Progress thread for ne

[ik1966]

Progress thread for ne

funny, i read the story too about the professor with the manic-depression disorder function very well now with lithium i don't remember where but it impressed me...
:l:l:l

[Murphyx]

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Ne, has Ed tried the piracetam yet? If not, why not?

[redhead77]

Progress thread for ne

I completely understand about Ed. I know everyone thinks he should go up, and ideally he should. The fact that he can't function in his job if he does, is a major issue. Been there done that. He can't quit for a couple of months. You say the bac is doing some damage control, correct? Although, I believe you said a 6 pack a night along with reefer. It's still a decent amount. I know you are going to try to help him go AF with other tools. Is he ready to do a little white knuckling? I think this is a rough position for you both to be in. I know in my case, I'm not going up much more. I don't want to jeopordize my job. I'm not having crazy urges that can't be fixed with a few tools myself. Do we really have to think that one little white pill will take it all away? I think it takes most of it away, but the rest is left to us.

It isn't unlike so many who have visited this forum and the bac threads, all gung ho, and then needing to quit. Quit because they can't handle the SEs with their jobs. Or not be able to get high enough to reach indifference. I was formulating a list in my mind, of all the people in the time I've lurked, or have been posting. It is a TON. I have some specific names but I won't list them. I wonder what has happened to these people? It gets to me sometimes. Some you even get a little attached to and they disappear. Oh, I digress.

I'm glad you aren't doing the nursing thing. I don't think you would be happy. I know you wouldn't be happy with as an ADN. You would be miserable. There will be a better path for you (to finance your writing career), one that is more conducive to your free spirit. It'll happen. Heaven will open up and provide. Somehow.

Speaking of heaven. Susiesmum, I know I'm late to the party on this one (I usually am), but I wanted to say, you are awesome. Awesome to care so much about your daughter and be such a wonderful mother to her. And awesome for being a Christ lover. Sorry for the fudamentalist talk. You didn't seem offended, but still. I needed to get it off my chest. :l

I'm off. I've got to get up before the roosters, and work the next few days. I've earned a mean ass sunburn and it's making me feel like garbage.

Nighty night Ne.

[Lo0p]

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No comment.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Progress thread for ne

Morning, folks.

The person who posted up there? At 2am? That wasn't Ne. That was Old Karen at 2am. Scared, insecure, still inhabiting that place where there are ghoulies hiding in the closet and under the bed. Financial crisis loomed, the end of the world as we know it, Chicken Little at her Very Best, shrieking that the sky is falling.

I thought I was done with her. And yet she lurks. She is most surely a result of the years I spent struggling with the beast, unable to make the right decisions simply because I was so sick. And so, she must go.

Ed went up to 180mg yesterday. He hasn't really HAD any SEs that are troublesome. He looks exhausted, because he is. He works 80 or more hours a week in a job he doesn't like, for people whom he has no respect.

There aren't really any SEs I can't manage, anyway. There isn't any crisis, not one, that we can't see through to a decent outcome. That's not pollyanna :lalala:

Stuff happens, folks. But right now? Things are rosy in Ne-land.

redhead77;1126350 wrote: Do we really have to think that one little white pill will take it all away?

Yep. A resounding, without hesitation, absolute YES! One little white pill takes it all away. Indifference is a completely different thing than craving cessation. Completely.

I wouldn't give up indifference for all the money in the world. If I had $20 left, I'd buy bac.

I worked in the restaurant last night. Everyone I work with is a problem drinker or a flat out addict. There isn't really even a very good attempt at hiding this fact. (It's a whole 'nother world, and one I don't fit into very well anymore.)

The middle-aged ones are pretty pathetic. They're the manager types. just-like-me, before I was Ne.
The young 'uns? They were on fire to go out after work. The entire atmosphere changed in the last half hour and I recall those days rather vividly. Sneaking drinks at the bar, setting up the rest of the night to meet friends and get it on! I'm so far removed, it's funny. (They watch their language around me! And well they should! Ha!)

The point is, with not enough of that little white pill in my blood stream, I could tell that it all would have been exciting. No question that I would've been partaking in the drinks they were sneaking behind the bar. With the only tool I've needed to get sober, and stay sober for four months, I had no urge, no craving, no feeling that I was missing out.

And Ed is going up. Until he's free. Because more than anything I want the person I love to have this. The ability to decide, and to choose not to drink, in the face of a HUGE trigger. Many, many triggers. (Peer pressure; wanting to fit in; a very long, stressful day; a place where it's okay to have a little one because no one will know, and hey, everyone there is just like me. Or like I was. A resounding FUCK THAT. I'll take the medicine, thank you.)
I can't emphasize enough the triggers that yesterday held for me. The drinking started at brunch, surreptitiously of course, but still going on. My best friend was partaking. The triggers started there, and escalated throughout the day.
Not once, not even once, did I think about having just a little sip. I was offered a martini at the end of the night, the one the bartender made to test me a bit, see if I was 'cool'. Turns out I'm not. :H I didn't want it. I wasn't trying not to drink. I wasn't thinking about not drinking. I was thinking that I was starving and wanted to get home to eat.

To recap: I was Hungry, Angry, Lonely and Tired. Left out. In an environment surrounded by active problem-drinkers and alcoholics where the booze started flowing at 11am and continued until 10pm. I was repeatedly offered drinks throughout the day. I ate not a calorie of food for 8 hours. My best friend was drinking, and then going off to a festival to party with her other friends, the ones who still party, leaving me at work. The list goes on and on and on, folks. No little drinkie-poo for me. And NOT because I pledged to be sober this month. :H, please. I wouldn't have to admit it if I did. I didn't want it, so I didn't drink it.

The 12 steps hold very little in this journey for me. I'll give you a good example: "Half measures availed us nothing" is in Chapter One of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. It might be true if you're white-knuckling. It's not true at all if you're using medicine to treat your disease. You don't HAVE to go up high enough to find indifference, or stay there, to keep indifference. You can have cessation of craving with a lower dose and make decisions to keep yourself sober. The beast still lurks, but you've got it caged. It might still have a key, though.

i am going to cure my disease, once and for all. It's a work in progress, for sure. The chemicals in my brain are going to have time to reset, and stay that way. I want that for Ed, too. And he wants it. He wants what I have. So up he'll go.

He's doing really well, by the way. In spite of what Chicken Little keeps squawking about on here. I never shared all that crap with him. So he went up and he's fine. I called him on my way home from work at 10pm and he answered! He was in bed, asleep, but he wasn't passed out or too drunk to talk. THAT is a first in MANY, MANY, MANY years, my friends. And he asked me how my day was! If you read bac about 5 months, you'll notice that we were on the verge of divorce because we never talked about anything at all ever. Now we talk all the time. About everything. It's a sea-change and we're at the tipping point.

I get it, RedH and others. You gotta do what you gotta do. Me? and Ed? We're going for indifference.

As to the lurkers and the non-posters and the haters and the people who fade away? Well, I can't make the decision for them, but if I could, I'd hold their hand, hug them when they needed it, and feed 'em the medicine myself. Fear, folks, holds more people back from indifference, than any other single Side Effect. Fear. It's the mortal enemy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9rfhMP36lc[/video]]YouTube - ‪Eminem - Not Afraid Lyrics‬‏

Lo0p;1126358 wrote: No comment.

You didn't have to. Not this time. You were right there the whole time, holding my hand and offering hugs when I need them. Thank you.

I'm not afraid anymore, my dear friends. I hope you can get here.
Love,
Ne

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Progress thread for ne

WOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!


:H:H:H:H:H

:new:

But I'm not alone.

[Murphyx]

Progress thread for ne

Wow, that's one of the best posts I've ever read on this forum. Your description of indifference is so much clearer and fuller than anything I could ever write.

Thank you.

:l

[bleep]

Progress thread for ne

As Murph says, good post. I can really get what you are saying with all my experiences of taking enough, then too little baclofen. The difference is subtle, but astonishing. At one level, the idea of having a couple of drinks seems a good idea and very easy to say yes to. A couple of pills later and it seems like a waste of time.

I've had both happen, several times, which I am trying to stop boring this forum with, and it is hard to believe it is the same me who so blithely refuses a drink when indifference is in and settled, as compared to the fool who thinks nightclubs and boozing are a great idea. The line is a fine one for me, and it has taken me a while to realise this.

I think you have made the correct call with regards Ed's titration, for what it is worth.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Progress thread for ne

Thanks, fellas. It's worth a lot, of course.

And you're welcome, Murphy. It's nice to *see* so clearly.

Love you both.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Progress thread for ne

Hiya, friends.

I've got a little more to add about indifference and triggers and the like.

I'm sharing my home with two people who drink against their will. There is booze! There is drinking! There is a lot of talk about booze and drinking! Not once, not for one second, have I thought, "I want one. Just a sip will do..."

I bought a bottle of wine to make a vegetarian bolognese sauce for dinner last night. I debated about the bottle of wine, in the grocery store. Which made me snicker, even in the moment. Because I know, without a doubt, that if I want to drink, I will drink, no matter what. It's not having a bottle of wine in the house that does it... It can be anything.
Where I live you can buy booze almost all day and night (except Sundays, which is a whole 'nother fun digression...) So I KNOW for SURE that if I want to drink, if I have an inkling of that white-hot-need, the craving, I'll just drink. Period.

So. I'm making dinner, and chatting, and my friend points out that buying some wine for dinner always allowed for a little tipple. Right? I get that. Two tablespoons for the sauce, two (or more!) for the saucy-sauce-maker... I realized I had no interest in having a little sip, it hadn't even crossed my mind!

I also realized that I couldn't taste the sauce until all of the alcohol burned off! pffffft. Not because I care, but because I made a commitment to not drink for the month of June. A Pledge, with a capital P. And these days, for the first time in many, many years, I'm also effortlessly able to keep my promises. Even about the booze!

My friend tasted the sauce, called it okay, and we left it to simmer for a while until I was sure that it was booze free and would pass the muster of even my former therapist, and any others who would worry about such things.

To be perfectly candid, I wasn't sure if this experience, sharing my home with two other bac-ers who were seeking indifference, was going to have implications for my own progress. Lots of triggers, lots of drinking, lots of thoughts, conversations, ideas, about alcoholism and drinking. Sitting in meetings with a lot of other drunks talking about drinking often left me with a white-hot-craving. I often left my 630am home-group AA meeting and bought beer at the gas station on the way home. Never a morning drinker, I always waited to drink it, but I had to know it was there, in the house, available.

Not this time. I am effortlessly free of craving. I can't even conjure the experience of craving. I'm not particularly excited about it, even. It is simply normal. The status quo. Not an issue. Effortless, without thought, easy.

I haven't had a drink in (what's today?) 12 days. It doesn't really matter to me, but that's the official record. The last time I drank (May 30th) I had a beer and about 4oz of wine. I felt terrible. And I was pretty loopy. I was off for a couple of days afterward. Not hungover, just not fully myself. I hope I don't ever have to feel that way again. I'm pretty sure I won't. I hope you all don't ever have to feel that way either.

Sorry for the lack of WOOP-WOOP and Cheers! And and :happy:. It's just not that exciting. I suppose it's not much, anyway, 12 days... The point is, I think, that I've been indifferent for 4 months and some days. And with each passing day, it becomes more evident what that means, for me, and for all of us that are there and are striving to get there.

The thing that really excites me, that gives me cause to SHOUT from the rooftops with glee, is that there are others with, in front of and behind me on this same path. If you take baclofen, folks, and you do it until you get to indifference, you will be indifferent to alcohol. :happy:

jttdp, my friends. You won't believe the result!

Love,
Ne

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Progress thread for ne

Thanks, my friend. And thank goodness I got it! Loved the song. It's always really, really nice to know that there is someone ... who wants to hear more.

[tiptronic_ct]

Progress thread for ne

Ne/Neva Eva;1129056 wrote: Thanks, my friend. And thank goodness I got it! Loved the song. It's always really, really nice to know that there is someone ... who wants to hear more.

If I hadn't seen the particular "Reggie's magical disappearing post" with my own eyes, I would have thought this comment to be hallucinatory.

[Murphyx]

Progress thread for ne

Ne, so when you've done the 30 days, how will you celebrate the achievement. Get a lash on? You'll be rat-arsed on half a glass of wine. Which will make it a nice and cheap session. Or celebrate by knowing it was, of course, completely effortless, and continuing in the same vein?

I'm 21 days without any booze and I think I may go down the attempting to get pissed route. Just to see if I can and if it'll have any consequences. I can't help it, I just like experiments.

[RudyB]

Progress thread for ne

be sure to let us know how that goes murph. i am proving myself to be a scientist as well.

[RudyB]

Progress thread for ne

... and how great it is to read 21 days af! i can't wait to post something similar. i'm hopeful that i will, so thanks murph, ne, et al.