It's the Most Wonderful (trigger-filled) Time of the Year!

Now that my kids are officially on winter break and we will have a couple of weeks off of our regularly scheduled evening activities I find myself in the beginning of what's normally my heaviest drinking time of the year.  In the past, I wouldn't even contemplate not drinking during this time of the year. Sure, I've tried dry January before.  That is much easier for me because it seems everyone is much more health conscious in January.  But during the holidays...no way, not me.

Except it is me now.  

I've spent the last couple of weeks relatively free of thoughts of alcohol.  This has been in part due to my obsession with a certain podcast that ended yesterday.  Then last night I was having those romantic thoughts of wine for the first time in a while.  You know what I'm talking about, right?  The sound of the the wine pouring in the glass, the way the glass feels in your hand, the instant "happy" feeling.  Also mixed in were thoughts of how unfair it is that I can't "drink like a normal person."

I've gotten much better though at "thinking through the drink."  Yes, it might feel good for maybe an hour at the most, but then what happens?  Well, I'd finish the bottle (maybe more), sleep like shit, feel terrible physically and mentally the next day, have foggy memories of the night before, not be present for my kids, etc.  

This year is different.  I'm confident I can make it through the next couple of weeks without drinking, but not so confident that I wont miss it.

Day 48 ~ It's a Mental Game

Day 48 is significant to me because the last time I "quit drinking", I drank on day 48.  I will not drink today.

Here's a brief recap of what happened last time. 

May 2014 

Day 0.  It was a Sunday, for no apparent reason I started drinking wine early and fast.  By the middle of the afternoon I had vomited and passed out.

Day 1.  Really bad hangover.  Guilt.  Shame.  The usual "I'm never drinking again."  But I felt pretty serious this time. 

Days 2-47.  I was feeling good, I was doing it.

July 2014

Day 48.  I went on vacation.  Wolfie was there although at the time I still had never heard it called that.  He said lots of things to me that day:

"You are on vacation, you can't have fun without drinking"

"You have made it for so long, you deserve a reward (wine)"

"Let's see how it goes, if a drinking opportunity presents itself and you want to drink you can"

"Everyone else on this trip will be drinking"

"You love wine"
"You need wine"

"You know you want to"

"You have never succeeded in quitting before"

"You aren't quitting forever so why not drink today"

 

I really did think long and hard about it.  I did not want to reset the counter on my phone to day 1.  I feel like my "let's see what happens" attitude was the reason for my ultimate decision to drink.  I am hoping the next time I go on vacation I will have a different outlook from the beginning.  I will know that I'm not going to drink and that there is no reason to have this crazy conversation in my head. 

Day 24

A cool thing happened last night.  I have been trying to actually comment on blogs instead of just lurking around and then Rachel said she had read my blog.  I got a cool butterfly in the stomach kind of feeling!  I really did love her book, I could relate to it so much.  I will be reading it again soon.

 

The other thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is this feeling that my problem isn't/wasn't that bad.  I KNOW I have a problem with alcohol and the way my brain works regarding it.  I also know I need/want to stop drinking.  I think what's bothering me is when I hear other peoples stories I almost feel guilty for never have gotten "that bad".  I love hearing from other people and being able to relate to others has helped me so much.  It takes a lot of courage to share terrible things that have happened.

 

They say alcohol addiction is like an elevator going down and people get off at different floors.  While some bad things have happened while drinking, I'd say I never reached a hard rock bottom.  So you could say I had a high bottom I suppose.  Something else that I keel getting hung up on is the fact that I was not drinking every day or physically addicted.  But as I said I KNOW I have a problem and for me this is what defines it:

 

I would always drink more that I wanted or intended to.  Yes there have been times in my life where I really only did have one or two but they were few and far between.  Also, anytime when that happened I had to concentrate and focus with all of my strength to make it happen. 

 

The part I hated the most was waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep.  I would lay there and ask myself "WHY"?  I would tell myself that I wouldn't do it again, but I always did it again.  The feeling of having lost control.  Then of course this was followed by a terrible hangover the next day.  I would spend my hungover days wishing the day was over and I hated that.

 

Another indicator for me is the constant obsession in my head regarding alcohol.  Always thinking about it.  The constant negotiating.  It just can't be "normal" to have this going on in my mind ALL THE TIME. 

Day 14

Well It seems as if my blog has been viewed which is an interesting (vulnerable)feeling.  Still waiting for my first comment!

Yesterday morning I had a conversation with one of my friends at the gym about quitting drinking.  It felt so good to talk about it.  She had a lot of questions and also always has a great perspective on things. 

Of course it was Halloween yesterday and as I was waiting in between trick-or-treaters I was having quite the conversation with myself.  It went like this:

"Maybe my problem isn't that bad, maybe I don't want to do this forever, a glass of wine sounds nice, why am I doing this to myself?"

But both when I climbed into bed and woke up this morning the feeling had passed and I was very glad.  I keep reminding myself about the things I hate about drinking.  In fact, here is a list I made a couple of years ago...note the time I made it, in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep because I had been drinking.

I finished Jason Vale's book and am now reading "Mrs. D is Going Without".  I knew I'd love it because of how much her blog spoke to me and its not been a disappointment so far.  I love to read anyway and am especially enjoying the blogs and books I've found lately. 

Here's to a sober November! 

Day 10 October 28, 2014

So what I want to do today is write about May-October of this year. Basically the key events that happened during that time to bring me to where I am today.

In May 2014, I had a particularly bad drinking day. It was a Sunday, probably about 2:00 and I started my usual “a glass of wine sounds nice” routine. I played a board game with my family (wine was pretty much required to do this), my husband put steaks on the barbeque…sounds like a great afternoon. But it was not a great afternoon. The wine was going down even faster than normal and soon after I ate that steak I was in the bathroom vomiting it back up. Who does that? What kind of a mom is puking in the middle of a Sunday afternoon? Of course I got it in my hair so I got in the shower and then proceeded to pass out on my bed in nothing but a T shirt and underwear. I vaguely recall my family coming in and out of the room and looking back I can only wonder what my kids must have been thinking. So I woke up feeling like shit with 3 empty wine bottles on the counter. I managed to get the kids to school, stopped for Gatorade and coconut water, took a detox bath…anything to feel better. I didn’t feel better. I slept until it was just time to pick up my kids. It was one of many days I’d spend just wishing that day was over so I could go to sleep and feel better tomorrow. It wasn’t the first time I’d had thoughts about my drinking being a problem, or that I needed to quit. So this began my second “official” attempt at quitting. I made it 47 days.

I was proud of myself, the 47 days were not even that hard. I did lots of things without alcohol including a birthday dinner. I was on fire…and then I went on vacation. I did not have a clear plan about drinking on vacation other than to “see how it goes”. Of course one of the best things about vacations had always been drinking and as soon as the opportunity presented itself I could not resist. It wasn’t an easy decision and I actually thought long and hard about it. I’d have to reset the app on my phone that was counting the days from 47 to ZERO. But the alcohol won and I drank on most days of that vacation. Nothing extreme, one day with a moderate hangover. But once I’d started again I couldn’t get myself back on track.

That was at the beginning of July, and once I’d started again I saw no reason to stop. Especially considering that my best friend was coming in to town at the end of the month. I have a 3 close friends who I’ve known since Jr. High and High school. We get together every summer with our families and then also once a year for a girls weekend, drinking is always a focal point. This summer, the timing of my best friend coming to town also correlated with one of the other friends turning 40. There was a big party planned. My best friend and the one who was turning 40 are both very normal drinkers, with the other friend and I being the heavier drinkers, the party girls…she was my drinking buddy. My husband had mentioned wanting to drink at this event and knowing full well that I’d go overboard I causally mentioned to my drinking buddy that maybe I’d drive (not drink). She was upset to say the least. I really wanted to please her and of course I really WANTED to drink. So I drank. A lot. I’m not going to lie, the night was a lot of fun. After quite a few drinks I actually remember bringing up the fact that I thought I drank too much. Someone said “if you think you have a problem you probably do” So true.

We had our annual girls weekend just a few weeks ago. I did drink, but surprisingly not too much. I remember thinking that it felt so much better to NOT be severely hungover! Of course I couldn’t stop drinking before this weekend but once it was over I felt that I was ready to try again and here I am. If I stay sober as I plan to, next years summer and fall gatherings with my best friends will be some of the most difficult for me. However, they are my best friends and I know that they will support me.

Labor day was in there too…I drank A LOT…you get the idea.

Still Day 5

I have never thought of myself as a writer or ever considered the possibility that I would like to write but now that I have started this blog I feel like I can’t stop and am constantly thinking about things I want to write about.

So as I was just making myself some breakfast I was thinking about the fact that tomorrow is Friday and it will most likely be the hardest day for me so far because it’s FRIDAY and who doesn’t want to have a drink on Friday? Then I was thinking that tomorrow I will write about what I was doing the previous Friday (drinking) and I realized that that wasn’t true. The previous Friday I spent hung over because I had too much wine the previous Thursday. Why was I drinking last Thursday? I’ll tell you. My daughter’s evening activities were cancelled (I didn’t have to drive) and my husband would be home late (no one would have to know). Of course my kids were home with me all night watching me drink but somehow I had convinced myself that this was ok.

So here’s how the night went. I got home from picking up the kids at school and immediately opened the bottle of red wine. I drank that wine while making lunches for the following day, cleaning the kitchen, kids doing homework (I was happy to be having the wine because surely it was making these mundane tasks so much more bearable). I’m sure I told myself as I usually did that I’d just have one glass. Then we watched some of our favorite TV shows. At some point I finished the bottle, put the it in the recycle bin and the glass in the dishwasher and we all went to bed. Nothing “bad” happened. But what kind of example is that setting for my kids?

A few days later I asked my son if he wanted to watch The Biggest Loser and proceeded to turn it on. He said that we had already watched that episode. I was staring at the TV but it wasn’t ringing a bell. Honestly sometimes TV is so mindless that I don’t remember it even when watching it when sober (or at least that’s what I tell myself). But as I was watching this show I realized that we must have watched it last Thursday when I was into the bottom of the bottle of wine I had been drinking. I laughed it off, and deleted the episode. Don’t get me wrong…it’s not like I blacked out and forgot the entire night. I remember it generally, I know I watched TV with my kids. The specifics just aren’t there. Is this the end of the world? No. Is this a problem? Yes.

Still Day 4

I feel good. Just got back from the gym and listened to the bubble hour (Mrs. D was the guest) while I was on the bike.

OK, time to write about something real. One of my worst nights of drinking, after which I first realized I might have a problem and had my first “official” attempt at quitting. I feel and hope that writing this down will be healing.

Spring break, 2012. Our last night in Hawaii. Mai Tai’s all afternoon at the pool followed by who knows how much wine during dinner. I woke up with a bad hangover, really bad. In fact, it was so bad I asked my husband to go downstairs and get me a beer. He did and I drank it first thing in the morning hoping to feel better. My 10 year old daughter who was sleeping in bed with me woke up and immediately and excitedly asked me about the tooth she had lost the night before. She wanted to know where I had put it for safe keeping. I had no idea what she was talking about.

In the past, after a night of heavy drinking, I often woke with a foggy memory of the night before. Then someone would mention something and it would slowly come back to me in bits and pieces. Not this time. I had absolutely no memory of the lost tooth. In fact, I had only a vague memory of arriving at dinner, eating dinner and drinking lots of wine but nothing after that. Nothing. I racked my brain, searched my mind hoping for something. I looked around in places I might have put the tooth and never did find it.

Lots of guilt/shame/embarrassment about this night. Lots of emotion, in fact I started to cry as I began to type this. Not only did I loose the precious tooth, but not having even the faintest memory of the night before scared me. How can that make sense to a child? AND, what else had happened the night before? I was with my family, my children! What did I say, How did I act?

I came back from that trip thinking that this could be my rock bottom. For the first time I seriously wanted to quit drinking FOREVER. I wasn’t ready. I quit for about 3 weeks.