Month: February 2019

Feeling calm

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Today I realised that things are calm and steady and I’m enjoying it.

This is the first time I have ever just been calm, drama free and chugging along for a number of weeks. It’s all because I’m not out drinking and letting hangovers disrupt my flow, or battling the anxiety that comes after a big night and paralyses me for days.

For once there are also no men in my life stressing me out or throwing me off my stride. Kids are both doing well no huge worries there and I’m finding more energy to do things with them and really connect. It’s peaceful and not too long ago I would probably have considered it pretty boring but now I like it. I feel content and calm and the usually ever present voice of anxiety has kind of diminished to background noise.

I spent some time today reading a new sobriety book and also watching confronting documentaries about severe alcoholism. I learned that it’s very common for depression and other mental health issues to come swarming in when you sober up as you’ve been partially drinking to self medicate. This has happened to me before and it was enough for me to start drinking again but now I am a little more prepared for it and understand why it may happen, I can hopefully push through next time.

I’m fermenting

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In the interests of full disclosure I have to confess I had a slip last night. Three glasses of wine and for absolutely no real reason except that it was Friday and I wanted to check out. I’ve been sick and feeling crappy and I think in my brain somewhere I decided that if I’m going to feel crap anyway I may as well drink. Determined for this not to be the beginning of the end as it so often is with a slip so I got up this morning and poured the rest of the bottle of wine down the sink.

I’ve been fermenting. Don’t know why, but this afternoon I was seized by the urge to make a batch of kombucha with my poor neglected scoby. Once that was done I then decided I wanted to finally learn how to make proper sourdough bread so I looked up recipes and started a starter culture.

Am wondering if this sudden urge to ferment things means I have gut bacteria issues, My immune system is so very crap, and I’ve been bloated, gassy and feeling cruddy the last week. Maybe I’m trying to replace one fermented drink with another, who knows! I need a project to keep my hands busy and my brain off the booze so I’m just going with it.

Had a pleasant enough Saturday evening watching Netflix and eating leftover pasta bake. I’m in a bit of a depressed slump right now, it’s partially being sick, I’m sure the wine last night didn’t help. Anxiety and depression are rife after I’ve been drinking. Being sober means things are coming up in my mind, things I usually drink to squash. Am trying to acknowledge the feelings and actually feel them rather than ignore or push them down. And know that just because that little voice in my head has decided to savage me relentlessly doesn’t mean it’s true or I have to listen to it.

I know it takes years to heal your brain after more than 20 years of punishment. But if I can start to progress that will be enough, see more good days, fewer bad and know that the bad will pass. I’m only 40, I’m only half way through my life, I want to make the second half better than the first but to do that I have to change what I’m doing.

Day 14 – Where are all the (other) sober people?

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Well I am sick, and my back has gone again so feeling pretty sorry for myself. What’s amazing is that I’ve had two nights with little sleep, a stinking head cold and I still feel better than usual. I’m able to push through it unlike with a hangover, which usually sees me completely debilitated all day.

I’ve not only completed my work quota each day, I’ve exceeded it and I am actually ahead of schedule on one of my monthly projects. This is different. I seem able to be consistent and productive when I’m not downing the wine every night, who knew?

I am a little nervous as I’m reaching the usual point where I start to waver. I start feeling good again (well as good as you can feel when you have a stinking head cold and an aching back) and think well what’s one glass of wine? I can be a normal social drinker just have a couple when I’m out, not drink at home, blah blah we all know how that one goes.

I had lunch with a good friend today. Let’s call her Julie. She’s a super close friend and also a drinking buddy. She’s seen me go through a few phases of not drinking and I think mostly she’s been bemused by it more than anything else. She’s the one I went drinking with on my Last Big Session and I hadn’t seen her since then. She’s the friend I confide in about everything, but for some reason I can’t talk to her about this. She just doesn’t compute it, and I guess she doesn’t want to lose her drinking buddy, which I totally get.

Today when we met for lunch straight away she grabbed the drinks menu and said ‘are you having wine? I said not for me I’m off the booze and she replied, I’ve been drinking too much too this week, you’re right, coffee’s probably a better idea. I didn’t push it any further. Realise that if I’m going to sustain this I will need friends who get it, Julie has been a trigger for me many many times. Not intentionally, but it’s hard to go to the usual bars and do the usual things and not drink with her. Thing is, I don’t really know how or where to meet sober friends but I guess maybe I need to start by doing sober activities and hopefully I will stumble across some non drinking people.

Two weeks!

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It’s been two weeks and I feel great. It took almost 10 days for the low mood to lift but for the last few days I have been feeling calm and content. Usually my mood is up and down and erratic and I have a constant jangling sensation in my brain and body. The main thing I have noticed the last few days is that this is gone. I feel relaxed. Nothing has changed except the not drinking. My life is still stressful but it’s like I have a little buffer of calm between the stress and me.

This is not my first visit to soberland but it’s the first time I’ve really considered making a permanent move here. It’s not that I can’t drink, it’s more that I now realise I have two options.

  1. I keep drinking and remain anxious, depressed and not moving forward with my life. Or
  2. I stop drinking and feel energetic, calm, content and start to gain some forward momentum.

I can’t have both. I can’t drink and feel happy and energised and meet my goals – I think the difference this time is that I do finally get that. So I choose not to drink. It hasn’t always been easy this past two weeks but I just remind myself of the choice every time a craving hits and I have been so far able to get through it.

Day 9 hello energy

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Finally my energy has arrived. I’m actually starting to feel better and like this whole sober thing may actually be worth it. Instead of crashing out after I get the kids home from pickup I’ve been doing things. Actual things. Like making kombucha, cooking home cooked meals, laundry, school admin, tidying up, nagging children to do homework (they are thrilled with this one), watering plants etc. Not interesting things, but Things nonetheless.

Also feel a bit better able to focus on work rather than working for five minutes and randomly staring into space for 15, then spending 10 mins on Facebook then starting on a completely different task than the original one before remembering said original task. I’ve been pomodoro-ing and being productive and shit. So I feel good, not pink cloud good but content and calm and like things are vaguely under control. I even tentatively went back to the gym yesterday go me.

Double figures tomorrow!

Kicking the man habit

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So yesterday’s date didn’t happen. The dude (let’s call him Dave), flaked on me and I am sooo relieved as I’m just not in the right headspace AT ALL at the moment. However, it got me thinking about the connection between drinking and dating and I have decided to do myself and all the straight, single men of Sydney a favour and take myself off the market for the forseeable future.

My tendency to repeat the same patterns when it comes to dating and relationships has been a big motivator behind this sober stint. All my relationships, long term and short, have been developed under the influence of copious amounts of wine.

Towards the end of last year, when I walked away from yet another uninspiring relationship with yet another self absorbed and emotionally unavailable guy, I really began to despair a bit. I felt like I was stuck in this endless cycle, on a neverending treadmill of dysfunctional men with commitment issues. It started with my marriage when I was 25 and after that ended it’s just kept on going. It’s like I date one guy in many different forms. Look this one is different, he has a beard!

It goes like this….

I’m in a good place, happily single and committed to sobriety, usually with a few weeks of not drinking under my belt. I’m starting to evaluate my life, implement positive changes and generally get my shit together. I’m focusing on my kids, work and I’m into my running and training for an event. Life is good. I’m not looking but someone comes along. He’s not exactly everything I’ve dreamed of, but he’s pretty cute/funny/smart so I think well there’s no harm in a coffee. I need to get ‘out there’ and push myself out of my comfort zone. Don’t want to end up an old spinster with cats! Just have some fun!

By the third date I’m downing cocktails at a rooftop bar, I’m too hungover on weekends to run, I miss deadlines at work because I’m too distracted and can’t concentrate and I start to become preoccupied with Mr Wonderful after just a few weeks. He just has me so off balance, it’s exciting and I spend my evenings after the kids are in bed lying on the lounge drinking wine and picking apart every little text or conversation to try to figure out how he feels about me.

He says he’s not really looking for a relationship, but he hints that in a bit more time, maybe… that we have something special, definitely…but it’s not a great time right now – he’s just got out of a relationship/he’s travelling a lot with work/needs to prioritise his career/lives in another country. I brush it all off and pour myself another glass of wine. I know he will change his mind, we have something amazing, how could he not see that?

Each time there’s another clear sign he’s just not that into me I will drink it away. When we’re apart I’ll agonise endlessly over the relationship and where it’s going, but when we’re together and there’s wine everything will seem perfect. And there’s always wine.

It will take anything from a few weeks to a few years but eventually I will wise up. The signs will become impossible to ignore and I’ll pick my flagging self respect off the floor and leave. I’ll go no contact, defriend him on social media and I will start to rebuild my neglected life. He’ll try to come back after a few months, once he realises that I am actually serious, but when I’m done I’m done.

I grieve, play sappy songs endlessly, cry in the car, throw myself into work, drink in bars and ramble on about how unfair it all is, wallow. Then I pull myself together slowly, get back to the gym, stop drinking, commit to sobriety, start to feel better, make plans, start running again, get in a good place and start to feel confident, look better…As soon as I’m back up another eligible looking male turns up on the scene. This one seems different and so it starts again.

It’s exhausting, depressing and downright pathetic. I’m a smart woman, I’m better than this. So when I walked away from the latest disappointment last September, after a year of putting up with an abundance of his drama, I decided to just stop and instead focus on embracing singlehood until such a time as I could figure out how to break the cycle. I don’t want to be a bitter 40 something divorcee and I genuinely don’t believe I need a man to be happy. It’s like they take over my brain and I forget who I am and what’s really important. Kind of like something else we could mention…

I’ve come to the realisation that unavailable men are as much an addiction for me as wine is. They are an escape from the reality of my life. I have a larger than average amount of shit to deal with on the day to day but if I can get preoccupied with will he commit or won’t he and get all caught up in the drama of being in an unhealthy codependent relationship it means I don’t have to think about all the STUFF.

On top of that the dysfunctional men and the wine are intrinsically linked. While I have one in my life I will never be able to escape from the other. The men are always heavy drinkers which means a threat to my soberness, the wine means I ignore the early red flags and plaster over the obvious holes in the relationship for far too long and it just all feeds into each other. The more I drink the more depressed and anxious I get about the relationship, the more I drink to cover it up etc. Where I’ve gone wrong up to now is trying to get rid of one while keeping the other. It just won’t work, cold turkey on both is the only way I see to move forward.

I also need to find ways of dealing with my crap rather than looking for an out and until I can do that and stop using men as a distraction I’m probably not going to attract the right sort of person or even be interested in them if I do. So I am officially taking myself out of the dating pool until I have six months of sobriety under my belt then I will re-evaluate. I’m a little freaked out by this but it feels like the right thing to do if I actually want to move forward and stop repeating the same patterns. I see a lot of netflix in my future but that’s OK.

On another note it’s been a week now and I am still waiting for that extra energy I keep hearing I’ll have. Still feel like I’m hung over, tired, dizzy and really down but I’m sure it will take a while for my body and brain to recalibrate so I just need to be patient.

That lurching feeling

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It’s Sunday and this morning I woke up as I usually do, shocked into consciousness by a jolt of anxiety in the pit of my stomach. Tentatively I surveyed myself to check the damage. How bad is it this morning? The relief of realising that I didn’t drink last night, therefore do not have anything to worry about or feel ashamed of is immense and it’s one of the things I’m loving the most about this sobriety thing so far. Anxiety has been something I have battled my whole life and I do have to wonder how much alcohol has contributed to that. Finding out and hopefully reducing it is probably one of my biggest motivators in getting and staying off the wine.

More good news; I survived the weekend so far. Been reading a lot about sobriety toolboxes, I don’t really have one yet unless dashing to the supermarket to pick up chocolate, non alcoholic drinks and a huge carb filled dinner and stuffing my face in front of Outlander counts. I went to bed feeling slightly sick but with the realisation that wine would not have made my night better. I’d love to say I woke up this morning raring to go but the neighbours were having a party till late last night so sleep was hard to come by. I feel like a zombie this morning but at least it’s just tiredness, not the rest.

It was a week ago today that I got hammered with my friend and I’m very glad to be spending today very differently. Some meal prep for healthy lunches to take to work, vacuuming and reading are about all I have in mind, although I have one anxiety inducing event later today, a sober date. Not just any date, a first date. We’re having coffee so there won’t be any temptation to drink. Dating has always been a minefield for any sober intentions I have. My fears centre around being considered a weirdo, having another reason for people to reject me and further narrowing my pool of available options when the chances of finding someone compatible or even relatively normal in the over 40s dating scene is already pretty slim. I have been talking to this guy for a while and he seems nice so I feel it’s worth meeting him, but I think realistically I need to focus on the sober thing for the next few months if I want to make it stick.

Day 5 – First test passed and a bit of a ramble

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It’s been a funny sort of a day. I didn’t sleep well last night so feeling wired and spaced out at the same time if that’s possible (it is). Can’t say I’m feeling energetic, healthy or particularly different from usual at this point in time but I guess it’s too early. At least I’m not hung over.

It’s Friday which can be problematic as this is usually my time to crack open a bottle of wine and get the weekend started. Cravings have been coming and going over the last two days but they’ve been manageable so far. I’m not getting complacent though, I know the worst is to come. So far I am getting by on sparkling water and tea and I have just cracked open an alcohol free beer since getting home. AF beer has never been problematic for me as I’m not a beer drinker, it doesn’t make me crave the real thing it just lets me feel like I’m having a grown up treat.

My oldest son has been away at camp this week, he got back this afternoon. It’s been weird having him away for even a few days with no contact and as always whenever one of the boys is away there’s always this feeling of incompleteness in the apartment. So it was with great anticipation that I lined up at the gates of his new high school with a hundred or so other nervous parents to await the arrival of our offspring from their great adventure.

I got chatting to a new parent I’ve never met, then a few mums I know came along and it was all very polite and friendly. Then a friend of mine came who is a massive drinker, and who has been the cause of my sober demise on a few previous occasions and I came over a bit sweaty (well sweatier – it was 30 degrees FFS) and anxious.

My history with this person is somewhat complex and while she is a lovely person, I realised at the end of last year that it’s just not healthy for me to be around her. I don’t feel good about myself after leaving this person’s company, she loves to gossip and it kind of draws me in too so I find myself bitching and betraying confidences to her just to gain her approval. It’s like she brings out all my people pleasing tendencies and I have no real idea why. Plus common sense tells me that if she’s bitching about all our other friends behind their backs, she’s almost certainly doing the same to me.

After much small talk the bus came, the kids all piled out, sunburned, exhausted, sweaty and hungry. Friend pipes up “Who’s going for a drink? Coming for a drink?” This was mostly directed at me, and fair enough usually I would immediately drop everything including my sober intentions to go and drink away the afternoon while our kids sat around bored. I stalled and said it depends what state #1 is in. She asked the other mums, they all mumbled similar things. She pushed a bit harder and I said, “No, I need to get #1 home he’ll be tired. But definitely another time.” She accepted that and off she went. So glad I didn’t drag my poor kid to the pub, he was shattered, starved, and has blisters on his nose from sunburn. He just wanted to go home, stuff his face with food and commune with his ipad and a bucket of aloe vera. But I felt guilty. That part of me that is desperate to please this person was screaming at me. It still is.

It’s always been this people pleasing part of me that has got me drinking again in the past. That and stress. I guess those are my triggers. But tonight I will not drink, I am safely at home with my boys and we’re going to stuff our faces with pizza and watch Harry Potter.

Two days ago I said no more

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It wasn’t the first time, or the second or even the tenth. I’ve lost track of how many times over the last few years I have tried to kick the wine habit but it’s always managed to edge its way back. So in the interests of not doing the same thing continually and expecting a different result (definition of insanity anyone?), I thought I’d try this. Maybe actually writing it all down and putting it out there will make me more accountable, maybe it won’t, but it’s worth a shot.

I didn’t hit any kind of rock bottom three days ago, I had a nice afternoon with a friend. It was fairly standard for one of our Sunday afternoon get togethers – a boozy lunch, followed by a boozy comedy show followed by a bucketload of rose and a boozy uber ride home. I hadn’t intended to get drunk, I’d thought to have a couple of wines over the course of the afternoon then come home and do a few chores around the apartment, get an early night and be up and at the office at the crack of 8am on Monday. Needless to say none of that happened. I didn’t manage to drag myself in to the office or even pick up my laptop at all on Monday and all I could do was lie in bed under a cloud of self pity, thinking why? At 40, there are a number of people I admire and I suspect none of these people spend their Sunday afternoons getting trashed in rooftop bars and skipping work on Monday because they are too hungover to move.

However many good intentions I have, however many times I try to cut it back or cut it out, however many weeks I manage to actually stop drinking (5 weeks is my record), I always end up back here.

So here I am, day 3 and I feel like I have the flu. This might be because I am actually sick or it might be some kind of withdrawal. At this exact moment, not drinking is easy enough, I’ve never been an every night drinker anyway, especially not during the week. My first real test will be on the weekend. For now I’m just tired, spaced out and a bit foggy but that’s pretty normal for me – it can take me up to a week to feel human again after a big drinking session, but no more. Roll on day four.