OK, firstly I better make it clear that I am female and that Vlad is an unfortunate nickname I have earnt... I will say no more!!!)
As a teenager I didn't drink, and never took risks trying to get served alcohol under the age of 18. I was far too interested in doing well at college and getting my piano exams - as a youth I was very ambitious and wanted a career in art or graphic design which I achieved.
It was at university were my heavy drinking first started - that's the typical lifestyle, drink all day and do little work. Whilst at university I met some Christian friends and before long, gave my own life to Christ - although for some reason struggled putting a stop to my drinking. I was gutted because no one seemed to want to drink as much as me, until one day at the university rock and thrash society of which I was a member, I met a guy (who is now my husband by the way) who loved to drink. We would meet up every Wednesday and Saturday, sometimes drinking from 12.30pm till the early hours of the morning the next day. We would drink copious amounts of lager and rounds of vodka and whiskey - I remember one occasion where we had been drinking all day and then went to a party taking with us a litre of vodka. No one wanted to drink the vodka apart from us and so we shared the bottle. We would now and again share a bottle of vodka during an afternoon. We also liked to make potent cocktails consisting of lager / cider / jack daniels and seeing how many we could drink before we felt sick. The bizarre thing was - I never had a hangover, moreover I didn't even know what one was. I didn't know what other people were talking about when they said they were hungover!!!
I was just obsessed - I made the mistake once of boasting to my brother about how much I'd drunk the night before. He was very concerned and told my parents who went up the wall and said if I couldn't stop drinking they would send me to rehab!
Anyway, all of a sudden, my boyfriend had a change of heart, he had been attending church and youth club with me and wasn't long before he became a Christian. Fortunately, his faith challenged his drinking habits and he began to challenge me. I said I would give up the vodka. Amazingly, this initially worked - vodka seemed to be were my obsession lay, we were still drinking every day but it reduced down to 2 pints of lager a day and 4 if we went out.
As my life began to change, I began to drink less, my boyfriend dropped out of university and got a job for one thing, and with God's help I began to concentrate more on my university course - I managed to achieve a 1st class honours degree in Graphic Design. My boyfriend and I got engaged and on finishing my degree I managed to find work in design.
As a married couple, we had little money so we drank even less, once, maybe twice a week or not at all - we very rarely went to pubs and would just buy a couple of cans from the local off licence to drink in the house.
One weekend, I experienced my first hangover, after just 3 cans of lager. In a way I was impressed - I suppose because it meant to me that I wasn't a heavy drinker anymore!
But as expected, as we both got more successful in our careers, MORE MONEY = MORE BOOZE, so typically our alcohol consumption increased. I felt uncomfortable about this and decided during Lent we would give up alcohol. We were very successful and it was surprisingly very easy. I felt so free and considered going tee-total. But for some reason, just couldn't take that step.
Life went on but my job in management began to get stressful. After a rather over-indulgent Christmas one year I began to notice I wasn't well at all. I had sporadic attacks of violent tremors (which were embarrassing and difficult to hide at work), my heart would race at 120 beats a minute. I couldn't sleep properly because I would wake up with my heart pounding. I couldn't walk more than 100 yards without chest pain and took me ages to get down steps, any length of time stood up left my legs shaking. I used to weigh myself regularly and suddenly noticed I'd dropped a stone in weight in a week! I desperately needed to see a doctor. I called my local surgery whilst at work and they called me out to an emergency appointment with a nurse as a doctor was unavailable. They asked me whether I'd been anywhere unusual abroad and whether I'd consumed anything odd to drink. I was confused but I said explained I may have been drinking something I thought was vodka but was really something else. I explained I'd only been drinking lager and hadn't drunk vodka for years. I was checked for everything, toxic shock sydrome, diabetes and had a full blood test. I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, a disease were the thyroid gland produces too much thyroxin. I asked my doctor if my lifestyle could have in anyway influenced this, but he didn't seem to think so. He put me on a course of beta blockers (for the tremors) and a heavy dose of carbimazole and told me to avoid alcohol for 2 months. I didn't think I'd cope but after just a few weeks of the drugs I felt that avoiding alcohol was understandable. Every morning I felt like I'd had a bottle of vodka the night before!!!
I gradually began to improve, and the doctor began reducing my dosage of carbimazole. But every time the dosage was reduced I felt really sick, sometimes I would almost vomit - it was just like I was craving alcohol. I complained to my doctor but he explained that it was because he'd reduced the dosage and sometimes this could happen. So for a while I put up with it, but then one day when feeling pretty bad, I had a drink and felt better. I began making the mistake of feeding this problem with drink and needed more and more. I felt the vodka was going to creep back in again... I prayed for resistance!!!
Eventually, after 18 months of treatment, my doctor declared that everything was OK and said that I could cease my medication.
The first day of no carbimazole, I was on a high. One of my colleague's was leaving the company I worked for and invited us out for a drink. My first pint lasted less than a minute and was soon on to some large double vodkas. After drinking till I was seeing triple I finally went home. The morning after I felt terrible and very guilty.
I began buying vodka in for drinking at home. At first I was reasonable, a bottle would last a couple of weeks but it wasn't long before a bottle was only lasting 2 days. I would feel guilty drinking a whole bottle so would drink some beer first. Sometimes I would miss drinking completely some days because I felt guilty. I would turn up to work drunk (and would drive in). One time I nearly spun my car round on a roundabout and another time was so drunk I drove at 20 miles an hour all the way to work. When I got there I couldn't do my job properly, customers couldn't tell what I was saying on the phone. After I'd walked into an office partition several times, a concerned colleague asked if I was feeling OK. I would crave vodka first thing in the morning, I was so tempted to buy a bottle before work (our office was above a grocery store that sold alcohol). I would resist, but would then pester colleagues to come to the pub at lunch time. No one ever wanted to. My cravings would eventually make me feel sick and feverish, and I'd struggle through work each day, longing for the evening's vodka binge. In turn, I was dragging my husband down with me too and he was drinking more. The worst of it, I was turning up to church, still drunk from the night before.
I got so frustrated with myself, I prayed and prayed. Then, another chance to do something about it came up. A big UK campaign called Thirst 4 Life, 40 days with no alcohol. They'd advertised on TV, radio and were promoting through local churches. I felt I needed to give it a shot (no pun intended!). I signed up and got a calendar to count down the days and plenty of tips for alcohol alternatives and entertainment ideas.
A week and a half into the session, I felt awful. The depression was horrendous, I felt like I just wanted to curl up in a dark corner and die! I felt I couldn't cope with anything without a drink. This was embarrassing, especially as I'd just been given a leadership role in the church. One church meeting, when praying in small groups, I came clean about my problem and our deacon prayed for me.
The remaining weeks were much easier but had little effect - as soon as they were over I was back on the booze. The following weekend I drank 22 cans of lager, 13 in one session. Sunday morning I drove my family to church, don't remember the service, my head was in a daze.
I was really starting to annoy myself, I was considering seeing my doctor about it but was too embarrassed. I sought more prayer with church members and things slowly began to improve.
Just before Christmas 2006, I got a shock to the system, my brother-in-law, also experiencing issues with alcohol was diagnosed with pancreatitis. That made me think about the amount I was drinking. My brother-in-law has since ceased drinking alcohol all together and he is certainly an inspiration!
I have made myself rules, no drinking before 8.30pm, no drinking every day and only buy what I'm going to drink. I don't buy crates of beer (cos I'll drink 'em all at once) or bottles of vodka (Although I did treat myself around my birthday to a bottle of Russian Standard, which I might add lasted 3 weeks!!!). I manage currently to keep my drinking down to around 16 units a week, I made a new year's resolution to cut down to 8 units, but that lasted about 2 weeks. My last major slip up was on holiday in Poland last October (where I got greedy on the vodka again and my husband more or less had to drag me back to the hotel due to lack of ability to walk properly).
I have since had another member of my family die from stroke and liver failure due to alcohol at the age of 58 - another kick in the teeth.
I still worry I'll slip up, the desire to have a good binge is unfortunately still there and is annoying! I just want it to go away! I've had my drinking under control for 5 months and I know it's not over yet, but I have a lot to thank God for in my progress so far.
As a teenager I didn't drink, and never took risks trying to get served alcohol under the age of 18. I was far too interested in doing well at college and getting my piano exams - as a youth I was very ambitious and wanted a career in art or graphic design which I achieved.
It was at university were my heavy drinking first started - that's the typical lifestyle, drink all day and do little work. Whilst at university I met some Christian friends and before long, gave my own life to Christ - although for some reason struggled putting a stop to my drinking. I was gutted because no one seemed to want to drink as much as me, until one day at the university rock and thrash society of which I was a member, I met a guy (who is now my husband by the way) who loved to drink. We would meet up every Wednesday and Saturday, sometimes drinking from 12.30pm till the early hours of the morning the next day. We would drink copious amounts of lager and rounds of vodka and whiskey - I remember one occasion where we had been drinking all day and then went to a party taking with us a litre of vodka. No one wanted to drink the vodka apart from us and so we shared the bottle. We would now and again share a bottle of vodka during an afternoon. We also liked to make potent cocktails consisting of lager / cider / jack daniels and seeing how many we could drink before we felt sick. The bizarre thing was - I never had a hangover, moreover I didn't even know what one was. I didn't know what other people were talking about when they said they were hungover!!!
I was just obsessed - I made the mistake once of boasting to my brother about how much I'd drunk the night before. He was very concerned and told my parents who went up the wall and said if I couldn't stop drinking they would send me to rehab!
Anyway, all of a sudden, my boyfriend had a change of heart, he had been attending church and youth club with me and wasn't long before he became a Christian. Fortunately, his faith challenged his drinking habits and he began to challenge me. I said I would give up the vodka. Amazingly, this initially worked - vodka seemed to be were my obsession lay, we were still drinking every day but it reduced down to 2 pints of lager a day and 4 if we went out.
As my life began to change, I began to drink less, my boyfriend dropped out of university and got a job for one thing, and with God's help I began to concentrate more on my university course - I managed to achieve a 1st class honours degree in Graphic Design. My boyfriend and I got engaged and on finishing my degree I managed to find work in design.
As a married couple, we had little money so we drank even less, once, maybe twice a week or not at all - we very rarely went to pubs and would just buy a couple of cans from the local off licence to drink in the house.
One weekend, I experienced my first hangover, after just 3 cans of lager. In a way I was impressed - I suppose because it meant to me that I wasn't a heavy drinker anymore!
But as expected, as we both got more successful in our careers, MORE MONEY = MORE BOOZE, so typically our alcohol consumption increased. I felt uncomfortable about this and decided during Lent we would give up alcohol. We were very successful and it was surprisingly very easy. I felt so free and considered going tee-total. But for some reason, just couldn't take that step.
Life went on but my job in management began to get stressful. After a rather over-indulgent Christmas one year I began to notice I wasn't well at all. I had sporadic attacks of violent tremors (which were embarrassing and difficult to hide at work), my heart would race at 120 beats a minute. I couldn't sleep properly because I would wake up with my heart pounding. I couldn't walk more than 100 yards without chest pain and took me ages to get down steps, any length of time stood up left my legs shaking. I used to weigh myself regularly and suddenly noticed I'd dropped a stone in weight in a week! I desperately needed to see a doctor. I called my local surgery whilst at work and they called me out to an emergency appointment with a nurse as a doctor was unavailable. They asked me whether I'd been anywhere unusual abroad and whether I'd consumed anything odd to drink. I was confused but I said explained I may have been drinking something I thought was vodka but was really something else. I explained I'd only been drinking lager and hadn't drunk vodka for years. I was checked for everything, toxic shock sydrome, diabetes and had a full blood test. I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, a disease were the thyroid gland produces too much thyroxin. I asked my doctor if my lifestyle could have in anyway influenced this, but he didn't seem to think so. He put me on a course of beta blockers (for the tremors) and a heavy dose of carbimazole and told me to avoid alcohol for 2 months. I didn't think I'd cope but after just a few weeks of the drugs I felt that avoiding alcohol was understandable. Every morning I felt like I'd had a bottle of vodka the night before!!!
I gradually began to improve, and the doctor began reducing my dosage of carbimazole. But every time the dosage was reduced I felt really sick, sometimes I would almost vomit - it was just like I was craving alcohol. I complained to my doctor but he explained that it was because he'd reduced the dosage and sometimes this could happen. So for a while I put up with it, but then one day when feeling pretty bad, I had a drink and felt better. I began making the mistake of feeding this problem with drink and needed more and more. I felt the vodka was going to creep back in again... I prayed for resistance!!!
Eventually, after 18 months of treatment, my doctor declared that everything was OK and said that I could cease my medication.
The first day of no carbimazole, I was on a high. One of my colleague's was leaving the company I worked for and invited us out for a drink. My first pint lasted less than a minute and was soon on to some large double vodkas. After drinking till I was seeing triple I finally went home. The morning after I felt terrible and very guilty.
I began buying vodka in for drinking at home. At first I was reasonable, a bottle would last a couple of weeks but it wasn't long before a bottle was only lasting 2 days. I would feel guilty drinking a whole bottle so would drink some beer first. Sometimes I would miss drinking completely some days because I felt guilty. I would turn up to work drunk (and would drive in). One time I nearly spun my car round on a roundabout and another time was so drunk I drove at 20 miles an hour all the way to work. When I got there I couldn't do my job properly, customers couldn't tell what I was saying on the phone. After I'd walked into an office partition several times, a concerned colleague asked if I was feeling OK. I would crave vodka first thing in the morning, I was so tempted to buy a bottle before work (our office was above a grocery store that sold alcohol). I would resist, but would then pester colleagues to come to the pub at lunch time. No one ever wanted to. My cravings would eventually make me feel sick and feverish, and I'd struggle through work each day, longing for the evening's vodka binge. In turn, I was dragging my husband down with me too and he was drinking more. The worst of it, I was turning up to church, still drunk from the night before.
I got so frustrated with myself, I prayed and prayed. Then, another chance to do something about it came up. A big UK campaign called Thirst 4 Life, 40 days with no alcohol. They'd advertised on TV, radio and were promoting through local churches. I felt I needed to give it a shot (no pun intended!). I signed up and got a calendar to count down the days and plenty of tips for alcohol alternatives and entertainment ideas.
A week and a half into the session, I felt awful. The depression was horrendous, I felt like I just wanted to curl up in a dark corner and die! I felt I couldn't cope with anything without a drink. This was embarrassing, especially as I'd just been given a leadership role in the church. One church meeting, when praying in small groups, I came clean about my problem and our deacon prayed for me.
The remaining weeks were much easier but had little effect - as soon as they were over I was back on the booze. The following weekend I drank 22 cans of lager, 13 in one session. Sunday morning I drove my family to church, don't remember the service, my head was in a daze.
I was really starting to annoy myself, I was considering seeing my doctor about it but was too embarrassed. I sought more prayer with church members and things slowly began to improve.
Just before Christmas 2006, I got a shock to the system, my brother-in-law, also experiencing issues with alcohol was diagnosed with pancreatitis. That made me think about the amount I was drinking. My brother-in-law has since ceased drinking alcohol all together and he is certainly an inspiration!
I have made myself rules, no drinking before 8.30pm, no drinking every day and only buy what I'm going to drink. I don't buy crates of beer (cos I'll drink 'em all at once) or bottles of vodka (Although I did treat myself around my birthday to a bottle of Russian Standard, which I might add lasted 3 weeks!!!). I manage currently to keep my drinking down to around 16 units a week, I made a new year's resolution to cut down to 8 units, but that lasted about 2 weeks. My last major slip up was on holiday in Poland last October (where I got greedy on the vodka again and my husband more or less had to drag me back to the hotel due to lack of ability to walk properly).
I have since had another member of my family die from stroke and liver failure due to alcohol at the age of 58 - another kick in the teeth.
I still worry I'll slip up, the desire to have a good binge is unfortunately still there and is annoying! I just want it to go away! I've had my drinking under control for 5 months and I know it's not over yet, but I have a lot to thank God for in my progress so far.
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