Author: nomowineing

Taking it on the chin and being a grown up

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I realised today that I’m thinking about drinking, or not drinking, a lot less than I was a week or so ago. Sometimes it doesn’t cross my mind for a few hours at a time, especially when I’m immersed in doing something. Believe it or not, this is a big improvement! My focus seems to be improving too, so I’m finding it easier to get immersed in things, especially work projects, although I’m a bit all over the place today.

It’s super busy at the moment, I have a big project due this week and other little jobs snapping at my heels. There’s a lot going on with the boys and we’ve got people coming over two out of the next three nights. And there I was saying how calm and quiet things were. That’ll teach me.

Generally I am a structured person. I like my routines, I like my downtime and I like to have everything under control, no rushing around frantically trying to do a hundred things at once. I can’t live in chaos, it just sends me into a spiral of anxiety and ends up being a huge trigger for drinking. Calm, peaceful, unhurried and structured is how I like to live and mostly I do, in spite of single parenting two kids and holding down a freelance workload, but this week it’s been a little upended. I’m feeling it and it’s only Tuesday. Had some rather savage and I feel overly harsh feedback from a client this afternoon too, which never helps.

Now that I can’t reach for the wine glass to deal with all this, it’s difficult but after a bit of time writing it all out, taking a lot of deep breaths and gaining some perspective I feel calmer and the knot of anxiety has unwound itself somewhat. I’m not obsessively thinking over the criticism I got which when you work in a ‘creative’ occupation is all part of the job but so often sends me into a spiral of questioning my abilities and worth.

Criticism is something I find very hard to take, I’m a sensitive little snowflake, always have been, and there’s always been that compulsion to drink to forget about it. I wonder how many drinkers are really super sensitive souls, I expect it’s quite a lot. So instead of reaching for the wine I read a nice email from a different client yesterday raving about my work, I remembered that I knew this client was going to be a nightmare from day one but I took on the job regardless, and I thought about a few things I could learn from the experience (especially with regard to taking on clients I have a bad feeling about).

Tomorrow, I will take it on the chin, be a professional and get the job finished as quickly as possible so I can take what I can from it and move on. Fear of being unable to cope with rejection has been exactly why I have stayed buried in mediocrity and not actually tried to put myself out there work wise for the last few years. I realised today that what’s been holding me back is not the fear of rejection itself, it’s fear of my inability to handle it without going into a spiral of depression and self loathing. Reminds me of the bit in Harry Potter where Professor Lupin tells Harry that what he’s most afraid of is fear itself. Shame I can’t conjure up a patronus for anxiety but if I could let’s face it, it would probably take the form of a bottle of wine.

A Sober Saturday Night Out

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Last night I decided to venture out from my hermit like existence and go to an outdoor movie with a friend. After a month of sequestering myself away with nothing but the apple TV remote and online ordering app for company it was nice to get out and surprisingly less difficult than I thought it would be not to drink.

Usually outdoor movies are a wine soaked affair, for me at least. Even if I’m (horror of horrors) driving I will have a couple of glasses over the course of the night. I took my big bottle of homemade kombucha along instead and plenty of food. My friend had a couple of ciders (not really triggering for me as I’m not a huge cider drinker) and we had a lovely night sprawled on beanbags looking at the stars and listening to bats squawking while watching On The Basis of Sex on an inflatable movie screen and stuffing our faces. Super inspiring movie, and I can’t imagine that Ruth Bader Ginsberg would have been able to wage her war on sex discrimination if she’d been face down in a bottle of wine every night. It was nice to give my friend a lift home at the end of the evening and it struck me as I was driving back that I never have to stumble home drunk or get into ubers with creepy drivers ever again. What a relief.

I had a nice chat with my friend about the different types of drinkers. She said she’s someone who can open a bottle of rose, have a glass and then put it away for the night but her partner isn’t. He drinks to get drunk and doesn’t see the point in one or two, it’s all or nothing for him. I am definitely in the latter category. I can go for a few weeks just having one or two on the weekend or when I’m out but sooner or later I crack and have a huge blowout. It’s easier for me to just have none than one or two. It’s strange how that happens. On the other hand my friend has some issues with food and that’s something I have never struggled with. I enjoy food but can easily turn down dessert if I’m full, I have half eaten bags of chips going stale in the cupboard and if I’ve had a bad day, ice cream doesn’t really even cross my mind. Hearing her talk about it I was really struck by the similarities. Basically, I feel about wine how she feels about cake.

I came home before 11pm, hopped in to bed with a trashy novel and read till I fell asleep. On the way to bed I found myself heading to the kitchen as per usual after a night out to get a big glass of water to drink before bed, then I realised I don’t have to do that. I’d been hydrating all night, I don’t have to down a pint of water to try to stave off the morning hangover, but it’s so ingrained after all these years that I do it without thinking. So I just went to bed feeling quite liberated. Woke up this morning in a moment of panic as I remembered I’d gone out last night, waiting for the rolling stomach and dry mouth to hit. The relief of knowing I didn’t drink never gets old. By 8am I was out doing a morning walk/run over the harbour bridge, nodding at other Sunday morning runners and feeling irritatingly smug.

I actually used to be someone who ran every Sunday at 7am. I ran with a group and we trained for and ran a couple of half marathons together. It was just after my marriage breakup and I wasn’t drinking much at that time or going out, but as I started going out more and getting back into dating I was finding it harder and harder to get up on Sunday mornings and run. I started skipping weeks until I eventually just stopped going. That was about five years ago and I still miss it.

I would love to be that person again, even though right now I’m on week one of the couch to 5k program and can barely run for a minute at a time. But this morning reminded me of all that and I started to feel a glimmer of hope that maybe I can get some of that back in time.

Groundhog year

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Four weeks! Barring my slip the other week but I have managed to pull myself up from that and move forward.

I’ve been thinking over what it is I hope to achieve from banishing the booze. Do I magically think my life is going to be perfect once I stop staring at the bottom of a wine glass? No. My life is far from perfect and it would take a lot more than just sobering up to make it so.

I think my main motivating factor at this point in time is the start of another year, turning 40 and the fact that for the last four or so years I have been basically living the same year, over and over. Like the movie groundhog day, I just can’t move forward and I believe that drinking is if not completely to blame, definitely a big contributor to my general feeling of stagnation.

I see everyone around me moving on with their lives, the single people pairing off, other working mums and dads getting promotions and moving forward in their careers, buying houses, running marathons, and just generally going in a forward trajectory while I am still struggling, still scraping by, still single or repeating the same unhealthy relationship patterns. I’ve spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself and wondering when things are going to get better, when will it be my turn, when will I get my break or whatever. And at some stage in the last six months I started to realise that if I want to change my life, I have to actually change my life. It won’t happen by itself. I have to start doing things differently.

I think another big realisation I have had the last few weeks is that this isn’t going to happen overnight. I’m not going to quit drinking and magically transform in the next six weeks. But it’s the start of a process and I am beginning to see how the snowball effect can work and over time, slowly, gradually, I will move forward and get out of my rut as long as I stick with it.

Over the last four weeks I have noticed a few things:

  • Calm. The jittery, jangly feeling that is always present is now gone. In its place I feel a strange lightness and sense of peace. When I get anxious about something it flares up again, but only temporarily and not as badly as before. For someone who has struggled with anxiety for as long as I can remember this is a revelation.
  • Lurching. I still wake up with a minor lurching feeling in the pit of my stomach every morning. It takes a few moments for me to surface and tell myself it’s ok, I’m safe, there’s nothing to be anxious about and then it goes away. I’m hoping for the day I don’t wake up with that feeling any more but having spent a number of years in constant fight or flight mode and coping with chronic stress, that may be a way off yet.
  • I’m lonely. Because socialising is a huge trigger for me and also because I don’t have many friends and have decided to take a break from dating, I haven’t been out in four weeks. That is a lot of Netflix. Am going to see if I can make a plan to do something with someone next weekend, even if it’s just a coffee or lunch. Also now my back is better I will look into fitness classes or similar to sign up to as a way to increase my chances of meeting new sober friends.
  • My negative self talk is more manageable. I’m finding it easier to distance myself from that horrible voice in my head. A couple of times this last week I’ve even told it to shut the fuck up. This is huge progress.
  • Ideas are coming. I had an idea for a blog post the other day for my work website, and various other creative ideas are popping into my brain here and there.
  • Generally more positive in outlook. I’m feeling more positive generally, more open to the idea of trying new things, taking risks and getting out of my comfort zone. When shit happens I’m feeling more able to take it in my stride and not catastrophise the crap out of it as I usually do.
  • My skin is amazing. Go sobriety! Maybe I will save a few bucks on foundation!

I’m sure there is more to follow, this is only the beginning. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

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.