Newbies Nest

[Coco--Nut]

NORA!!!!! Yay! (Where's the breakfast?) xxx

[jane27]

Welcome Mary!

Nora, name the popular tv show that opens with the song below

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name
And they're always glad you came
You wanna be where you can see our troubles are all the same


The Nest is probably my favorite bar in the world! Glad to see you guys have pulled up stool. :hug:

[NoraC]

Jane - CHEERS!!!!

Yes - I need to get back to basics. Thanks for the welcome.

[Byrdlady]

Welcome, Nora! We are so glad you are here! We are serious about kicking AL out of our lives once and for all! Grab on and let's get started! B

[Overit-still]

I HATE POSTING FROM MY PHONE! It does not work well with this site.

Anyway, the doc said my blood tests were OUTSTANDING! Can you believe it? I'm so shocked! If you remember, I was on a bender when I took those tests and still probably legally drunk at 7AM that morning when I had them taken. But, I had been sober for over 60 days prior to that and on my kick butt diet and workout. WOW! What a difference that made. I have been extremely anemic all my life and issues with my thyroid. I had been off all meds and supps for 4 months before I took that test! He said liver and kidneys are functioning beautifully too. We did discuss my abuse of AL, oh OK, that I'm an alcoholic. He congratulated me for getting back on the wagon and promptly offered a refill on my AB. I feel like I've been given a 9th chance at this game called life. Sometimes you think only bad news can knock sense back into you but this gives me SO MUCH HOPE!

Anyway, couldn't wait to share. gotta get to work.

[jane27]

Excellent news Overit! Now for God's sake don't let AL get a hold of this info- might try and suck you into celebrating or tell you, 'see, its ok!'
Its not OK, and you are doing the right thing. So happy that you got a positive report and that are going to take the bull by the horns. Clean labs are a beautiful thing, but acute liver failure doesn't give much warning in the case of folks with fatty liver, which YOU * DO * NOT ! Keep on fighting the good fight! xoxo

[Overit-still]

ok, some trivia.....where is this quote from?

"Who are the people who are always crying the blues? Who do you know who reeks of self-pity? Who keeps getting beat up for no reason at all? Whose eyes are bleary and bloodshot? It's those who spend the night with a bottle, for whom drinking is serious business. Don't judge wine by it label, or its bouquet, or its full-bodied flavor. Judge it rather by the hangover it leaves you with-the splitting headache, the queasy stomach. Do you really prefer seeing double, with your speech all slurred, Reeling and seasick, drunk as a sailor? "They hit me," you'll say, "but it didn't hurt; they beat on me, but I didn't feel a thing. When I'm sober enough to manage it, bring me another drink!"

[Dutch1988]

Glad you are done with the treatment lilbit! Congrats!

Mary good luck!

So going into another unsuccessful month of getting the wife knocked up. Since the miscarriage her getting her period was never such a downer, now it's like a night of the blues for both of us. She feels like she let me down, which I keep telling her she's crazy, then I am sad because she's sad and I just want to get back to having a new LO on the way so I can give myself a good reason to start making more money. Instead i am sitting here bitching about my feelings. last night we were watching the Simpsons to try and get a laugh and Homer needs to fight the mob boss in town and asks for help from Barney. he's recovering and tells Homer he can't because like all recovering alcoholics hes a coward. I laughed but thinking about I actually do feel that way, like alcohol made me at least act in the way I thought I was supposed to, even if it was probably slowly killing me.

I am in a weird place right now. I have been thinking a lot about drinking on my vacation. I think what it really comes down to is I am just not happy right now, and I want to be happy for my vacation. Or maybe I have flexed my sober muscles to failure and I am just ready to try modding again. Reading back on my first posts I was always trying to mod, and convinced that if I just keep not drinking I would feel better. Call me impatient, but I was hoping to feel better by now. I can already see in my head the posts about people trying and unsuccessfully modding, but I don't want to spend a couple thousand dollars to go to Hawaii and have a lousy time.

Has anybody, ever, successfully drank on a vacation and not come back right back where they started? I mean people seem to have day slip ups all the time on here and come back from them. So I guess what I am asking is where do you guys stand when it comes to having to come back from a quit. I remember reading every quit gets harder but I don't understand why that would be. I felt like after knowing I had quit for a month twice before I knew I could make it to 30 days, I was more surprised I made it to 4 and a half months. Let me know your thoughts, i am definitely not going to do anything rash like drink on the place there...(although I am already dreading my inlaws sitting next to me). But for at least 2 months of this quit I have been having a pretty lousy time, I don't know if alcohol would have helped or hurt, but right now it doesn't seem impossible to drink on vacation and come back and start at day 1.

Of course here I am making up rules for myself and I know that's the start of breaking and making new rules again. I guess I am just tired of feeling crappy. At least when I drank I knew when night came it didn't matter if i felt bad about the day it wasn't going to last forever. Now I go to sleep feeling crappy and wake up feeling crappy.

[Overit-still]

Dutch, you sound like me every time I rationalize drinking but look where it lands me. Coming back here and having to start over SUCKS! Have you and your wife ever thought of counseling? Maybe someone has already asked that but you sound as if you are depressed. The crappy feeling, IMO, should not last. You are searching for something.

How disappointed would you wife be in you if you drank now?

How will you handle the GSR brothers the next morning? Trust me you'll have them and then you'll feel crappier than before.

I can talk about this, I've done it over and over and all it is is wasted time. Yes, I've started over but it sucks, it's embarrassing, and every time I'm slowly killing myself.

[Londoner]

The occasional mid week drink is happening now. Something I've never done before.

It's apparent that it's because I have kept my emotions bottled for so long, that I am not sure I know how to show them any more, or that I even know what I am about deep down. I just settle to get along with everyone - keep in my comfort zone.

And as I grow older and into a more grown up and mature role in life, I have to keep this false act up. I have to paint this picture of some one I know I am not. And that takes energy.

And booze is the escape on the weekends and mid week now.

[Dutch1988]

Londoner I come on here and basically bitch and whine and express my feelings every day in place of drinking, why can't you do that? If you want to call me a pussy to my face go for it, otherwise you can always join me so I don't feel like such a whiner

Overit she's been to counseling and it doesn't seem like it helped much. The counselor basically said she will feel better when she has something new to focus on, so that's what we are trying to do. Call me co-dependent but I think when she feels better I will feel better. I could probably go in for some counseling but I would much rather complain on here and let you guys try and figure me out haha. She told me I have not changed since I stopped drinking yesterday, maybe a bit around the mid-section. She said she never thought I would stop drinking for this long, and it only made her believe more strongly that I can do whatever I set my mind to. I seem to just be in a bad place right now. I don't want to go to work, I don't want to workout, just stick a fork in me...

The only thing keeping me from drinking is I know I am just not dealing with emotions(even if I don't know what they are) and after I drink i am going to feel the exact same&*^%ing way! So I will stagger to work, teach a few autistic kids and a group class. Leave, go get carne asada fries, come home and workout with my wife, and then what...something seems to be missing here.

[Byrdlady]

Dutch, (tough love warning)
You are rationalizing drinking again. In your post there are a couple spots that say, 'At least ______ when I was drinking'. Let's look at this rationally. You looked up a site for AL abuse and joined in. You have found it difficult to quit drinking and you feel the pull of it wanting you back. This is NOT how normal drinkers behave. As alcoholics, have to accept that for us, ANY DRINK IS POTENTIALLY DEADLY. We do not have occasional alcoholism, this is a lifelong party and we got an invitation. What happens if you drink on this vacation and begin again? Next year you'll be faced with the same situation. I am here to tell you I have seen 100's of people go on vacation, have a few, and NEVER GET BACK UP! If you think you feel deprived now, wait til you only get one a day....or even two? That is torture. Drinking doesn't make anything better, it makes it worse. We don't behave bravely because of AL, we put ourselves in danger and do stupid stuff and make total asses of ourselves. You were watching a cartoon, please don't take what a Simpson says as a reason to blow this quit. You have 4.5 good months. That is a solid foundation. Going back to drinking is going to escalate faster than you can say, DOOF! Just do a search on this site about drinking during vacation, you will get an education! Look up a guy named Scandinavian and see how he did! His story was insane, and we are all more alike than we are different when it comes to AL.

Please stop justifying drinking on this vacation I can promise you, drinking won't improve it, you will come home with more guilt, shame and remorse than you ever thought possible.

Grab yourself up from the pity party, or it will drag you down the hole! You have so much to be grateful for, please don't blow it. There are people here who would give their right arms for 4.5 sober months! Don't let AL take one more day of your precious life. B

Edit: I just bumped up Scan's thread. Now I will search for the aftermath of his vacation, which is typical of how it goes.

[Overit-still]

Byrd-where do I find Scan's thread? I would be interested in reading from someone that makes me feel better about myself.

Dutch-what Byrd said, I'll take your 4 1/2 months in a heart beat. I would be feeling so much better about me, my life, my goals, and my health.

[NoSugar]

I was thinking that I need to start over in the newbie's nest and look who I run into?!?! Hello to everyone else. I am hoping that I can join in with you all and work on these issues that are NOT going away.

Hi, Nora
It is great to see you here! Whenever we're trying to make a big change, the best way to do that is to surround ourselves with people who share our goals. A consistent message is critical. This is not a good time for weighing different options - it is hard enough to change our brains without confusing it further! I know I had to not even glance at the moderation threads at the beginning - they just made me think, Well, if X can do that, so can I ... (And this in spite of having shown myself over and over to be a complete failure at moderation!). Maybe some "brainwashing" does go on in the Nest but our brains need to be cleaned of the toxin they've been exposed to for much too long. xx- NS

[Byrdlady]

Byrd-where do I find Scan's thread? I would be interested in reading from someone that makes me feel better about myself.

Dutch-what Byrd said, I'll take your 4 1/2 months in a heart beat. I would be feeling so much better about me, my life, my goals, and my health.

I bumped it up, there are two threads, before and after. They are under General Discussion.