The Brave Babes Battle Bus - Carry On Past The Offy!!

[Mouseface]

Well, this is our tenth thread so we are throwing a little party!

Everyone is invited! No booze of course, soft drinks and mocktails only!

I'm Mouse, hello.

There are all kinds of drinkers on board the bus. Come and join the journey, whatever stage you are at, drinking, cutting down, wanting to stop or sober already.

Everyone is welcome to post here. Come say hi.

The journey so far is below.

JWN's original thread

Thread two

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hello you loony lot!

Just came on quickly, love the name change zombie.

Welcom dichotomy, will post more later

x

my dd has offered to take me out for dinner! , i even checked that this is actually going to be a treat and that i wont be passed the bill, she said it is!, ok, which one of you has swapped my dd for a nice one!

Right: I'm off out and I have to go to a meeting where they always serve wine afterwards. I am going to be good and get the fruit juice but I know I'll be offered wine at least twice (you always are!), so this will be a test.

I'm writing it here because if I 'say it to the thread' I feel more likely to keep my resolve firm!

Have a lovely afternoon blokes and babes.

LOVE IT zombie!!

You lot shoud get over awww.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/1061178-Scream-It-s-the-Hallowe-en-name-change?msgid=21739518 here and register....

Try that again here

I think we are usually the last ones to know miflaw - it's just that other people play along with the game as it can be just as hard for them to face up to the fact that someone is an alcoholic - speaking as the ex-wife of one.

MIFLAW -

they both might come from a life isn't fair reaction.. but one is anger and the other is self pity very different emotions in my opinion

as I see it

Self pity = Giving up you no longer fightback
Anger = wanting to break some thing

And I agree life doesn't tend to be fair - it throws stuff at you and you need to deal with it one way or another.

Good example is following -

I used to go to work by bike I must have been 20 ish I was a assistant warehouse supervisor in the Rotterdam port area. This meant 6 miles there and 6 miles back no transport links what so ever and it was in the middle of large refineries.

One day in winter I was more or less halve way there a puncture ( on a bridge nothing but cars 3 miles to go its pissing down a decent gale is going and Im freezing as I m soaked and its only just above freezing ). Now how do you think I reacted .. self pity would have meant sitting down looking at my bike and crying about it ... instead I got angry I kicked the living day lights out of my bike before grabbing it and walking to work .. got in late ... told the foreman to eff of .. and went to fix my bike.. Which consequently on the way home had another puncture at which stage I actually did break down and cry I gave up no fight left..

So now 20 years later I don't do the self pity thing any more but I do occasionally get that angry but I no longer have a bike so I take it out on myself.
( btw that was a joke :) I do have a bike but it was expensive so no kicking the living day lights out of it all though it might be a good alternative to damaging my self )

-- my apologies for these long rambling posts--

diabolik

Rambling is good, talking about how you have got to where you are in your lie is good too so keep posting.

Gives us all a feel for you and most of us can relate to one anothers posts.

welcome dichotomy. I am finding this a sagfe positive place and its helping me a lot.
Moves over to make room.

'life'

ack - I meant safe

lol @ mouse ..

btw how do you change your name ? -

Am LOVING the name changes

Diabolik

That is a very fair point and I do see the distinction you are trying to make.

However, I would say that what is important for you at present is they both lead to a drink if you are not careful. Whether you cry into your pint or smash up the jukebox, if it takes you to the pub it is bad news.

So I think that, to be on the safe side, you have to accept, for now, that "dealing with it one way or another" CANNOT include drink. Be ready for that trigger, whatever form it takes.

thanks everyone for the welcomes x

To change your name -

Step 1. Go to MyMumsnet at the top of the page.

Step 2. Sign in with your email, not your nickname and password.

Step 3. Select registration details.

Step 4. Scroll down to your current nickname and re type what you want to be now.

Then select save.

Job done. You made need to refresh any other MN pages you have open so that it works.

Shout if you get stuck.

Diabolik

Also

"Self pity = Giving up you no longer fightback
Anger = wanting to break some thing"

I think that it's important to recognise that there ARE things in life where you CAN'T fight back and where anger, while cathartic in itself, gets one nowhere. In retrospect, some of my own worst drinking was around such incidents, such as, for example, death of close family. I drank hugely at such events and it solved nothing. I also got very angry - fuelled, in part, by the huge drinking - and, again, it solved nothing. Yet, at the time, drink seemed the only solution. Now, for today at least, I would no sooner stab myself in the heart than drink because a loved one has died (though the remaining big tests on that are still to come ...)

Sometimes, the only fighting back you can do is to stand still and take it.

dichotomy Hi and welcome aboard

Home from work, managed to avert my eyes from the wine in the shop, despite having a CAK! day at work and really feeling the need for a wind-down drinky-poo.

Picked DS up from school and he was covered from head-to-toe in flour after bread baking. I now have ghostly white footsteps across my carpet.......very festive

MIFLAW

"Sometimes, the only fighting back you can do is to stand still and take it."

• well I wonder about that one, because that means you are allowing emotional build up.

I get pictures in my head of Michael Douglass in falling down - e.g years of repressed anger and frustration coming out all at once

So there needs to be an outlet or a way of channelling all that emotion in something positive.

I would just like to say that tonight I will not be drinking.
Although I may treat myself to a Bat and Toad Juice over ice in a posh tumbler

diabolik

I have had many a daydream where I am Michael Douglas in Falling Down.

I have wished that I could be him in that film, shotgun in hand giving the world, what the fuck for!!!

Christ, I could be him. I could kick ass so hard that life, karma, fate, whatever.... would not dare to mess with the Mouse.

And trust me when I tell you, and MrHammerMouse will verify, that I do indeed have days where I wake up and think fuck it.

Not today and not on my patch. I take no shit and I get the job done!!

Those days are VERY rare.

I just need to be that Mouse a bit more often.

I think very few of us learn how to deal with anger. For some people it can be a terrible out of control rage that is destructive and hurtful. For others it can lead to despair, self loathing and self pity. Some people can't express it at all and hold it all in, which can manifest itself in physical illness,stress and depression. The lucky few who can recognise it and harness the negative energy and turn it into something positive and proactive are lucky bastards.

• steps away from the mouse nervously -

you ok there mouse - wanna borrow my bike ?

MP - very true -

Interesting though

I just saw what you did there

I categorized self pity as an emotion...

Where as you categorize it an expression
result of an emotion.