Newbies Nest

[Starfish1]

Newbies Nest

And hey- does anyone else own a Siberian husky?? Her belly is nothin but fur!! No belly blowin there!!

[Elliesmom]

Newbies Nest

Happy Weekend, fellow birds -- welcome Caz, Kitten and Odie, I'm really glad you're here. This is a really wonderful place. Caz, like NS said, be ulta-protective of yourself. At the end of my second week, I had to go out for a social thing, but deliberately rode with someone who i knew could only stay an hour so I had an excuse to leave early. It's been 35 days for me and now I know I could go out socially and just get a soda without it being a stressful event and actually stay the whole time. Your alcohol-free self is just an infant, and if you had an infant along with, you'd definitely leave early or even make up some reason to pass on the dinner altogether, right? Take care of yourself like you would a small child for awhile - you deserve a lot of love and tender care right now. And LOTS of great food!

Take care and hang tight,

Elliesmom :welcome:

[kuya]

Newbies Nest

Elliesmom;1475240 wrote: Happy Weekend, fellow birds -- welcome Caz, Kitten and Odie, I'm really glad you're here. This is a really wonderful place. Caz, like NS said, be ulta-protective of yourself. At the end of my second week, I had to go out for a social thing, but deliberately rode with someone who i knew could only stay an hour so I had an excuse to leave early. It's been 35 days for me and now I know I could go out socially and just get a soda without it being a stressful event and actually stay the whole time. Your alcohol-free self is just an infant, and if you had an infant along with, you'd definitely leave early or even make up some reason to pass on the dinner altogether, right? Take care of yourself like you would a small child for awhile - you deserve a lot of love and tender care right now. And LOTS of great food!

Take care and hang tight,

Elliesmom :welcome:

What a wonderful way of putting it Elliesmum :h

[Elliesmom]

Newbies Nest

Oh and Slay - just want to echo what everyone else has said. For everything you're dealing with, you've been a total rock and your battle-ready avatar is perfect for you. You're clearly a tough woman, and we'll be cheering you along as you do some green card ass-kicking.

On another note, my family requested beef au' jus tonight, which calls for simmering a roast in a mix of beef stock with one can of beer. Where I live, beer isn't sold in grocery stores so you have to go to a liqour store. So after a lot of deliberation, I made my very first trip to the liqour store today in 5 weeks and bought one can of Fosters. I was going to ask my husband to do it, but I was afraid he would come back with a 6 pack and I didn't want that in my house. I've been a regular there for years and have spent hundreds a month on gin and boxes of wine, so all the young guys who work there know me. So I put my single can of beer on the counter, and the kid behind the counter was obviously perplexed. He asked not once but TWICE if I was sure I'd found everything I needed! :H I've gotta say, that made me laugh.

I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying their weekend - congrats to everyone who reached milestones this week, and keep up the awesome work. It really keeps getting better...each day waking up is just a little better than the one before until suddenly you realize you're actually HAPPY with yourself for the first time in forever. That's something I never want to lose again!

Hugs to all, :l

Elliesom

[Elliesmom]

Newbies Nest

Thanks, Kuya - but I'm pretty sure you're the one who gave me that idea when I first joined! The post about the inner child, and how we would be sent to prison if we treated our own children the way we've treated ourselves? I thought it was you, anyway - that made a profound impact on me, so I wrote it down in my journal that I carry with me, which BTW is filled with other great motivation I've found here. This place is a wealth of strength and weaponry.

[rednose]

Newbies Nest

Can't even get one day at the moment. today is another try.

Trying to make it through day one today.


rednose

[Oneredshoe]

Newbies Nest

Starfish1;1475199 wrote: And hey- does anyone else own a Siberian husky?? Her belly is nothin but fur!! No belly blowin there!!

Oh bummer.....

[Shamefuldrinker]

Newbies Nest

Rednose itll be okay... im only on day two..... but i smoked some pot when i was craving.. does that count?

[NoSugar]

Newbies Nest

rednose;1475271 wrote: Trying to make it through day one today.


rednose

Rednose, I am sorry you are struggling with so many day ones. I have been there and it is so demoralizing.

A NEW PROTOCOL IS NEEDED! THIS REPEATED EXPERIMENT IS NOT WORKING, FRIEND!

I posted this recently on a different thread (I view going AF as a type of science experiment - I have conducted many n=1 health and diet trials on myself - this one is just the most difficult and important):

Hypothesis: I can drink moderately like normal people such as my husband.

Promise myself to just drink one glass and at the most 2.
Drink 2.
Drink another.
Take swigs out of the bottle when passing through the kitchen (just so so many things I needed to attend to that take me there... weird!). Very Classy.
Hide empty bottle somewhere and concentrate on remembering where. FOCUS!!!
Fall asleep on the floor watching TV.
Wake up with wool carpet marks on my face and haul myself to bed.
Sleep in whatever shirt I wore that day.
Wake up and swear I will NEVER do that again.

Repeat this experiment almost nightly for months.
Give up experimenting and just drink.
Go back to experiment.
Don't change any variables.
Don't check to see if any reagents are bad (Bad Wine? - never!).

Every once in a great while stop at the first or second step --- but not very often.
When I did, those results were by chance and really, should not have been considered significant.
But -- those aberrations were the ones I 'published' in my brain.
See, I can drink moderately and stop after 1 or 2!!!! Hurrah, my experiment worked.

Finally, finally, finally after lurking on MWO for awhile and re-conducting for about the 500th time my experiment on 1/23/13, I declared it an EPIC FAIL, a phrase often reserved for when the experimenter inadvertently kills some of the subjects with the treatment.
I have not repeated it since.
I have no plans to redesign it and try again.

I didn't kill myself or anyone else but that was not because I was in control of my little experiments. I was lucky and I over-drank only at home.

I'm sorry if this is harsher than it should be. I would just like to spare anyone conducting repeated and ultimately fruitless experiments that sometimes really are epic fails.
-----------------------------------

Rednose, what variable can you change this time?

NS

[Blossoms]

Newbies Nest

Here again today - day 8 for me

Last night (day 7) was really hard because my husband really wanted me to drink a bottle of wine with him. I really seriously considered it because he was grumpy and moody and that would have made him happy to drink. We also are getting along a lot better now than we were a few years ago, but a good part of that new spending time together is drinking together.
He is really not happy that I have decided to go AF. He doesn't really understand it, and is saying that I don't drink that much. It's true that I don't drink as much as in the crazy binge drinking days before I had my daughter, but the drinking has been creeping up again and I had ended up drinking pretty much every night. I was pretty much passing out rather than going to sleep most nights. Then there's the night last month I went out with him for dinner and to a bar and was so drunk that I was flirting with a lot of strange men and then threw up in the stairwell outside the bar - and that was for Valentines day. I spent the whole next day in bed with a hangover.

Wow.... That was longer than I intended, but I really wanted to say how much I appreciated and needed the congratulations and encouragement last night in the Roll Call..... Thank you so much Star!!!

I was so excited to know I'd get it...... And that motivated me and helped me deal with everything Thank you!! Thank you!!!!!!!

[Byrdlady]

Newbies Nest

Well done Blossoms....8 days is a big deal for us. Well done. I always have to think that my relationship with AL is just that....mine. Other people can recommend I just have one or two, or that I don't have a problem, but they haven't had my relationship with Brother Dick Head like I have. For an ALK like me, ONE DRINK is too many. One drink sends me right back to hell. So you will just learn to tune folks like that out when it comes to AL. Plus we are very sensitive about it in the beginning and are willing to believe anyone who tells us we are ok. It's just what we want to hear. Don't fall for it, you know better.

Shamefuldrinker, I do consider myself an expert on AL addiction, but not so much on pot. As an addict, I can't imagine that it would be acceptable to smoke pot when one is trying to stop drinking. They may be interconnected.....if you start feeling good on pot, you would seem more likely to start drinking....can you try and eliminate both problems?? That way, you will have a truer idea of reality and what it's like to be free of these dangerous habits/addictions.

Rednose....hang in there with us man. You are doing great....go on to bed if you have to...whatever it takes to get day 1 behind you. Hugs, dear man....Byrdie

[Blossoms]

Newbies Nest

Yes Thank you I knew I had a problem - and I finally admitted it and knew I had to face it. Typing it out just confirmed it to me.

Most people would agree with me that I do have a problem with alcohol..... but my husband has his own problems with alcohol - so I can understand that what I am doing feels very threatening and is putting him off balance. I know I enable him, because he is often so grumpy until he gets to drink. I was there in that mind frame last night. But that doesn't help him, and it certainly doesn't help me.
I'm not saying he can't drink, because that is not my decision to make - but I have decided not to drink and have asked him to help me by being careful about the way he drinks around me and that I won't be drinking together with him.
I made a point to say thank you to him this morning for supporting me. He is doing things a bit differently, and he is drinking less himself - all positive things

[Blossoms]

Newbies Nest

Rednose.... I agree with going to bed early to avoid most of the evening and the regular drinking time. I've been going to bed at the same time as my 9 year old
I've also has a lot of baths and consumed a lot of chocolate - often at the same time

(I also stocked up on a lot of yummy juices and sparkling mineral water .... So I can have a special drink just like I want)

[spiderwoman]

Newbies Nest

I'm cheering you on Blossoms - if my late husband were still alive I could have written that too. Life revolved round the wine with everything except breakfast and carried on throughout the day, I truly admire you for standing by what is best for you. Enjoy the baths and chocolate, it keeps me off the Chateau Collaapseau as we used to call it.

The last three months have been one of my hapiest times despite a lot of relationship issues, he will get to know and love the new you.

[Blossoms]

Newbies Nest

Thankyou so much Spiderwoman! I really, really appreciate that encouragement

I hadn't fully appreciated what it was going to mean going in - just knew that I had to do it for myself, to be the person and mother I wanted to be.

But of course with alcohol being an important part of the marriage it was going to bring lots of stuff up.

We have had some truly terrible times in our marriage, and I was really unhappy and wanted to leave for a long time.
We are an inter-cultural couple - he is Japanese and I am Australian and we live in Japan. Different cultural understanding of roles and ways of communication were killing us. We did turn it around, but it was really hard.

Part of the way we did manage to come back was reconnecting as friends and people - he seemed to look at us in our roles as mother and breadwinner rather than as partners - for me that was unbearable
Part of this re-connection was about getting away from the roles and having fun again together... Which of course involved drinking together.

(Drinking is a huge part of Japanese culture - I'd say even more than Australian culture. It's a way to put aside the roles and rigid expectations. Traditionally women didn't drink that much, even though men did, but that is changing.)

So - me not drinking anymore with my husband is a huge change, and may threaten the partnership feeling that we have managed to find again. But, I need to do this for me..... And I hope we can make a new reality that keeps the feelings of partnership and friendship without the alcohol.