The Brave Babes Battle Bus - Carry On Past The New Year Wine Offers!

[Mouseface]

Hello all.

We are the Brave Babes. We're on the Battle Bus, travelling around sobriety and going day by day, hour by hour, through the detox hell of not drinking, cutting down or sometimes even not.

Come say hi. We won't bite.

No doubt one of us has been where you are now......

It's fine. No judging, no nasty jibes, just us, the BBs.

Come meet the others..................

LADY

Whether you drink a bottle of wine pure, mixed with mineral water or mixed with Toilet duck, you have still drunk a bottle of wine! And if you do that every night, you will suffer.

Most people know this, which is why they don't drink a bottle of wine a night (or more, as you used to.)

The fact that you are still doing it every night, even though it is making you unhappy enough to consider stopping, would suggest that "pleasure" is quite an odd description.

Question for you - if you thought you had breast cancer and your friends said, "nah, probably not, that's just a cyst" would you believe them? Or would you smile politely, trust your instinct and take advice from someone who knows about breast cancer?

Three reasons why your friends are saying this:

1. they only see a fraction of your drinking and assume that the rest of the time you are dry. On this basis, they assume you do not have a problem.

2. they are heavy drinkers themselves. They imagine a long line of drinkers queuing and, when you get to the front, you have to enter AA/dry out/visit the Priory/whatever. This idea frightens them, just as it frightens you. They believe, rightly or wrongly, that you are in front of them in this queue (perhaps, when you picture this scene yourself, they are in front of you!) If you own up to having a problem, you go in and they move one place nearer the door. They would do anything to keep you in the queue in front of them.

3. They imagine, wronlgy, that sober people are necessarily boring and judgemental and can't go within 100 yards of a barmaid's apron. Because they like having you around socially, they want to keep you drinking.

I bet that, if you tick through the list of your friends, you can allocate every one of them to one or more of these three categories.

Thankfully, none of the three are true so you can then cheerfully ignore them and do what's right for you.

Hello everyone, gosh I miss you. Have tried to catch up every few days but running slightly behind on all the news. Lovely to see you Luci and everyone else too! Hello noteven and jesus and venus and msgee and silver and mouse and everyone.

My DDs have been ill (wheeze, croup etc etc) and my DH continues to be extremely low so I have been run ragged recently. haven't started working yet but soon I will receive my start date. Have bought some clothes and things.

I haven't been drinking for a few days but before that I was , not too badly, but my resolve was low, my DH kept drinking more and more and I found I was just useless at NOT drinking in the face of his drinking and so I have asked him to stop too and start a healthier life. His depression only gets worse from it and it's such a vicious cycle. Let's hope he improves. I feel like I am one of those cartoon characters with a tail caught in a roller coaster being whizzed around, up and down, against my will, trying to cope with my DH's ridiculously volatile moods.

jesus another new dress!?
venus interesting thoughts on the jumpy and irritable stuff there - all true for me

Jesus

Would you really like to drink normally?

I'd hate to drink normally. The thought of having half a glass of wine is like an outer circle of hell (the inner circle would be a ginger beer shandy or something ridiculous like that.)

What I want is to be able to drink extremely heavily and not suffer any consequences.

Noteven - OMG. I can't even begin to understand how that happening to your beautiful DD made you feel.

Words fail me but please, please NEVER blame yourself. Ifs/buts/maybes won't change what happened and unfortunately, niether can you.

You have my utmost respect for sharing that information with us. That couldn't have been easy to do either.

Noteven - I hate the fact that you are now stuck in the system. You really don't need the added pressure that it brings. Not at all.

AA is working for you by reading your posts, as is getting out of the house.

Yes, you've made mistakes (spending money you didn't have etc) but you're not the first and won't be the last.

Thing is, you're learning from all of this. You are learning every single day that YOU CAN TAKE CONTROL!

You're doing it already. You are stronger than you think. I bet a few months ago, you'd never think to share that with us, about DD?

But you seem to be unscrambling your head, working things out, what really matters to you, baby steps, yes, but you ARE getting there.

KEEP GOING xx

And keep posting.

Miflaw, if I'm being honest with myself and everyone else, and I may as well be as there's not a lot of point in posting, yes, I would like be a functioning drunk and not suffer any consequences. I enjoy the feeling of being drunk. 2 glasses of wine is always going to make me want the rest of the bottle plus more.
Then my life starts falling apart and bad, embarrasing things happen.
I remember discovering alcohol as a teenager and being delighted to have found something that (I thought) gave me bravery, confidence, wit, made life so much nicer.
How wrong I was.

miflaw!, yep!, i proberbly do mean i want to get totally shit-faced but not have any consequences! - i am jealous of people that can drink normally though, im guessing that this irrational jealousy will fade in time?

noteven - everything mouse said! - plus, keep on trying love!, it will get better, just give yourself TIME!

Christi lovely to see you. Let us know how it goes with dh, you are so right - alcohol will not be helping his mental state. However, for you, I bet that shopping for new clothes for your new job is making you feel good

noteven cross posted. My goodness poor thing. I am sorry for all you and your DD have suffered. If it helps, I spent all my (large) savings on living extraordinarly hedonistically in my late twenties trying to get over my father's death. If I hadn't... I could have bought a house... without a mortgage!

venus it does make me feel good... I do have to lose a bit of this wine belly though!

Hope you are OK x

noteven you barve, brave babe. Interesting that you are "bright and independent". I see so many of us writing on here about how externally it looks to others as though we are coping with everything life throws at us, and I guess many of us would describe ourselves as gloriously and fiercely independent. Or to paraphrase that too proud and ashamed to admit any weaknesses and ask for help. not supririsng then that when things get too much for us we take the solitary route of alcoholic oblivion.

It is great that you are getting so much support from AA and learning to ask for and accept that support. That's a hard one for many of us.

Goodness me Noteven what a crappy year you have had. I think your are even braver and stronger for going through what you and your DD have and yet yuor still picking yourself up and doing what is best for you both. Hope your DD is OK.

Feel bad now for getting down and waffling on about being stranded in town/getting stupid notes from XH when some of you guys have been/are going through some tough times. [bblush]

I drank again last night although not as much as I would have a few months ago.

Zany, don't compare what is happening in your life with anyone else's, if it's happening to you then it's important to you!

Morning BBs

Didn't get into work today - woke up in agony with rib and by time the pain killers kicked in I thought Fek It will work from my bed today. So that is what I am doing.

Hope everyone is OK in their own way and Lady if you can find a GP that understands alcoholism (and so many of them don't) it will really help you. I am very lucky that mine has been so supportive (ahem and happens to be very easy on the eye [), but what really matters is that I can be completely honest with him and he doesn't judge me when I fail/slip, he just gives me the mental and medical support that I need.

xxxxx

Noteven - I cant begin to imagine what horrible time you have trough, I'm so sorry , you are so so brave. Poor you and you poor little girl .

I have just thrown the left over of a bottle of white and I'm now silently praying that this is it. I have an appointment with a different gp on friday. hopefully friday will be day 3.

Well done on throwing away left over wine Lady, don't project about Friday, just get through today as best you can.

Thank you desiretochange, do you think at one point I'll forget to count the days without alcohol ? It will become a natural thing ?

I haven't reached that stage Lady but once again you are projecting, if I have learned anything on this thread it is that you have to take things one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time. Just tell yourself that today you will not drink and who knows maybe tomorrow you will make the same decision.

Luci

When I was a teenager I could run five miles for fun with no training and feel on top of the world; or play football and have a Marlboro red instead of a half-time orange.

It would be mad of me to think that I would still get the same pleasure from such activities now. Why would drinking to excess be different?

lots of interesting posts today - am lurking but here

I'm not really brave, I'm just really stupid, because I keep going back out there. Today I went out on my bike to a meeting (or so I thought!!) - I used to cycle everywhere before I started drinking - as I am 6 days sober it's probably safe to re start now! but I got totally lost. (we moved less than 2 months ago in my defense!) I ended up with probably a 10-15 mile ride and now I can hardly walk... the bath is running...

My life is unmanageable, but my DD needs me - I need to get well for me but hopefully it will have massively positive effects for her. I will try and share some of what I said here at a meeting, thank you all for the encouragement - it means the world to me. xx

LADY

There's nothing wrong with counting the days - as long as you are only counting the days behind you, not in front of you.

However, what typically does change is how you feel about those days. My last drink was over 8 years ago and, let me tell you, I am over the fucking moon about that fact. Drinking was horrible at the end and I am so glad not to have to put myself through that any more.

This will start happening as soon as you let it, so no need to wait for anything to happen. In other words, as soon as you can see drinking as it really is, for you, now, you will cease (bar the odd insane blip) to feel hard by and start thanking your lucky stars.

You are not stupid noteven, you have a problem with alcohol.
I can empathise with your feeling that your life is unmanageable, but the only piece of advice I can give you is the one quoted on here, about accepting the things you cannot change and changing the things you can!
Could do with taking my own advice

Thanks Miflaw, I just want today to be over so I can day 1, I didnt have a drink yesterday.

Jesus

Re irrational jealousy, yes it fades and then disappears in my experience.

Like with so much else, it happens when you can face up to the truth about drinking instead of the fantasy, which, again in my experience, happens very much in stages.

But you'll get there. To speed it up, watch normal drinkers in action and think, do I really want to be like them?

Speaking personally, even when drinking I despised them and wished they'd get the fuck out of the pub and leave us "proper" drinkers in peace - and I despised them most of all on the rare occasions they drank like I did. It was like watching Lord Charles pretending to be a real human.