The Braves Babes Battle Bus - NOT stopping at the pub!!

[Mouseface]

Hello

I'm Mouse. I've been sober for over a month now, thanks to the support of posters on this and previous threads.

No matter where you are up to with your sobriety, you'll find someone here who has been in your shoes!

Come and meet the other Brave Babes........

And here are the other threads for those who want to read them.

JWN's original thread (and the reason we are all here!)

Thread two

Thread three

Thread four

Thread five

Thread six

Starting and Maddogs just by being on here and posting you ARE helping. You are helping me.

Of course I post on here in response to things, but moistly I post on here for ME, because it helps ME to think about MY drinking and MY behaviour. Things that you and other post bring back memories of ways I have behaved long ago or more recently, risks I have taken, excuse I have made, the mad, illogical, crazy reasoning that I have done. And it strengthens MY determination to be sober today. If it helps anyone else, great. But I don't write to be clever or funny (although maybe that happens sometimes too, after all us Babes are a pretty terrific bunch), I write because it is the most honest I have ever been about my alcoholism.

And I NEED people here to stimulate that process, otherwise I'd just write a blog or a journal. So THANKYOU. I am still a selfish alcoholic, and you are helping me.

'mostly' not 'moistly', although I have been known to cry at posts on here

Bloomin heck - that was kind! I am feeling a little moist now too!!!!!

Now....work or shall I feed the washing machine instead? Ho hum

Maddogs

Really relate to the port story. My partner is a (normal) drinker. She is also very bad at throwing away out-of-date food. One day, I quizzed her on an open bottle of wine in the fridge. Wouldn't it be sour, I asked?

Of course not, she blustered. Wine doesn't go sour after a few days, does it?

How the fuck would I know? I replied. As if I ever left a half-bottle of wine in the fridge for a few days!

Even a BOX of the stuff didn't usually survive that long ...

starting as everyone else has said, please don't worry about giving back - everyone contributes to the thread whatever stage of their journey.

Like maddogs, I worry about it too (so you are not alone) but I think that every post here helps whether its saying that its hard, providing advice or support, or just a bit of morning smut!

You are doing so well so please don't make life harder by worrying about here!

Also, thanks for the advice on the move front. I might get a sneaky quote just to see but I don't think that £2k will compare with DH's tight £200 budget of hiring a cheap van and getting some boxes off tinternet.

And yes, a procrastinating support group would be great!

Lucil - that is my biggest demon... thinking I have done it for xx days, therefore I am fine and can have a drink if I want. It helps me to think about the difference between my drinking and DH... He sits there, has a glass of wine most nights and at some point in the night will look up and think, ooh the glass is empty. He may have another, he may not. Neither decision is a big deal. I on the other hand pour a huge glass, glug half and then take our (now equal) glasses to DH in lounge. I then watch every sip he has willing him to speed up because I want another glass NOW. It consumes half my evening plotting to get the next glass. Then I spring up when he is half done and say, top up dear?? Jump to the kitchen, half glass for him, giant glass for me (big glug and top up, perhaps second glug and top up) before leaving the room. And repeat.

Not drinking for two days or two weeks won't stop me doing that again. It might take a day or week but soon enough I will be back there. For me its the relationship with alcohol as much as the amount. I really want to be my husband and have a 'take it or leave it' glass of wine but I can't.

This is why I now understand that I cannot drink. I cannot control it, I am not in charge of it (although I thought I was). I drink too much, without thought for anyone or anything else. I am an alcoholic and two weeks of not drinking won't make that go away.

wasindie I was just about to get in a huff 'cos you hadn't mentioned me. I thought it might be because I didn't fit with your alliterative first line - and wouldn't have minded if you'd called me mars instead of venus, just as long as I got a mention .

It is a family joke that my SIL bought me a wine stopper, and I said - what would I want one of those for? Actually it doesn;t feel like a funny joke any more. And no I have never used it.

Shit, I always witter on too much and by the time I have posted 4 people have said the same thing more eloquently and with a quarter of the words.

You would not believe that completing forms with limited word counts is how I spend my days huh?

MsGee your post describes my behaviour exactly.

MsGee - following my recent, extensive research in the field: I can confirm, without doubt, that it neither goes away nor gets better!

venus I guess for many of us on here it the reality of drinking and yet we choose to remember it as something very different.

Red your post did make me smile! Although I try to convince myself that I could drink again, I know I couldn't.

MsGee - that is me!

And me.

BUT.......... that is all waaaaaaaayyyy off in the future.

Maybe, one day, you WILL be able to drink one or two glasses of wine, with a meal, out at dinner, lunching with friends etc.

AND THEN STOP!!!

One day. But for now, we ALL have to focus on the present.

And keep posting no matter how many times we fall off the bus or down the stairwell or lean too far forward and topple over!!

Or not as the case may well be! We are the Brave Babes after all

Text from friend.

I frighten myself. 2 bottles of wine and sleeping tablets. Dont know how many. Missed mot. Feel really ashamed and stupid. Oh fuck. Feel so awful can hardly move.

I feel like a real cow. I knew this would happen. At least she has nit ended up being pumped this time. Oh fuckfuckfuck

starting - it is not your responsibilty. Repeat after me! You are only responsible for your own drinking. In your situation I would really suggest AA as an option for your friend. (I think you said she went before? Does she still have some AA friends she could contact?)

THIS IS NOT YOUR 'FAULT' - in any way, shape or form x

Also - you are not a cow. There was nothing you could do. Could anyone stop you when you decided to have a drink? No. (No one could stop me that's for sure!)

Yes fuckfuckfuck, because that is awful, and she is clearly in a bad place.

NO to feeling like a cow. Your friend chose to do that. She may have done it even if you had been drinking with her. You did not KNOW it would happen, and you do not KNOW it wouldn't have happened. None of it, none of it is your fault.

"I feel like a real cow. I knew this would happen." Of course you knew this would happen - she is a problem drinker! It is her nature to drink to excess! She will do it every time she gets behind a bottle!

But it does not follow that you were a cow. Just imagine, for a second, that you do not control the entire universe and everyone in it and are, in fact, mortal. What, practically speaking, did you intend to do? You said you planned to talk to her - that would have had a similar effect to Chamberlain talking to Hitler, believe you me. So what else? Wrestle the drink from her? Lock her in a room? Even these things do not always work with problem drinkers (note, for example, the ready availability of alcohol in prisons) but anything less certainly won't.

My friend George once phoned me up asking me to come round because I had a car and he didn't. As a result of his drinking, he had put his arm through a plate glass internal window. The floor was covered in blood and broken glass and stank of sour, cheap brandy. I drove him to hospital where an X-ray showed a chip of glass lodged in the bone.

Geroge drank again within days.

I totally get that you are feeling bad, but what would you have changed about the evening?

It would have been great if when you said you weren't drinking, she had said, Oh that's a good idea, and the two of you had sat over a pot of tea and put the world to rights. But that is not what she chose to do. You offered her friendship and she chose to leave right after dinner. Her choice in the moment was not to stay and drink tea with you, not to stay and drink wine while you drank tea (or whatever), her choice was to go away and drink on her own.

What if you had drank one bottle with her? That would not have stopped her from going away and having the second bottle on her own anyway.

She is unhappy. You cannot make that better for her. her relationship has ended and you cannot change that for her. I have been with friends like that. Whether I am drunk or sober makes no difference at all to whether they are happy, or to how they choose to deal with their unhappiness.

Your friend's choice is probably particularly ineffective, and it ressonates with you because of the changes you are makng now. But it is not your fault or your responsibility.

You did the best thing possible for YOU. You need to take care of yourself most of all. You will be no help to your friend if you too are a drunk.

starting, this is not your fault. everyone else has written this very eloquently but I will repeat - this really is not your fault.

No matter what decisions you made that evening, she would have done this - this was her decision. You have to make your choices to keep yourself safe - hers are very separate choices.

Lucil - that is my biggest demon... thinking I have done it for xx days, therefore I am fine and can have a drink if I want. It helps me to think about the difference between my drinking and DH... He sits there, has a glass of wine most nights and at some point in the night will look up and think, ooh the glass is empty. He may have another, he may not. Neither decision is a big deal. I on the other hand pour a huge glass, glug half and then take our (now equal) glasses to DH in lounge. I then watch every sip he has willing him to speed up because I want another glass NOW. It consumes half my evening plotting to get the next glass. Then I spring up when he is half done and say, top up dear?? Jump to the kitchen, half glass for him, giant glass for me (big glug and top up, perhaps second glug and top up) before leaving the room. And repeat.

Not drinking for two days or two weeks won't stop me doing that again. It might take a day or week but soon enough I will be back there. For me its the relationship with alcohol as much as the amount. I really want to be my husband and have a 'take it or leave it' glass of wine but I can't.

Yes, she would have carried on drinking when she got home, whether I had joined her with wine or not. She always takes home a nightcap!

I guess I am just so worried about her. I feel as though I am making a point of not drinking (not to her I hasten to add) in order to avoid where she is right now. I am not an alcoholic (least not like my father or my friend!) but I drink too much too regularly. Not to falling down or taking too many pills just to sleep, but I have made a big deal of this for myself. I do not want to be like others I know, and I do want to get fitter.

Oh bollocks - agent here to take more photos of house. I don't know what I want to say anyway.