Totally new to forum, sort of new to bac

[BoomBaby!]

Totally new to forum, sort of new to bac

BACLOFEN IN NEW ZEALAND

HI EVERYBODY,
i'M NEW HERE AND SO GRATEFUL FOR FINDING THIS SITE!!!
I LIVE IN NEW ZEALAND, AUCKLAND, AND AM FINDING IT VERY HARD TO FIND A DOCTOR THAT'S ON BOARD WITH BACLOFEN - IS THERE ANYBODY THAT KNOWS OF DR.S IN NEW ZEALAND THAT DOES DESCRIBE BACLOFEN FOR ALCOHOLISM?
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PM ME, I WILL BE SO GRATEFUL FOR ANY ASSISTANCE!
KIND REGARDS,
B:new:

[Samandkatharine]

Totally new to forum, sort of new to bac

Boom,

Some of us answered your thread, plus I forgot to add something. Search "Where are the doctors" and you may get answered there. Chelsea had some pointers. :welcome:

Sam

[LadyLush]

Totally new to forum, sort of new to bac

Yourfriend6116;1640720 wrote: Hi lady. I sent you a PM. I am not a troll. Just looking for help/guidance.

Hi your friend,
Sorry about that. I did pm you. My solution is both Baclofen for anxiety and Antabuse for the straight time. It works for me. I drink on occasion, limit it to 2 days a week and it is a total transformation from the lush I was 2 years ago. I was a bad binge drinker and those binges could last a loooooooong time! Good luck to you sweetie!

Now Back to Stuck in LA :h

LL

[LadyLush]

Totally new to forum, sort of new to bac

Why is this thread slipping to page 2? Come on Stuck?

[Otter]

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Hi LL, I just noticed you back on the boards and wanted to say thanks for the moral support you gave me and my wife over the past few years. We are in a much better place now. Glad to see you are well.:l

[StuckinLA]

Totally new to forum, sort of new to bac

LadyLush;1641573 wrote: Now Back to Stuck in LA

You ain't f**king lying. After five boozy days in NYC, blacked-out in cabs from Manhattan to Brooklyn, hitting on ladyfriends at a wedding, throwing up in the bathroom sinks of dive bars wearing suit and tie, and whatever else I am now back in LA.

I get up in the morning, I work on my dissertation. I f**k around for a while then go to the gym in the afternoon, f**k around some more in the evening, then work on my novel before bed. Rinse. Repeat. It's a delicate and fragile work ethic and spurt of productivity that I'm trying to nurture, to not push too hard on. The process itself is a work in progress, and trying to slowly add in more reading and less f**king around, a little less Xbox.

My exGF and I haven't spoken since Xmas, but according to Facebook she got engaged last week. That was a little distracting for a day or so. Today I read something again on FB, where she said she was happy to "finally have sex in a bed," and I got physically ill. I know my feelings for her are mine, and independent of her - whatever she does or doesn't feel for me doesn't matter. I'm bound up with thoughts of myself back then, in my mid-to-late 20s, drunk and carefree and more physically fit thanks to youth and exercise, and sleeping around and having some kind of hope for the future. For some future that hadn't yet shaped itself. Now mid 30s and nearing the end of grad school, with 1/2 a novel and much less hope, the worst of it is still how booze turned on me. How that whole time and part of life that felt so comfortable and safe has turned on me. It has very little to do with her.

The new girl is moving to LA at the beginning of July. To be with me. She's going to move into my apartment and she's going to look for a job, and then we're going to look for a place, together. Stuck. In. F**king. LA.

[LadyLush]

Totally new to forum, sort of new to bac

Stuck,

You crack me up...LOL I must say I am always smiling when I read your words of wisdom
Thanks Otter and Ditto to you:l. I know I enjoyed reading how your wife improved with the miracle of Baclofen. I still take it for my anxiety. What a blessing to have found it for that purpose. I don't know about others but anxiety was the biggest hurdle for me against alcohol.
Anyway glad to have you back Stuck; doesn't matter to me if you're drunk, sober, with a girl, with a guy, or whatever. You offer a lot to many people. Thanks for that :h

LL

[StuckinLA]

Totally new to forum, sort of new to bac

FUCKfuckfuckfuckfuckingfuckettyfuckfuck. Fuck!

Just had to let that out real quick. I feel better now, thanks!

EDIT: no drinking or anything (15 days?), just got some news about next year's funding for school. Not good news.

[skullbabyland]

Totally new to forum, sort of new to bac

Sorry to hear you got bad news for school. That sucks.

In regards to the exGF, you might be better off if you unfriend her on FB. Or at least block her posts. Some things are best left unheard, such as the comment she posted, especially since it made you ill... anyway I speak from experience, leave the ex in the past if you can. It's easier to move on that way. But, tell me to mind my own bidniss if I'm talking out of bounds...

Good luck with the school thing. ANd big congrats on 15 days, keep it up!

[StuckinLA]

Totally new to forum, sort of new to bac

Update?

Update.

School sh*t's fine - I had a ranking of ways to get money for next year, 1, 2, 3, and #1 got knocked out and then #2 (where I taught last year) didn't want me back, so I was down to #3. Then #2 did want me back, so now I'll be teaching, unless some miracle-ish stuff happens with another fellowship that I applied for comes through, but whatever. I'm teaching, I'm finishing my diss, and graduating next year. That's just how it's gonna have to go because I am done with this sh*t mentally, like just ready to be done, so everything else is going to have to be done too.

Sobered up after NY, stopped the drinking and stopped the ativan - since I ran out - then went to the doc's and claimed fear of flying and got a bunch more ativan. Haven't taken any yet, just holding onto it in reserve-like, in case. Went to Europe.

Spent 3 weeks in Italy and Croatia and Paris. Went with the GF and a couple other friends. There's alcohol for sale EVERYWHERE in Europe, by the way. Every cafe, every gas station, there's goddamned vending machines with beer. Didn't drink any of it, just stuck with espressos and ran jittery around up the leaning tower of Pisa and the Eiffel Tower and this high-ass belltower attached to a cathedral in the 4th-century retirement palace of Dioclecian, the Roman emporer, in this coastal town in Croatia.

I get jet lag bad, and don't sleep well anyway, so was waking up buttf**k early, taking a notebook and heading out for espressos at sidewalk cafes. Did some writing, did some thinking. Then sightseeing and we were constantly on the move - we didn't spend more than a single night in one place until almost 2 weeks in. It was exhausting, but I got to have lots of sex with my girl so that was nice. She's still gung-ho about this moving to LA thing, and that's coming up right around the corner. I'm happy about it, but I also ended up buying more and more gifts for my exGF, the one who's not speaking to me, and sent those in the mail this morning. Not sure what that's about, other than wanting to have everything I've ever lost back, all of it.

Work is like claw latched around my throat. Simply can't get myself to sit in the chair and do anything. An article I'd written came back from a journal I'd sent it to - requests for minor revisions. This is a huge deal: I made it past the editor and past peer review at a major academic journal, and the revisions they're asking for really are pretty minor. But somehow it feels impossible to do any of it. I cleaned my kitchen instead, and learned my sink is actually white? All this time, I had no idea...

So that's where we're at. Jet lagged again, waking up at random hours, wanting to get back into the groove of working but feeling like I can't, which makes me kinda want a drink. Kinda real bad. But haven't done that, either, for 2.5+ months now. Instead I bought 10 packages of instant pudding on sale at the grocery store yesterday. And I intend to eat them, one at a time, every day until they are gone.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Totally new to forum, sort of new to bac

What flavor?

[StuckinLA]

Totally new to forum, sort of new to bac

ALL THE FLAVORS.

They were on sale, I stocked up! Got French Vanilla, and regular vanilla, and chocolate, and chocolate fudge. And had one box for dinner and now my tummy hurts and I am going to take a nap.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Totally new to forum, sort of new to bac

We're going to have to talk about that trip you took. I want to do it.

Do you not find it pretty amazing that you traveled through Europe with friends who drink and you didn't? In Europe???

Also, could you smoke in the bars and cafes and on the streets and wherever the hell you wanted? *sigh* I don't want to be a smoker anymore, but I would really, really love to have a great cup of coffee and a cigarette in a cafe. In Croatia. In fact, anything in Croatia would be a welcome experience.

I'm sad (happy?) to say that I do not like pudding. I do like ice cream and candy, though. Preferably in excess. And I hate to go all-girly about it, but my clothes don't fit anymore. It pisses me off that the two things are very likely related to one another.

For a minute I was worried about the fact that you aren't really sure about the woman moving in, and that you are buying gifts for the ex...But you know what? That relationship stuff's crazy and crazy making. The soon-to-move chick might be feeling exactly the same way. But nothing is gained from sitting in front of the tv/pc without taking risks. Right? I would know.

It is kinda weird that you're still buying things for the ex. But I still follow one of my ex-boyfriends around the web. (He's a journalist, so not hard to do.) It's been 20 years, and I've been married for half that time, so... (He just got married finally! I'm very happy for him and very glad that she's not very pretty. Does that make me a bad person? She is, however, accomplished and super-smart and all kinds of cool-nerdy.) I don't want what I had with him, or him, or anything like that. I'm not even nostalgic for it. I just think he's super-cool, and wish we could be friends. But given the fact that he flew across the country to visit me, and then I got very drunk and did some very thoughtless things, and he flew home a week early without his luggage, I'm pretty sure he doesn't feel the same way. I'm so glad that drunken shit's over. ugh.

Anyway. What were you talking about?

[StuckinLA]

Totally new to forum, sort of new to bac

In France you can't smoke inside anymore, but can at most of the sidewalk cafes. In Italy you can smoke inside in some places, and in Croatia everywhere. And yes, sitting down along the waterfront with a coffee and a smoke is a remarkable experience. I really need to give up, too, but still it's lovely.

And yes, traveling in countries where everybody drinks, where it's not uncommon to see people having a glass of wine at 9 or 10 in the morning in public, with friends who drink, and where the wine is cheaper than water. Actually cheaper - restaurants don't give free water so you buy a bottle of water for the table with dinner, and the wine is cheaper. And not drinking through that is pretty amazing. But I don't think of it as amazing or something to be proud of or anything like that - I just know that if I drink I won't enjoy it, my blood pressure will go back up from normal (where it is now) to dangerously high, and the anxiety/panic that I'm dealing with occasionally now will be constant.

So while I would *like* to drink, really what I want is to drink the way it was four or five years ago, and that can't be right now. It's similar with the exGF - my feelings for her are independent of her, and what I miss about her are more feelings of a time that's lost and can't be retrieved. I was drunk then, and young, and hopeful for some magical future. But *actually* writing a book is very different from sitting in a bar with friends talking about the book you'll write some day. It's a lot more work and a lot less hopeful, so while I'd rather be where I am now, I miss the way I felt and saw the world back then.

If I rather compulsively buy a couple shot glasses for an ex, because she collects them, and a masquerade mask from Venice to go with the one she got in New Orleans, and a silk scarf with colored skulls that she'll absolutely adore, then well that's not the worst way to spend a hundred or so dollars.

As for the move-in girl, my feelings are complicated and at the same time frighteningly simple. My focus is everywhere except my personal life right now. I like this girl. She's cute. Not the hottest girl in the world, not even the hottest girl I've dated, but I like her and we get along very well and she's good for me. I feel bad even saying that, it's not like I'm bring supermodel or rockstar to the table, but it's my honest assessment, I think. Very cute, though that's not a particularly apt way to describe her - she's far too tall and a little broad shouldered to be 'cute' but you get the idea. And she's got it in her head that she's completely in love with me, and decided she's going to live with me now or in the next city I move to. So no point in dragging things out another year and a half, we may as well move in together now and she can find a job here (I mentioned she's unemployed, so there's little holding her where she is now). If this is going to flame out, might as well get it over with. And if it works, well then that's a whole different issue.

The emotional flatness/deadness that's been with me since stopping drinking hasn't lifted, and with that I don't trust my own feelings. I may have stronger feelings for her than I realize. And we're quite compatible in bed, which is a big deal that people tend to overlook. We'll see how all this goes, but my eyes are on other things. She'll move in, we'll find another place to move into and make our own, and we'll keep on keeping on. Meanwhile, my attention is on the writing projects I have to do, and how best to do them.

Yesterday I tried to start working on revisions but couldn't quite get myself in the chair. I read for a while in the evening, and then went to sleep at about 8pm - to wake up at about 4:30 this morning. Yeah, still jet lagged and that's still sucking a whole bag of cock. Oh well, at least there's coffee.

[Ne/Neva Eva]

Totally new to forum, sort of new to bac

What's wrong with 8-4? I LOVE that.

The rest? Sounds good. Really good.

I don't know what that emotional flatness thing is. I have been there for a long time and feel like I'm just coming out of it now. I thought it was meds. I thought it was any of a number of stressors. So I tried to tweak all of it in some sort of reasonable rational way and now I have no idea if something worked or if it's because everything changed. (Grandma died, hiatus from nursing program, dog died. Voila. Stressors are gone.) I also went way up on bac again, from 80mg to 175mg. That's what I meant on the other thread about still not knowing what's normal. Is my normal response to that much stress to completely shut down? Is baclofen an effective antidepressant (for me)? (Btw, I tried a couple of other traditional ADs. I was too freaked out about taking them to figure out if they were helping...) What do you think?

I would have loved a silk scarf with skulls on it, just in case you're in Venice again sometime soon.