Hi, I'm new here.
I think boredom is the killer for me. I'm bored with my job, so I come home and have a couple of drinks. Suddenly, the stuff I read on the Internet is interesting.
The weekends are the worst. Many weekends I end up by myself and bored out of my skull. I drink to make it interesting and nap away the weekends so I can get back to work on Monday. Then, Monday afternoon I realize my job bores me almost as much.
Oddly, when I'm with my friends at a party I drink much less, because I'm not so bored. It's weird to see them drinking - and some of them getting smashed - and I'm enjoying myself enough that I don't drink much at all.
It pretty much became a habit during my previous relationship, I'd drink to escape and drink to get away from the boredom. Problem is, it followed me along afterwards. I also have suffered from depression so I know there's a biological thing going on there as well. I've found that when I work out in the morning and the evening the rush from the workouts makes me want to drink less and puts me in a good mood.
I want to quit because I'm experiencing physical side effects from it that I hadn't before. Like shakiness in the mornings, and severe nausea after long weekends. I've kept myself to 2-5 drinks nightly, but on the weekends I 'indulge' more and experience alcohol withdrawal. The shakiness, like a severe caffeine high, is awful. I've read where when experiencing AWS that going cold turkey is a bad idea, so moderate reduction is the key. I've been able to do this every other week or so, but the weekends kill me, especially if I've got nothing going on. So I moderately taper during the week, then blow it all on the weekend. My calendar is full of me tracking my progress during the week, then nothing for the weekends.
I don't think I'm an alcoholic - I have alcoholic friends and I've never done anything close to what they have - but I'm definitely an alcohol abuser. Or maybe I am an alcoholic, I don't know, I just don't crave the stuff like I've read. If I could get a string of weeks together where I'm AF I think I could pull this together. I'm trying different herbals - passionflower is really good - and just picked up some kudzu to see if that works.
Any advice? Once I get through a weekend of withdrawal - which I've done a few times in the past months - I'd like to be able to keep it going and gain some momentum. The longest I've gone is 5 days just recently, and the key seemed to be workouts. But I'd gotten to the point that I was stressing out my joints and ligaments and had to put the weights down, and that killed the momentum.
:new:
I think boredom is the killer for me. I'm bored with my job, so I come home and have a couple of drinks. Suddenly, the stuff I read on the Internet is interesting.
The weekends are the worst. Many weekends I end up by myself and bored out of my skull. I drink to make it interesting and nap away the weekends so I can get back to work on Monday. Then, Monday afternoon I realize my job bores me almost as much.
Oddly, when I'm with my friends at a party I drink much less, because I'm not so bored. It's weird to see them drinking - and some of them getting smashed - and I'm enjoying myself enough that I don't drink much at all.
It pretty much became a habit during my previous relationship, I'd drink to escape and drink to get away from the boredom. Problem is, it followed me along afterwards. I also have suffered from depression so I know there's a biological thing going on there as well. I've found that when I work out in the morning and the evening the rush from the workouts makes me want to drink less and puts me in a good mood.
I want to quit because I'm experiencing physical side effects from it that I hadn't before. Like shakiness in the mornings, and severe nausea after long weekends. I've kept myself to 2-5 drinks nightly, but on the weekends I 'indulge' more and experience alcohol withdrawal. The shakiness, like a severe caffeine high, is awful. I've read where when experiencing AWS that going cold turkey is a bad idea, so moderate reduction is the key. I've been able to do this every other week or so, but the weekends kill me, especially if I've got nothing going on. So I moderately taper during the week, then blow it all on the weekend. My calendar is full of me tracking my progress during the week, then nothing for the weekends.
I don't think I'm an alcoholic - I have alcoholic friends and I've never done anything close to what they have - but I'm definitely an alcohol abuser. Or maybe I am an alcoholic, I don't know, I just don't crave the stuff like I've read. If I could get a string of weeks together where I'm AF I think I could pull this together. I'm trying different herbals - passionflower is really good - and just picked up some kudzu to see if that works.
Any advice? Once I get through a weekend of withdrawal - which I've done a few times in the past months - I'd like to be able to keep it going and gain some momentum. The longest I've gone is 5 days just recently, and the key seemed to be workouts. But I'd gotten to the point that I was stressing out my joints and ligaments and had to put the weights down, and that killed the momentum.
:new:
, never have trouble getting up. But it really does feel like a boredom thing. When I go out with friends, I don't get bombed, and it's not that I want to and I don't, I just don't enjoy being with people that much if I'm tipsy and I hate being around drunks. But I have to admit, I look forward to the times at night--and it is every night-when I put on my pj's and make a martini. I have a stressful job, am active in a ton of things, and it's like a mini retreat. And I worry if I don't think alcohol is going to be available to me. I feel terrible guilt, particularly if I forget a detail about the previous evening. "Okay, what exactly did the Girl Scout leader tell me about tomorrow's badges," that sort of thing.... so I'm wondering where I need to go with this. So confused. If I read the literature, I am definitely a heavy drinker--definitely more than one drink a day-- but it doesn't feel that way. But maybe I just don't know any better.Anyone else feel like that?
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