Dependent Drinkers and Alcoholics (recovering or active) Support Thread

[BrassicMonkey]

The last thread will close soon, but I want this one to be about everybody, not just me. So Hidesit, Earlgrey, SoSo and anyone else that needs support please post and keep me company.

I've lapsed again tonight, which is a shame as I hoped I'd be able to start this off on a postive note.

Link to the last thread.

Morning teasle. How are you doing today guys?

Hello everyone

Thank f*ck it's the weekend. I had a lovely lie in today and so now feel well rested.

Your recliners sound lovely Kokeshi. I love the smell of new leather. I've fallen in love with a leather sofa in DFS, but Ex-P thinks it looks 70's...ish, so I'm looking around again. I know what you mean about wanting to update everything though. It's a good thing that credit isn't an option because I could blow a lot of money this weekend.

Purple, I think debt problems are common amongst drinkers. Actually I think I was a compulsive spender long before I was a compulsive drinker, and the 2 problems piled on top of one another. We ended up in serious debt.

I don't think you'll be able to smoke at any meetings now because of the new regulations. I'd probably chain smoke if I was allowed and then I might be just about comfortable enough to share

I'm really pleased that you both had positive experiences last night. Keep going back

Hi guys. Hope your all having a great Saturday!
It's bloody cold out there so wrap up well.

Just wanted to say, that today is the first time in years that I have woken up on the weekend and not laid in bed all day. Can't remember the last time I cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast for me girls. If I had enough money today, I'd be taking them swimming...mebbe tomorrow when the benefit clears?

I got my loan approved from the DWP for christmas. (it's the only place I can get a loan lol) This is the last time I borrow. Hope I can get myself sober enough, so I can start saving up the beer money in an acct, for next Xmas.

I'm also glad I drifted into mumsnet and this thread...

Would I be ok in drinking Kaliber,The alcohol free beer? I know I'm gonna start missing the taste of it.

Personally, I would say 'no'.

Brassic, I think all compulsive behaviours come from the same roots. You'll find many people have multiple addictions/compulsions rather than just the one. Addictions to gambling, sex, drugs, shopping, spending, stealing, and food are all really similar in their pathology. It's also important to actually find a solution because if we just say give up booze, there's always the chance we'll transfer the addiction/compulsion to something else.

I've always been a kind of "all or nothing" type of personality, and I've never smoked, but I know if I took it up I'd be one of those chain smokers. The root of it is again not being able to deal with your emotions properly - I guess for a lot of us we weren't taught this by our own parents - and so we look for ways to change how we feel. In the end though all the stuff we've tried to suppress and not deal with is still there, lurking at the back of our minds and affecting everything we do. Like a big ball and chain.

Guys who went to the meetings last night, it's important you keep talking about your feelings at the moment, I know you may be in a bit of turmoil with the whole thing. Let us help you through it. You can say anything you want, doesn't have to be all positives!

PurpleOne can you email me on k0keshi at hotmail dot com? I wanted to talk with you about something but it may be a bit too personal for the boards. Just some thoughts I have? I'll be out for the rest of day (and evening) but will reply as soon as I get back.

Oh it's NOT a good idea to drink Kaliber. You need to break all associations with drink in the early days because it might give you a taste for the real thing. I've personally known people who've done this and it's caused them to relapse badly. It's just one step away from drink really. Anyway, would you really miss the taste? Do you actually notice it? Or do you just get it down you as quick as possible for the effect? I know for me it's definitely the latter!

For the reasons Kokeshi listed!

Hi to everyone else.

Purple are you feeling emotional today? I am.almost like in a surreal world today-like yesterday never happened...I'm ok -no cravings-yet-just feeling wierd.

Is this normal?

Not so much emotional gfc, but really really anxious as it's getting dark outside.
That's why I asked about the Kaliber.

Went out earlier on and I bought a little notebook with fancy paper, and a really nice fountain pen. Used to be really creative with words and loved to write and read, before the drink took hold. Going to try a put a few words down later.

I don't feel weird. Just anxious and I'm really cold, yet the heating is on full blast?

Tks for the email kokeshi. I will drop you a line later x x

gfc... my email is carolkenton at hotmail dot com

drop me a line if you fancy it...tonight is going to be hard. am a nightime drinker. drank 2 cups of tea the the meeting, came home and demolished a whole litre box of tomato juice

Hi guys. If you feel like a drink tonight, come on here and post about it. Tell us about how you're feeling at that moment and try to identify what you were thinking about previously. We have to try really hard to break these negative automatic thoughts in the beginning. Like "I'm worthless", or " I'm fat" or "I'm a bad mother". Or negative things htat other people have said to us.

If we watch how we think, I mean if we become mindful of how our brain works, then we can figure out how we end up drinking. If we are more aware of ourselves and our behaviour patterns, it's easier not to drink for today, Identify what's bugging you, and instead of drinking phone someone, text, post here, write an email. Get it out of your head before you drink on it.

I'm sure you'll be feeling all sorts of things and that's totally normal. Just keep remembering what you heard last night. It's just for today, right?

PurpleOne. If you like drinking at night, how about getting some sparkling mineral water? Asda and morrisons do a smart price version that's dead cheap and not bad. It will replace the bubbles you're missing! Anyway, tomato juice is really good for you, so don't worry about that. (unless of course it's in a bloody Mary )

OK, I just popped into say hi, off to another friend's for dinner tonight (we're all members of AA), so it will be a laugh. It did seems strange to me at first that people would want to get together to actually talk and eat and not drink.

Have a good night and keep busy.

You're doing really well.

Really annoyed at my mate who turned up here earlier and 'on the ponce' for money again.
She asked me if I had any alcohol in the house and produced a huge bottle of wine from her shopping bag......

Are you OK PurpleOne? Did you tell her you weren't drinking?

no im not ok

i cannot sleep. im cold, im sweating.. wrapped up in blankets all day, heating on...still cold. my hands and feet are frozen,. plus my mate taking the piss?

i did say no, though it was hard , as she left the wine bottle in my kitchen unattened while was tending to her boys.

she sent her boy up, knocked on my doorasking for money for her gas meter? not even a thanks when i gave her a quid. when m meter runs out its us who sit in the dark, with candles, batteries for radio and a flask for coffee and a wash in the morning~!]

have emailed you kokeshi,,,hope you had a great night? xx sleep well all

Oh PurpleOne, that sounds like withdrawal symptoms. PLease make sure you monitor these closely and if it's too bad, call the out of hours doctor and explain you're detoxing from alcohol and having a bad time. If they're worth their salt, they should tell you how to do it safely, or prescribe something to help out or possibly give you a sickline for work. Please don't play down your symptoms and be really honest about how much you drink.

The other thing we're told is to keep sober company because our drinking buddies don't like to see us getting sober. Can you just tell this pal you can't see her for a while?

I feel for you really. But it will pass. I checked my email account and I didn't have anything from you. It's a zero between the two "k"s... k0keshi at hotmail dot com. I'm looking forward to getting your mail and will reply tomorrow, I'm not firing on all cylinders at the mo and want to make sense! Take care and thinking of you.

Hi Purpleone. Just want to echo Kokeshi- withdrawals DO pass.
Wishing you well.
Well done for not having a drink last night. Just focus on yourself, and kids. Remember it will make a world of difference for them to have a sober mum.
Post on here, too. x

Hello PurpleOne, sorry you are finding the withdrawals so hard. I thought I'd find the 'well what do I drink now?' thing really difficult, as sitting at the pc of a night with a box of wine beside me was the habit of years. What I did was choose some nice soft drinks (not too sweet, and different varieties) so that became a treat in itself - I sort of transferred my cravings from alcohol to a new, fresh glass of something sparkling and soft, if that makes any sense. Also, I make icecubes, and getting up to refresh a glass with some ice makes it feel more of a treat. It strikes me as quite funny the way I now space out getting ice and looking forward to it the way I used to look forward to topping up my wine-glass - but IMO this 'transference' of pleasure, of little treats, of satisfying a craving, to something innocuous instead of alcohol is quite key.

Glad to see a few of you have made it to AA. It seems to really have turned some people's lives around, Brassic's for example. All kudos to you for having the guts to go - I never did and wish I'd only had the nerve to get help before I got ill.

As for the money side of things, I wince now when I think of how much of the family's money I wasted buying alcohol every week! It's really quite astonishing (and depressing) to think of how much I simply drank away over the years. I was buying a box or two of wine, plus a couple of bottles of brandy

Kokeshi, you're such a nice person. Oh, if only I'd had you to talk to you when I was such a mess and knew I should give up, but just couldn't get up the will!

Good luck for another dry day, everyone.

Morning all, nice to see you on the thread again Oenophile. I think it's great to have range of people's experiences with dealing with a drink problem and I always enjoy your posts for the wee insights into how you've done it.

PurpleOne, if it helps at all, the worst of the withdrawals would pass within 36 hours (they always told me the first 24 hours where the most dangerous for withdrawal complications like seizures). So if you're still hanging in there kid, it won't be too long before you feel physically well again. I liked Oenophile's suggestion about treating yourself with something nice. This kind of transference is healthy I think. Sobriety isn't at all about denying yourself or leading an ascetic life, it's about feeling comfortable in your own skin and achieving that serenity and contentment that eludes us when we're caught in the cycles of drinking.

Goingfrickincrazy, how are you feeling? When is your next meeting lined up for? I, for one, think it's important to try to get to as many meetings as you can in the early days, as it's so easy to fall back into our destructive behaviour patterns. Any associations we have with drink (be it environmental, geographical, chronological etc) are dangerous for us in the beginning. We have to be really vigilant of our thinking at these times. Like you say PurpleOne and Oenophile, you associate(d) being on the pc at night with drinking alcohol. We need to break these associations or create new healthy ones, and it's easier if we have ongoing support with that.

PurpleOne I have emailed you, just to check I have the right address, so when you confirm I'll reply to it.

I had a lovely night last night with our friend, thank you PurpleOne. He has 14 years sobriety and I find a lot of what he says really inspirational. He's always looking to improve himself and is a really positive person to be around. I guess I'm really lucky to be surrounded by such good recovery too.

Look forward to the posts from everyone. Come and let us know how your doing.

Purple, I think you did so well last night. That was a really cruel and unfair challenge to face so soon, but you did the right thing. You should be really proud of yourself.

Hopefully your old drinking pals will see that you are serious about living sober and they will give you the break you need. I was a solitary drinker so didn't have any of this to deal with.

I used to sit at my PC most nights with my drink too. When I stopped drinking I had to break that association but I couldn't stop using my PC completely because the support on here was a lifeline. I stopped using MSN and chat rooms and deleted any contacts that I used to speak to purely when I was drunk. I stayed off of my PC completely on Friday and Saturday nights as even MN, with all the 'oops I'm a bit pissed' posts felt dangerous. It was very easy for me to fall back into looking at drink as recreational and a release from the pressures of life - which of course, for me, it wasn't. It was a lifestyle and it was a bloody awful one too.

I was on here last night actually and started typing a post about how I really wanted a drink. Then I just deleted it, switched off and went to bed. I don't crave drink that much anymore but I still have to be vigilant,

Your symptoms do sounds like withdrawal. I didn't have them too badly, but I remember them being really unpleasant - like being semi-conscious all the time and having hot/cold sweats and shivers. Psychologically I was very paranoid and couldn't concentrate. I couldn't hold a conversation without having to ask the person what I'd been talking about and I'd keep forgetting what I was doing - going to the shop and having to really focus to remember the one thing that I'd gone there for. It does pass pretty quickly but please do contact a doctor if things get worse. Withdrawing from alcohol can be dangerous.

Oh and I second/third treating yourself to a nice non-alcoholic drink or whatever is your thing. I'm not too bothered about nice drinks really, but I treat myself to nice stationary and keep journals. I also buy something new for my kitchen every week when I go shopping. Nothing big, but it gives me a kick to have these indulgent items that I can only use if I'm sober. I would have just written a load of crap in a journal when I was drinking and we lived on takeaways so cooking equipment was a waste of time.

Kokeshi, glad you had a nice evening. It is inspirational to be around people who've turned 'recovery' into more than just returning to their self before the booze took over. I know of a middle aged business man in AA who was on the streets 20 years ago, when he walked into an AA meeting. I know there are loads of examples like this, but he intrigues me because he seems sooooo upmarket now. I'd love to know exactly what his path was after that first AA meeting.

Hi Oenophile Kokeshi is lovely isn?t she . When I first posted on here about my drinking she and Franny were a great support to me. Had I been sober I?d never have thought I would receive so much support and understanding without being judged on here, or anywhere really. I feel like I?ve made true friends through this thread which is such a contrast to how I felt a few months back, which was unworthy of friendship or trust or compassion.

Great post BrassicMonkey. Did you feel Ok in the end last night? I hope you feel you can still post if you struggle at times. I was thinking yesterday that this time of year really reminds me of drinking. I walked through M&S as there was a woman with a Santa hat offering samples of wine. Just for a split second I felt like my mind was balanced on a knife edge, I was taken aback at the speed my brain was racing ahead with the whole "I wonder what would happen" thing. It really shocked me actually the way it seemed just to come out of nowhere.

I didn't pursue it in my mind further than that (Relapses occurs in our heads way before we lift the drink, I've learned that much), it made me aware of how much the external environment can affect me - especially if I'm being lazy and coasting along without doing any work on myself. I really should tell my sponsor I'm back from Oz

Oh, I wanted to ask you about changing sponsors. I've heard a few 12 steppers say that they've just got new sponsors. Is it customary to change every once in a while, or is it because people move, drop out of AA or sponsoring, something else? I'm wondering really how you negotiate that kind of change. Next year I'm going to make it my priority to move on in AA, either by finding a sponsor or doing service. I'm worried about choosing the wrong person though, but I know other people that have made this mistake and have swapped and they seem to be alright.

I was fine last night, but thanks for asking. It's like what you were saying about not pursuing the train of thoughts. If I let myself weigh up my options and try to negotiate it's a relapse in the making. As I was posting, I thought 'why am I doing this when I could just switch off and go to bed'. So that's what I did and I was fine.

Just starting to post and thinking about why I was feeling that way was enough for me to understand my feelings. I was also a bit worried that I'd be making it out to the newcomers that sobriety is about constant craving and denying privileges and that's not true.

I had the exact same thing in Tesco's with the booze promotion. I don't know what the woman was offering but she was standing at the edge of the BWS aisle. I just said no thanks and then received my big pat on the back from ex-p. It's funny that I hadn't even thought of that until you mentioned it, and it didn't have any effect on me at that time - another time and it might have though. I know that knife edge feeling though - knowing that a little slip could have devastating consequences.

Honestly? One step at a time BM! Wait until you get one before you start thinking about changing her!! It made me smile because that's the sort of analysing I do and I know it's really obstructive...someone said something similar to me once so I'm just passing it along . I know it's a big step and it's just a case of putting your faith into someone whom you think has something you aspire to.

Sponsor/sponsee relationship is something that both of you have to feel comfortable with. It's fine not to "click" with someone, or sometimes your relationship has just run its course. I think when people are a long time sober they sometimes need to learn different things. All individual though.

I needed someone who could relate to the other things that are going on in my life so I was mindful this time of asking someone I'd built up a relationship with already. I admire her for her spirituality, which is something that I'm trying to define for myself as well.

You r relationships are constantly changing and evolving in AA, so it's not a life-time sentence when you choose a sponsor. Honestly, I think you would make a great sponsee so I don't think you'll have an issue with someone to agree to help you.

Hi Purple, how are you tonight? Hope you feeling better. XXX

PurpleOne, I've just got your email and replied to it and I'll be around for a while.

Monkeybutler, how are things with you? It's good to see you.

BrassicMonkey

If you have msn, my email is a page back

The pc thing struck a chord with me too.

I'm really sorry guys but I relapsed tonight. Couldn't face the coldness and shakes anymore. I'm gonna get to a meeting a lot sooner than I had planned. Found a copy of the serenity prayer just now, in my coat pocket...can't help seeing everyones faces that I met on Friday, and how dissapointed they'd be. Even here. Right here right now, I don't know why I did it. Anything I say would be an excuse in my book.

Going to make appt with doc tomorrow, get to work, spend time with dc's and make the point of not taking the first glass of whatever it is I fancy.
I did buy the sparkling mineral water. Made orange, added some flat lemonade with sparkling water, added ice..very nice drink so thanks for the recipe.
I have seven boxes of assorted fruit juices in my fridge...and I'm pissed.

Am going to feel so vile, vile Jeremy Kyle in the morning. Hasve to keep my sense of humour, it's about the only sane thing I have left. Once dd1 finds out, she will positively kill me.

G'night everyone. Hope your weekends have been good? x