Day 14: let them eat steak

Or cake. But I don’t like cake so I went for steak.

Tonight I briefly experienced a desire to drink wine. After several (very) busy days I suddenly found myself alone on the sofa (watching cooking shows, as I do) and I thought ‘dang, I want wine now…’

I remembered HALT (hungry-angry/anxious-lonely-tired (I’d also add ‘thirsty’ because I often forget to drink)) and blamed it on the ‘lonely’. Just to be on the safe side I had some food and something else to drink too. It offered enough distraction to forget all about the wine.

I didn’t think I’d forget about wine this quickly and still wait for the other shoe to drop, because I don’t quite get why it suddenly became so easy to not drink. I made several attempts before to cut back, or to only drink in the weekends, and had more issues with those lately. Maybe because this time I went for a fairly long period (100 days) instead of ‘several days in between drinking’. I also don’t see it as a punishment now, and I sort of did before, or at least as depriving myself of something. This time, I decided that for my health I needed to take that break. When I look back over the past few years I never seem to have had issues with not drinking if the reason for it had anything to do with my health (either physical or mental). Maybe that’s my sober-lifeline, the one thing that will make this easy/easier. My health sucks, but I don’t want to ruin it more by doing unhealthy things. Sure, I have plenty of other unhealthy habits (I drink softdrinks 😉 ), however, I think alcohol hurts me most, so it needs to go first.

My crazy brain actually considers not drinking at all anymore. For pretty much ‘forever’.

Starting week 3 tomorrow! Whoopeee!

Day 13: numb the pain

Yesterday, day 13, didn’t go so smoothly.

I didn’t have cravings or anything, but I did have a lot of (unrelated) pain. I maxed out on my painkillers / anti-inflammatories, exercised a bit to loosen things up, drank a lot of tea, tried to eat well. Despite that, in the evening the pain got pretty bad. I thought about how having a glass of wine helps with this kind of pain. I didn’t actually consider drinking some, just thought about how well that worked, which makes drinking (too much) more tempting of course. I have an appointment with my doctor in a few weeks so I’ll have to suck it up until then, and I can. Done that before.

I mostly want to sleep and rest on the sofa. But I don’t want to give in to that too much, I’ll look ‘too good’ during my appointment and I won’t get new medication. I hate how that works, but for these few weeks, I’ll suck it up.

Day 10: double digits

I made it into the double digits with no real problems. The occasional thought of wine but no real cravings. No frustration or negotiating, which I have had in the past so my brain can do that, and doesn’t for now. Not complaining at all. I suspect the rough moments will come eventually, when the longevity of 100 days sinks in. 
Until then I’ll cruise along. 
Feeling very tired probably helps too. I’ll look at the clock at 3pm and half an hour later it’ll be 8pm and I don’t really know what happened to the time (usually I nap part of it). For the record, I mean that in the ‘so tired everything takes aaaages’ way, not the ‘I blacked out ‘ way. 
I don’t like feeling this tired but perhaps, right now, in this phase, it’s  the best thing for me. 

Day 4: thinking about not drinking

Unlike other evenings where I’d definitely started thinking about drinking by now, tonight I mostly think about not drinking. This whole 100 days sober thing takes up a lot of my brain-time, but I think in a good way. Not in the ‘oh no, I CAN’T drink! but I MUST!’ or other pushy thoughts. My brain mostly goes over why I drink (or drank), what it does to me, what if I never do it again (no-no, not now! we’ll think about that in 80 days time okay???), why I would want to drink, what I think it’ll solve, and do I want to feel like crap in the morning (actually, I quite like my mornings so far, much easier getting up), and what about those mood-swings now huh? (may not have my hypoglycaemia under full control at the moment…)

Instead of focussing on what I ‘am not allowed’ to do, I seem to focus more on ‘okay, what next?’. It may help that I’ve started the program as described by Feeling on https://feelingmywaybackintolife.wordpress.com/2014/12/12/alcohol-desensitization-training-alcohol-top-training/

Might be a bit too soon for results from that training though, so maybe it’s all on me 🙂

Emotionally I feel mostly flat, and sometimes a little sad, and a lot tired. Today I napped again shortly after 10am until roughly noon or 12:30. Around 16:00 I went to lie down and watch a little TV.

I hope to sleep a bit better tonight. H. had one of his snoring-badly nights, and they don’t always bother me, but last night it did. Not a lot, only woke up twice, but still.

I worry a bit about staying sober for a long time and then realising how awesome I actually am and how I’ve wasted my awesomeness (let’s just pretend I’ll be awesome, and not that I’ll be very un-awesome because I can deal with being un-awesome even less…)

Like I said, flat, and a little sad, and a lot tired.

Day 3: exhausted

I feel exhausted. Not the post-drinking kind, but just exhausted. Of course I did not rest enough between two busy weekends, and I’ve done too much the last two days, so that could explain it. Trying to keep well hydrated, not very easy.

I woke up early and did my morning routine and around 10 I felt like I’d fall asleep on the spot. Crawled back into bed and slept for three hours. Guess I needed that. I think I’ll give into the desire to sleep as much as I can, my body clearly needs to recover from something.

Yesterday while cooking I had a moment (or a few, rather) of ‘gosh, I’d like some wine!’ and then notice the bottle of liquor on the counter. And then I thought of the open bottle of H’s wine in the fridge (he drinks white, I drinkdrank pink, although I didn’t mind sharing his white on occasion). The thoughts occurred to me, but the one thought that didn’t was ‘I will get some!’. Good thing, I will not beat myself up over thinking about wanting wine (nor would I about actually considering getting it), and afterwards I felt good about not even wanting to grab it. Instead, I had some lemonade, took a brief break from dinner and then finished it up.

I need to make sure I make dinner on time. Have this sneaky suspicion that the later I cook it, the bigger the desire for wine (because my blood sugar slowly drops, I have issues with that).

Currently feeling mostly too tired to think about drinking. Hard part yet to come, I suspect.

Dry run: day 2

Woke up tired, as usual, but it does seem I slept better than usual (after drinking). H. offered me a drink last night and I declined. He took one and said I was the smarter one, hehe. He can easily have just one or two drinks, or decide he doesn’t care. With me, it’s more like, I drink until I stop, and that’s usually not after one or two…

Feeling a bit off the past few days, increased (chronic) pains. Maybe a virus, or I just overdid it.

Early in the evening yesterday I wanted wine (because I usually have wine around that time), but I told myself I didn’t need to and went to do something as a distraction. I went to bed earlier because I got tired earlier. Good thing.