The Freedom Thread; for those embracing a life without alcohol.

[Drybird2020]

Welcome to the 7th thread in this series, which has helped me and many others find the way to a life free of and free from alcohol.

Anyone is welcome! Newbies, you will find emotional support, tips for handling cravings, strategies for handling social occasions and plenty of first-hand experiences to mirror your own. An alcohol problem makes you feel lonely and isolated, but you are not alone.

Please be aware that this is an abstinence thread – it can be difficult and triggering in the early stages to be around alcohol related chat (however, it might help to know that one of the gifts of long-term sobriety is not being at all bothered by people drinking or talking about drinking in your presence!) So, if you feel that moderation is for you, or if you feel you need to cut down before stopping, there are other threads in Alcohol Support that can help, or you can start one for the specific support you need.

Oldies, come and share milestones, enjoy the chat, and pay forward the kindness and non-judgemental support we have all benefitted from. And when you have the time, do yourselves a favour by finding where you started and reading through all your posts, it will show you how far you have come and what you have achieved! (I'll add links to previous threads in my next post).

My toolbox:

• This thread
• The original Braves Babes thread, started by JesusWhatNext - I've re-

read this a couple of times to strengthen my resolve, especially the hard hitting advice from a poster called MIFLAW.

• AF drinks
• Quit Lit
• Early nights - fresh sheets - nice shower gel, bubble baths...lots more

pampering

• Eating well
• Lots of exercise and fresh air
• Meditating
• Knitting (keeps hands busy in the evenings)
• Doing something - anything - cleaning, going for walk - anything

between 6.00 p.m. and 7.00 p.m. to distract myself at my trigger time.

• Watching hard hitting stuff on YouTube about liver damage, etc., (I

needed to do this after the first month, when the wine witch was trying to convince me that I was a drama lama, I didn't have a problem, I could so easily moderate).

• Putting the money saved from no longer sponsoring Prosecco into a

jar and treating myself to a lovely posh candle/bit of good make up every weekend.

• Most important one of all - one day at a time - not projecting.

Soph

Lol breathmiller 'hangover in a glass' that's it exactly. You're weekend sounds fab!
As drybird says too- for me it was the anticipation of the first drink and after the first few mouthfuls that was it, it was rubbish really but felt I had to keep going once it was open.

I think it's just a new way of life now that I have. It's like a shell has been peeled off and the real me is coming out- yes full of general ups and downs but freer and less 'thinking' and anticipating somehow. Not sure that makes sense! I think what I mean is that even just small things I wouldn't have noticed before I'm noticing and they give me pleasure? Like life feels less complicated even in the midst of things happening like DH having been very ill etc.
StayingVigilant I wouldn't describe it as proper friendships as such I'm afraid - just people I've got to know a little bit now through dc hobby, but I get what you mean about wanting to have friends that just don't drink- I do too and I find it hard enough to make friends at the best of times. I'm sorry about your mother. Best ignored and withdrawn from!

My toolbox was:
Exercise- not loads but just walking and then eventually running. A bit of couch 2 5k after a while just to give me a structure but gave up with that and just recorded walks on Strava.
Pink nosecco
'Noticing stuff' like better sleep (gradually!); nature when I went out walking; the sense of having more 'time'; noticing I could do more with the dc and then life just started taking over I guess.
For me it wasn't about constantly thinking about alcohol or having to constantly think about having to distract myself from thinking about it but more I just focused on what I was noticing and doing generally that was positive, not giving myself a hard time and just 'being' and keeping going with a routine of exercise etc.
That sounds a bit wishy washy doesn't it But it's a mindset shift that happens over time I think, but you need to be open to that happening and if you are constantly thinking about drinking and how not to drink you're not really giving yourself brain space for your mindset to grow and change as you're not focusing or noticing other stuff in your life, or allowing yourself to do so.

Oh yes and this thread, and the positivity of others on it talking about what they were doing differently now

When I started the first of these threads I posted every day, in a pact with myself. It kept me accountable and was one of the things that kept me going (still does!) I would definitely not want to have to come and tell you all that I had a drink.

Thank you. I will be screen shotting the suggestions. There's a good few that hadn't even crossed my mind.

I've got into making shrubs, my own mocktails using unusual bitters, and kombucha. I can make unusual ones to suit my own tastes, and it's lovely drinking something that not only isn't bad for you but is actively good for you.

I've just had a glass of my latest kombucha - pineapple and chilli. It's delicious! I've also bought dried hops, which make a great kombucha which owes a lot to beer.

I've never heard of kombucha. I just had a look, I will get a box when I get paid this month. Thanks!

@CardiganOfDoom would you consider sharing your kombucha making secrets? I have a rather expensive habit these days.

@DontBiteTheBoobThatFeedsYou well done for dusting yourself off.

I literally had no (healthy) coping mechanisms when I quit drinking, as some of the old hands might remember I was a wreck🤣😅

Now I have a decent sized toolbox, it contains:

• This thread! (I don’t post as much as I used to but to begin with I posted almost daily)
• Running! I started off gently huffing and puffing my way through very slow 5kms but now I have several marathons under my belt. Running keeps me sane
• Alcohol free beer
• Open water swimming
• Treating myself at milestones (mostly clothes and beauty stuff)

And some unhealthy ones of course🤣

• Good quality chocolate
• Great coffee
• Takeaways😳

Everyone’s Toolbox will be different (for example yoga benefits many but it just isn’t for me) but knowing what works for you is essential.

In my toolbox is I've moved the furniture in my room and have added to it, including a beautiful chest of drawers with a white linen granny type mat where I have my evening candle on it, my perfume and just trying for a bedroom that's a retreat into old world/hotel comfort. It is so far from it right now (the curtains are broken to I have to physcially hang them back up every damn day for six months now!) but it's just that I've gotten in the habit of laying out my PJs, my new slippers and setting out my skincare routine each night. I even bought a pile of facecloths I roll up in a basket for heating up to double clease. WHO AM I NOW????

Knitting. I make beautiful things which helps, I can boast here cos I'm anon but I made a blanket you could see selling for 150 quid using 15 quid worth of wool!!

I make photobooks sometimes. I do some strength training. I've done a coupe of courses online food/personal development related.

How inspiring cartooner!

Thank you for the tool box inspo.
I'm really pleased to have this in my Arsenal.

Is anyone else secretly really pleased they don't drink/on their way to abstinence because they woke up with zero hangover unlike a lot of England today?

Another thing I kept thinking was how can any of them stay awake and/or remember the match? If I had started in the middle of the day I'd be fast asleep by 6pm, no way would I be able to stay up until 11pm to see the end of the match.

Gosh looking at the scenes around the stadium was pretty awful I too thought of the hangovers today. I don't live in UK but can almost hear the fizz of pain relief tablets today! Loads seemed to be drinking all day long.

dontbite

A toolbox is great. So many good ideas here and you will find your own too. There is a whole thread where this was a theme, maybe two threads ago? Or just the last one? I can't remember. It's worth a read back though.

The main thing is that you need a full to bursting toolbox because each job needs a different tool depending on what you need at the time.

So, one of my favourites is to have a long bath. I find it comforting. But, if I was out in a restaurant or with friends and was struggling that would obviously not be any good.

I find it best to think, what is it I'm looking for here? What do I feel I'm missing out on? So, one of the things I hated the thought of was not using nice glasses. I love my 'wine' glasses. I love my 'champagne' flutes. So I use them. We had a big conversation a few threads ago about reclaiming the wine glass. I have tumblers and ordinary glasses during the day for tap water but I have sparkling water in my wine glass in the evening. It feels a treat. And now the association is gone. They are my sparkling water glasses. I have nosecco in my flutes on an occasion. I also drink AF cider out a bottle. Which is funny as I never really liked cider. Bundaburg gibger beer out of a bottle gives me that beer bottle feeling.

If, i feel I am missing out on a Friday night when others are drinking I have an AF drink. Or something fancy in a nice, grown up glass. I had AF gin, tonic and home made elderflower cordial last night. I usually only need AF drinks on a Friday maybe a Saturday so it's good to keep them as a treat. But I am on holiday for a few weeks so will have it more often probably.

Food. So, not one of the healthiest ones, but especially at the beginning I think you can just use treat food to get you through if its your thing. You can always lessen it later on. I tend to still use crisps and sweets on a Friday night if I need it. I am working on it being better though, and it is much more so than 11 months ago when I started.

I do a lot of yoga and meditate but I understand it's not for everyone. But find something you can enjoy that's physical - run, walk, swim or yoga etc. And something calming and meditative like - craft? Draw? Write? Read?

Treat yourself. The money you save can be used to save or treat yourself to other things you'd maybe think twice about. Dh and were swimming in the pool at the hotel we were at and mentioned we would go swimming more often if we had a nice hotel pool nearby. Well, we do. But it costs. Them I reminded him that I would think nothing of buying £10 bottles of wine and the rest. I may as well use that money for something good for me instead.

I went a bit crazy at the supermarket in lockdown when I realised how much I wasn't buying on booze and would treat myself to clothes instead. Or a nice candle or something for the house. Normally I wouldn't add these to my trolly. But, now? Why not? Might only be a £10 top but it's better for me than a £10 bottle of wine.

I also liked having a star chart (im sure i am 5 sometimes) . I added a little gold start to my phone diary every day. It gave me such a great boost. And you don't want to break your streak. There are apps that do the same.

So, have a huuuuge toolbox full of things that you can do regularly to top up your feel good factor genaerlly in life and also have lots of 'in crisis' tools to bring out there and then to address the need that is at the forefront.

And, sometimes, there just isn't anything. And in these times, you just have to get through them. Throw everything you have at them. But sometimes all you need to do is ride it out. It's just a thought. You don't need to act on it. It WILL pass.

And come on here when they come along. It does help.

Kombucha - ideally you need to equip yourself with a 2l glass jar, a muslin cover for the jar, two swing-top bottles, and the SCOBY itself, which will come with some starter tea.

First you make the kombucha base. Boil 2l of chlorine-free water in a large pan. (I have a distiller for my iron which I used to make distilled water, but boiling for 15 mins will also remove the chlorine - make sure to boil more water to allow for evaporation.)

Once at a rolling boil, add about 130 - 160g of white sugar. (The recipe is for the higher amount, I'm trying less in my current batch.) Once it has dissolved, add about 15g of loose-leaf tea, take the pan off the heat and leave to infuse for 4-8 minutes, depending on how strong you like it.

Black tea is probably best for your first few brews as the SCOBY prefers it, and the SCOBY will need to recover a bit from being packaged and sent to you. After a while you can use white tea, green tea, or a mix.

Now strain the liquid from the tea into your sterilised glass jar, removing the tea leaves. Make sure to leave enough room for the SCOBY and its liquid. Leave to cool to room temperature - you can use the fridge to speed it up, but don't over cool it. Once at room temperature, add the SCOBY and its tea, then cover the jar with the muslin. Leave somewhere at room temperature and out of direct sunlight for at least 2 weeks. You can taste the kombucha to see if it is done - over time it gets more vinegary and less sweet. Some people leave it up to 30 days.

Once your base is done, strain the tea into a jug and set the SCOBY and about 125-150ml of liquid aside ready for your next batch. Bottle your kombucha, adding flavourings to taste. If these flavourings are sweet, you will get quite a lot of bubbles and continuing fermentation, so vent the bottles every day! For my last brew, I added about 75ml of pineapple juice to each bottle, plus some sliced chillies and fresh pineapple. This one has been really lively, with all that extra sugar!

Once your kombucha is to your taste, put it in the fridge to slow the reaction, and drink.

I have this book by Louise Avery, which has lots of great recipe suggestions.

www.amazon.co.uk/Kombucha-Healthy-recipes-naturally-fermented/dp/1788790367?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Booking a massage or facial with money saved is also good.

I heard something horrifying today.

If a woman drinks 3 glasses of wine per week she raises her chance of breast cancer by 15%. And every glass after that it raises by 10%.

I watched my best friend die of breast cancer, she was just 31.

I had no idea alcohol had that much of an effect on breast cancer. I'm fucking horrified.

Horrified that my drinking could cause my own children to watch me die of breast cancer in the same way I watched my friend dying.

If I never drink again, when do my chances of breast cancer go back to normal?
A week? A month? A year?

Hang on it must go down relatively quickly otherwise all drinking women with breasts would have 100% chance of breast cancer if it just kept racking up with each drink and never decreasing.

Yet just now I read that it can take 5+ years for the risk to decrease.

@DontBiteTheBoobThatFeedsYou yeah those stats can’t be correct as that way we would all be 105% dead after 10 years🤣

Still, drinking does raise the chance of some cancers sadly, so it’s a good reason to quit. And I’m really sorry about your friend, how heart breaking😢

This link presents the data in a better way.

breastcancernow.org/information-support/have-i-got-breast-cancer/breast-cancer-causes/alcohol-breast-cancer-risk

Do any of you have sober heros/inspiration? Apart from the celebs list... is there anyone that you think, fair play. I find the people that inspire me are those who just don't and it's not even part of their identity really. There's a blog/chef I've followed for years and she mentioned once I don't drink so I love a warm chai tea or something like that in a blog post and I thought that's great. She lives such a lovely rich fulfilling life and simply doesn't drink. Now I know it's not cos of a problem as she did mention adding a tiny splash of rum to a drink on holidays once but you get the jist. I like her recipes, the drink part is just incidental that I rememer it. Here's a link www.homegrown-kitchen.co.nz/

Is it okay if I join in here? After a horrible night on Friday I've decided to quit (trying 100 days to start with.) I don't drink that much all the time - if it's there I'll drink it, and if it's not I don't, but what has really started to worry me is the way that once I start I can't stop - what was supposed to be a two hour visit last week became 12 and I didn't leave till half 3 am. I made a total idiot of myself with people who are both neighbours and professional contacts, and spent three days feeling like death - and looking back over the last few years I have a lot of memories like this. I make rules for myself eg limiting how many I'll have but never keep to them, know I won't keep to them, and I hate how out of control it makes me feel. I think it's partly because I'm a very shy and self critical person normally so drinking feels like a strait jacket being taken off sometimes, but I don't want to rely on it for socialising - and I always go too far anyway and end up feeling so ashamed and hating myself. My son saw me throw up and said he was scared and I felt absolutely horrible. I think part of it is I need to work on why I feel so miserable so much of the time and why drinking feels like such a break from that - have always struggled with mental health. I need to work out how to get happier but I have no idea how to do that :-(

Hi, I hope ye don't mind me joining in on the thread. I'm here up at 4.30am, trying to think of my best way to kick this habit. Every night I say I won't have anything but by 6 o clock it's like a switch goes off nd I need a glass of wine while cooking, sipping away then for the evening and then have a bottle of wine gone before i even notice! I'm sick of waking up with a groggy head! At the minute, I'm saying definitely tomorrow night, !!! Staring now, I have to ! Hopefully I will be able to!! Fingers crossed! Going to give it a go ! It's a hectic house with 3 smallies nd I always feel like I deserve a glass, but i just think it's making me more stressed!!!!

Welcome callybrate and keeptrying

All sounds familiar. This is a great set of threads and people who have felt exactly like you describe. If we can do it so can you.

One day at a time. Just for today you won't drink. One hour even.

It can be useful to read back this andthe previous threads , there is so much valuable advice.

And post as much as you want. There's usually someone bobbing about at the usual witching hours to support you through.

I know it feels an impossible task right now, but honestly, if I can so it so can you. That thought helped me at the beginning. "I'm not different to any of these other people who have knocked it on the head. If they can do it, so can I"

Remind yourself often why you're doing this and think about everything you will gain. For me , the headspace not to think about 'will I wont I?' constantly is the winner. It's so freeing.

Good luck.