Hellooo Drybird!

Great to see you keeping on keeping on! Day 282 here and still alcohol-free and so happy about it!

Hope you are well and similarly enjoying things. Best new find is biscuit flavour Yorkshire Tea. Amazing!

Signing in lovely YES people, with my cup of green jasmine tea

Thanks for the shiny new thread drybird

60 days for me tomorrow and feeling good.

Thanks for the new thread @Drybird2020!

< hops aboard and sticks the kettle on >

@Hangingover I pm’d you with some SW swimming/surf tips:-)

Checking in 😀

Day 280 for me!
I'm just back from a wedding abroad, my first sober wedding ever, went very well actually!

Gettin up fresh in the morning when everyone else is nursing one of the worst hangover of their lives feels glorious.

Look how busy the new thread is? You guys get up way too early .

@Drybird2020, thank you so much and (ahem) love the title - great thought that we will be marching into Christmas together, with our kettles on and our stockings hung up in a row
@FastFood - just the best - I'm even more of a morning person now I am AF, I suspect its probably quite annoying...
I'm with @Breathmiller and @Drybird on the beverages - Lady Grey or a decent cup of coffee for me, please

I'm day 15. It would be 23 were it not for the pressure of having to keep MIL company with a bottle of red she 'really only bought because we were coming'. I haven't got much of a depraved history to boast. I just got concerned that I regularly exceed weekly limits. How does any red wine lover keep under 14 a week? If a good bottle is open, I want to drink about half. Oh and there's the crisps. My weight spiked during lockdown. I've since lost 3lb which is not really newsworthy I know but it can only be attributed to the drink/crisp habit.
In truth I would prefer to be a moderate drinker and I have cut down and done dry sprints before. I think I've finally put that one to bed. I haven't read the Alan Carr book as I understand it is very repetitive and I just want to get the pointers. Instead I listened to a podcast of two Aussie guys summing it up and describing their take on it. What resonated with me was the assertion that when drinking is part if your life, you're either going to be drinking and feeling guilty or not drinking and feeling deprived. That is so true. Yes I can have AF evenings (lots), but there's a twinge isn't there. 'Aren't I being good, doing without'. Only when staying completely AF does that sense of denial evaporate. So put the kettle on ladies, mines a Jasmine Rose.

Welcome @WorriedMutha! For me it is also true that only when I am totally AF, I do not feel deprived! It’s a great feeling! Well done on your 15 days!

I agree @WorriedMutha, that gnawing feeling of missing out every time I had a dry night and the obsessive keeping track of units - mentally it is SO freeing to be completely AF, the choice made once and then that is it.
It took me a while to get to the point of not thinking about it but I've realised recently that more and more the thought of drinking is no longer crossing my mind - such a relief

Much in the same way I feel obligated to try thi has like chai lattes ( not envy) now and then because everyone else seems to like them, inspired by you lot I've done my once a month run to check if it's still awful. It is. My joints just can't handle it. Although I managed 6km in 40 minutes . Unfortunately for at least 1km of that I was being chased by a flock of really pissed off seagulls. They were following me and cawwwwing really loudly, so much so passers-by were staring obviously wondering if I had sprats in my pocket. I thought I'd just jogged by a nest and temporarily spooked them or something but the fuckers kept following me and swooping down it was soooo scary and embarrassing. Came home in a sweaty mess feeling emotionally exhausted and put a pie in the oven. Hurrumph.

Was that a seagull pie @Hangingover?

Day 280 for me!

Nice job Fast food !

WorriedMutha funny you mention the Alan Carr book being repetitive...Annie Grace says at the beginning of This Naked Mind that her book is deliberately repetitive...I wonder if that's part of why it works? 15 days is so great! That for me was when things started to feel clearer.

I haven't got much of a depraved history to boast

That's a good thing! People in pubs only ever tell the stories that make them sound wild and edgy and oh so hilarious but they don't mention the times you got yourself beaten up or started a fight with a bouncer or wet yourself on the nightbus not speaking from experience obviously

@WorriedMutha The whole point about the Allan Carr book is that is is repetitive. It's talking to your subconscious. We don't really just need "pointers" about how to stop drinking, or it would be easy!

I listened to it as an audiobook - I highly recommend doing that.

@Hangingover - the Annie Grace book is basically a redo of Allan Carr's idea. I don't know how she gets away with it, frankly! She even quotes him!

Was that a seagull pie Hangingover

Sadly that would go against my principles but I was having some very bloody unvegan thoughts about them at the time I can tell you

Hello, can I join?

I’m on day 54 AF. It’s very freeing, isn’t it?

Hi to everyone
I totally get the whole lack of the bloody boring conversation with myself every day. "Should i have a drink tonight? Hmm..shouldn't really, I overdid it at the weekend and I had some last night when I said I wouldn't. I'm supposed to be cutting down. Well, one won't hurt. Ach, I deserve it tonight. Ahhh no, I don't deserve it tonight ...." on and an ad infinitum.

It is so freeing not to have any of that going on in my head.

I've also started doing it with food too. I have had an ED my whole life and been very similar to the Freddie Flintoff programme I watched the other night. But at the start of this year I said no more diets. No more feast or famine. No more obsessively thinking of the "should i shouldn't I mentality." No more thinking of my weight, good food or bad food or whether I deserve food that day or not. It's the same mentality and it has been exhausting. I have since found out it's called intuitive eating but I haven't followed any plan. The only 'rules' if you can call them that are I have breakfast, lunch and dinner (if I am hungry enough for them or want them) I eat when I'm hungry roughly 3 times a day. I don't deny anything. I exercise for the joy of it rather than a punishing regime to counter the food I've taken. I basically have stopped the massive dialogue within myself and started talking to myself more kindly. I see so many links to how I feel about food as alcohol.

That sounds like really good progress Breathmiller

I hope I'm not being complacent and perhaps I should take my medicine and read Alan Carr or Annie Grace. However, I'm just finding it so easy not to drink. What's wrong with me. The crunch point before was the curling up on the sofa with a glass of wine and a bit of Netflix. Scratch the wine and the evening is just the same. Before, I always felt I had to have that conversation in my head as to whether I should give it a miss for tonight or have just one. Now, it just isn't on the radar.
This thread came up in active conversations this morning and I thought, oh hello, I'll join that and keep the momentum going before Christmas. It will help me spot the dangers with the benefit of your experience.
I'm sort of hyper alert to triggers now. How did I get from social drinking to regular home drinking. I'm a bit of a cliche I think. I bought into the whole mum's wine time thing. Relax, unwind, have a drink, you deserve it. It's so seductive. I followed up on a Nectar offer to a wine club and after the first delicious case, they swamp you with offers so the rack is always groaning with moreish good reds.
I'm also now attuned to spotting how alcohol is portrayed in the media and TV drama. It's always there as a comfort, a celebratory marker, a sharing of an intimacy. Mostly it is portrayed in a positive light. We recently watched some old episodes of the Hustle. It was fun and funny and suited our teenage household. In the main part, the grifters invariably held all meetings in a friendly bar and having pulled off a successful con, I lost count of how many episodes closed with the clink of Champagne glasses and happy smiley faces. The messaging is subtle and subliminal and we were watching this with teens.
I guess I will have to toughen up as the Christmas messaging will be along soon to tell us that Christmas isn't complete without mulled wine, Champagne, a little glass of Sherry for Santa and an after dinner Port.
Maybe I will be needing some inspiring reading after all.

Christmas messaging will be along soon to tell us that Christmas isn't complete without mulled wine, Champagne, a little glass of Sherry for Santa and an after dinner Port

The sad irony of that is that, while it's portrayed as being joyful and celebratory, many people drink themselves stupid to make Christmas not miserable