size. Ive polished of 2-5 of those in a sitting. Just more waste as far as my alcoholic self cares. In theory great, in reality, no deterrent.
I just cut and pasted this from my first ever blog post:
Delete"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." Yep, Mrs. S, I hear you!
White wine does seem to have a unique way of hooking you in, in my experience. I was OK with beer because at the time I drink it, they were not making the higher alcohol content type. It was too filling and took too long to drink for me to misuse it as often. Then I had a friend who was strictly a white wine drinker, and wanted to share bottles with me at restaurants. So I began to drink it reluctantly. But that was it ... the added sweetness and higher alcohol content kicked my drinking into high gear. When I have tried red, I don't really over-drink. I don't like it enough. That being said, I would go out and find what I really wanted as opposed to drinking what I did not.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea where I'm going with this, which is ample proof that I just need to stay away from that shit. ; )
So interesting reading all this. I get the feeling that analysing which type of problem drinker we are is very healthy because we can work out what to do and what steps to take. Learn and share.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I get an unsettling feeling about investigating which alcohol types we like - it is all ethanol and I for one have a problem that is alcoholism. I do love certain wines and I believed that because they were expensive and lovely I didn't have a problem (so dumb). I honesty know that if all the french rose's and all the white wine and champagne and even red disappeared - I would eventually drink the next best available drink. I may not prefer it at first but I have a problem, I needed alcohol to relax and take away my anxiety so i am sure I would have EVENTUALLY drunk whatever is in the house if I was desperate. I have/had problems and I was using alcohol to "fix" it instead of working on them myself because I was scared. I feel that I stopped about the same time in my problem drinking as lovely HabitDone did. When I noticed swelling ankles and fingers, body changes yet a clean doctors bill of health (what stupid tests are they doing that comes back so clean!!! How shitty does my body have to be before the "radar" goes off - even though this is of course my responsibility)x
It is such a dangerous game thinking that if I prefer one or two types of wine then I am safe from others xx I also think it fills my head with more time-wasting alcohol thoughts that I spent every waking moment thinking about. Alcohol, Alcohol, Alcohol. So trying to think about recovery, recovery, recovery. Support, support, support.
Just some thoughts and we are all different and doing out BEST to overcome addiction so we are all wonderful.
M xxx
It is interesting how we are all different and you are right, wonderful! I agree, it's a drug that I don't need....now just a matter of convincing myself of that. Thanks for sharing!
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