Dry Another Day - Dry January and Beyond!

[wellitywellness]

We are officially at thread #3!

Thanks @wellitywellness !

Just thought I'd come along early to bag one of the best seats!

Thank you @wellitywellness I continue to love these threads. Half term holiday hasn't been too successful, but back on it when home!

Ps. Love the pun!

Checking in.

I’m here!

Also checking in. Thanks for a new thread to see how we all wend our dry/damp way.

Some more angsting on abstinence from me today...

https://wellitywellness.com/2024/02/23/dry-day-54-abstinence-part-2/

Are we on here now or filling the old thread?
Anyway, HT has not done my wine habit any good at all! Back on track after the weekend.
I'm in awe of those who have chosen to stay dry. I still have no desire to stop, but moderation must be maintained

Interesting thoughts @wellitywellness . I've reached similar conclusions. In my case I think I always knew that taking a break from alcohol wasn't the answer to everything, but it may have been a necessary precondition to moving forward, in the sense that I needed to know that while I have problems, enslavement to alcohol isn't one of them. Having commenced my current damp regime, I'm also convinced that the 2.4 units of Pinot Noir I had last night are in no way preventing me from being living my best life today - I have a whole range of neuroses which are quite capable of accomplishing that on their own. (I had to look up Orthorexia btw, but I think I probably have that too!)

I've noticed a new side effect from drinking less... I'm more sensitive to caffeine. I still love coffee, but I have less of it and switch to herbal teas earlier in the day. I suspect I needed it to wake myself up when I was drinking too much alcohol the night before, even though I never got hangovers as such.

Interesting @Neptunium93 ! I'd never drawn the connection, and went more or less virtually caffeine free last year. Not in a hurry to re-introduce it - accidentally had a pretty strong coffee the other week (as in forgot to order decaff when out), and couldn't sleep half the night. Past me would have sunk several in a day and not been bothered - but maybe that was as a result of the red wine of an evening too...

Today, my musings turn to moderation...

https://wellitywellness.com/2024/02/24/dry-day-55-musings-on-moderation/

Thanks @wellitywellness . When you say 3 drinks on 3 nights, do you mean units or glasses? I'm gravitating towards 3x4 as an upper limit for now, meaning 3 units or less on 4 nights per week, though I can see that increasing slightly to, say, 3x5 or 4x4 depending on what's going on.

On moderation, I think one of the things that has hampered me in the past is that in my mind, Fridays and Saturdays are somehow special, and drinking is therefore an ingrained habit, while dry nights are associated with boring weekdays. The subtext is that drinking is good / fun, while not drinking is a penance. But with the array of great AF options, there's no reason why that has to be the case. I can celebrate or enjoy a meal in a restaurant on a weekend without alcohol, or reward myself with wine on a Monday evening if I choose to. I think, by allowing myself to drink / not drink on any night, it somehow takes the pressure off, in the same way that having wine in the house during DJ made me more relaxed about avoiding it. But the key thing is that I don't think I could have achieved that mindset without taking a break from it.

Anyway last night was dry and this evening will probably be somewhat damp, much like the weather!

I was thinking 3 x small glasses of wine (which I'd likely pour into two big ones!) equal just over half a bottle - so in total a bottle and a half a week...

Yes, I hate drinking out of a small glass - would much rather a small amount in a big glass that I can swirl around and sniff to enhance the pleasure 😊

Just a word of warning... don't underestimate how low your tolerance will be after abstaining for this amount of time. I had planned to drink 4 units per session (just under half a bottle) at one point, but couldn't have managed it. It's a balance between planning how I'm going to drink, and seeing how I react to it and adjusting accordingly.

Another dry Friday and Saturday here.

Two more dry days for me in the bag.

Going to keep it that way.

I’m on a 18 day streak here, I’m wondering if I can do forty this time. I did 30 in jan then had a couple of drinks over the first weekend of Feb, then was unwell which tbf has helped keep me af. So I’m sort of doing dry lent earlier. Giving my liver the rest is my main motivation, and I also worry that as soon as drinking becomes in some way habitual again then it’s a slippy slope. I’ve definitely realised I was a habitual drinker more than anything else as I’ve not had any problems not drinking, it’s just been the habit of rewarding myself for a long day (or anything!) picking up a nice glass!

Iwas up early with a sick dog and saw your thread, wow you guys are still going! I was briefly on the jan thread but couldn't keep up. I didn't manage DJ, and that surprised me and as a result has given me a great deal to think about. I'm interested to hear how you're thinking about moderating. Out of the last 20ish days I've drunk on two occasions, both were social. Unfortunately i slept very well both those nights. I'm a life long insomniac and i know I've used alcohol strategically at times. And during the tubes between these two occassions I've experienced some low level dead or anxiety and low mood, so it's let me know there's more dependency than I wanted to admit. I don't have a plan going forward. I'm just thinking my way through it day by day for now, but when it gets tough i think about how glad I'll feel in the morning if i don't drink tonight.

Good morning! I think I may have been on an earlier thread. (I've been on a few under one name or another!). I would like to pop in again if I may.

I managed 12 days and then went back to drinking. I actually hate drinking and hate how I feel but I use it as a boredom crusher and anxiety controller. I have just put another goal in my Try Dry App and want to reach 3 days from today. I start a new job tomorrow and really don't want to start by being sluggish and off top form.

Sundays are a hard day for me and DH will be away all day as well. So I will try and drag the Dcs out for a walk and hamburger / milkshake lunch. Anywhere I can drive to.

Hello all, I was a DJer and have since been moderating fairly successfully. I've been tracking my drinks on the app and it's really helped. If I had alcohol every time the occasion called for it I'd be back up to where I was last year, and I don't want that.

I no longer have a drink just because it's Friday night.

I would always have beers while watching the rugby in the pub but I drank zero beers yesterday because I have a night out tonight and I wanted to "save" my units for that.

I do still struggle with abstinence / moderation but am definitely in a healthier place. Here's my February so far:

“I also worry that as soon as drinking becomes in some way habitual again then it’s a slippy slope. I’ve definitely realised I was a habitual drinker more than anything else as I’ve not had any problems not drinking, it’s just been the habit”

That’s exactly where I am too.

Waking up on Sunday morning and feeling absolutely fine is just the Best Thing Ever. Hating how I felt on Sundays is something I’d been dealing with and beating myself up about for years.

It feels liberating to be free of that at last.

Ending up drinking several evenings a week as a habit was something that crept up on me / escalated after I’d gone AF for three months one year (dry Jan)and then two another year (dry July).

@dudsville @SoberIsTheNew50 @disappearingfish

Welcome to the thread.

Personally I found the predecessor threads to be a really helpful non-judgmental space for thinking through my own individual relationship with booze, and my drinking habits and triggers, and what worked for me in terms of preventive steps (such as drinking a big glass of water before a meal to make sure I didn’t respond to dehydration by reaching for the wine).

Hopefully this thread can help you find out what works for you too.

By the way, looks like you went out for a lovely meal on Valentines disappearing! 😉👍

That’s really interesting @DJ24 , so you found in the past that periods of abstinence actually made things harder afterwards? Was that because you felt you’d done it or proved something to yourself so gave yourself a free pass essentially to enjoy it again?

This is what I’m a bit worried about as I can see myself doing the same. Did it happen without you realising? I’ve actually bought myself a journal from Head Plan (they were on dragons den) to try to practise some accountability. It’s interesting that even now I’m looking at Feb 7 (when I probably had a bit less than half a bottle of wine) as an annoyance in my track record as without it I would be on 20 days already … and I felt so rubbish the next day that it really wasn’t worth it!!

Hi all, glad people are finding the thread and welcome to the (sober, or at least distinctly moderate) party!

Some other people's wise words on moderation today:

https://wellitywellness.com/2024/02/25/dry-day-56-more-on-moderation/

@PoppyAndParsnip

What happened was: I was trying to get the Saturday evening habit under control. I did dry July, and might have extended it (it’s a while back so I’m a bit hazy). Then, end August, we went on holiday and we ended up drinking a bottle of wine between us every single night. I realised I’d drunk as much in that week as I would have done in two months of Saturday night only. I was annoyed with myself - what’s the point going AF and then bingeing the same amount over a week.

The escalation up to several nights a week occurred over a period of months, might have been a couple of years.

I can’t say that the escalation was caused by attempting to go AF. I’d say it was more to do with unhappiness and loneliness, plus being from a family where one set of relatives have always been very regular drinkers so I suspect there’s a genetic element (similar to how having sugary things makes me want more of them, even though I don’t have a sweet tooth). And also having got sort of psychologically stuck where it felt like there were so many things in my life I need to fix, I couldn’t get started on even one of them.

But they key thing for me now is: that prior experience however many years back has made me conscious that going AF for a period isn’t a magic solution, for me anyway. And I need ongoing mechanisms to keep myself on track.

For me, this thread and the discussions here is one of those mechanisms.