The Brave Babes Battle Bus - We're All Going On A Sober Holiday!

[Mouseface]

Hello, I'm Mouse

Welcome to the Brave Babe's Bus. This is a bus full of drinkers old and new, sober and not, and those who are somewhere in between.

We are all at different levels of sober so you can bet that one of us has walked in your shoes.

If you want advice and support then you're in the right place.

Come take a seat or just lurk, we're happy to have you along for the ride.

And here is a link to the last thread so you can catch up on the journey so far HERE

Morning MsGee and all

Especially lovely to see a smile from MsGee. I can't offer any advice but I do hope that whatever happens for your family brings you every happiness, whether the 3 or you or more.

Today I will not be drinking. Got lots of 'spring cleaning' to do which will keep me out of mischief.

Morning msgee good to hear you sounding brighter. My friend has one daughter, and she her dh and her dd are a lovely, and complete, family. They just make sure that they factor in their family size when making decisions - for example, they moved house to a place with a village school and lots of local children, rather than their previously preferred isolated rural house. And yes their dd did ask for a sibling and want to be a big sister, but then she also asked to live in a fairy castle, and at one time she wanted to be a horse .

Maybe your 'seed of a thought' is similar to having a low alcohol beer, just enough to get a taste, but not enough to do you any damage . Have a good day msgee

Hope you have a brighter day mouse, and I hope you got off to bed last night without answering the call of the Sauv Blanc. Reading about your drinking yesterday - a bit of this, a bit of that, sounds like my worst nightmare, overall consumption of quite a lot of units, but never enough at any one time to hit the mark, and just a vague dissatisfied feeling. Honestly - better to have none.

You think you should know better at 36.5? Well I'm 49-and-364/365ths and I'm still not sure that i know any better

venus thank you - you are quite right. My DD does also want to live in a fairy castle and have a princess pirate party every day of the week (apparently girl pirates still wear dresses at parties). She also wants a giraffe, but just a small baby one so that she can cuddle it...

One day to the big day ... did you tell DP what he was to do to make your day special? I'd give him a typed itinerary, just so that he gets it right

ma I have to say it took me a while to find non-alcoholic drinks that I actually enjoyed, and I still keep varying it now. But it also took something else, it took a firm decision that I would have elderflower (or whatever) or nothing. I am pretty sure that if I'd also had the choice of opening a bottle of wine, then that's what I would have done. If I'm being totally honest though, if I was going on the taste alone, then very often I'd have stopped drinking wine after the first sour gulp. However I always managed to get through that with comments like "oh, not quite cold enough" or "mm, needs to breathe for a bit", and after the first couple of glasses the wine stopped tasting so bad.

msgee oh yes, he knows . I've also asked him to arrange good weather but I think I might just forgive him if he doesn't get that one right.

venus you sound much more reasonable than me... I would insist on good weather

Morning :) So true Venus, red wine has been my main drink of choice over the last few years, and I can honestly say I have never enjoyed the first few sips, but I always persevered . Went for a walk before work this morning, that's two days in a row now, trying to create a new habit for myself

MsGee

you just need to do what works for you - I know alcohol-free beer wouldn't work for me as it would leave me vulnerable and because what I like in beer is not the beer taste but the "weight" that the alcohol adds to it.

That said, depending on where you live, have you ever tried Supermalt? It's the most beer-like soft drink I have ever found (assuming you really do just like the taste of it ...)

JRHarris

Welcome, i hope you find what you want here. I don't mean to be confrontational but does your extreme religiousness cause you problems or get you teased in Tesco's? Perhaps a good idea would be, not to look for a highly religious AA meeting (you won't find one, because AA does not espouse a faith, so you will always find people who care less about religion, people of other religions, and even atheists like me in meetings) but to leave your religion at the door? No one is going to be interested in what your faith is - the programme asks you to find a Higher power that works for you. If that is a Judaeo-Christian God, that's absolutely fantastic for you - but it IS a private matter, for you alone. No one else needs to know - unless your goal is to preach or evangelise, in which case you can expect to encounter considerable derision and hostility, because no one goes to AA to be preached at.

This is genuine advice, not an attack - keep your faith private, like the rest of us try to; say what it is if you like (as you have here) and then move on to the real reason why you are in a meeting (if your faith alone was going to get you sober, you wouldn't be asking a group of drunks for help!)

JRHarris hello and welcome.

MIF thanks - I do quite like the taste of the beer - to me it just signals a change in fizzy drink from day to evening. However, with wine it would be a different matter, its the headiness and resulting sensation that I enjoy - I know it would be a slippery slope for me to have alcohol free wine. Is Supermalt a beery taste? I tend to drink alcohol free wheat beer as its quite light tasting.

Should probably say alcohol free wheat lager ... I suspect this is not the place to be lazy on semantics of beer!

Supermalt tastes a bit like a brown ale - it is quite sweet. However, it is also quite a cultural thing - I am about the only white person I have ever seen drinking it! And i've never seen it on sale outside of London.

Afternoon Babes

Thank Jeff I didn't answer the call to Sauv Blanc last night. Nemo had a truly awful night. We've not had a night like that for a long time. So I bearly slept, DH too and Nemo was up for ages.

Welcome to JRHarris [ smile]

MsGee - fabulous to see you posting so positive today. Thank you for the cheese xx

So far today, I have not had a drink. I am soooooooooooo tired and stressed that I am tempted just to pour a large one and sit in the garden. So instead, I'm taking Nemo to a nice park in the local town. I'm not driving (Dh is taking us) as I really shouldn't be whilst these meds are making me feel so wobbly and making me lose the feeling in my hands.

We're going to meet up with friends and have ice-cream and a wander.

I've also cut a pair of old jeans and made them into shorts so you may hear reports of people fainting at the site of them in Shropshire as I don't normally do shorts!

Ma - you can do it. Just keep trying xx

Our house smells very 'farmlike' today. Mmmmm. I'm feeling pretty crap at the moment, and would happily smoke some cigarettes to make me feel better. It's been more than a week since I picked up a fag. My work at the moment is rubbish, and I have an exhibition in a couple of weeks. Frankly I'm bricking it, and feeling lonely.

Horror dog ran off today attached to his line. Needless to say, he got stuck. I bollocked him and left him there. When I went back to collect him, he walked with me all the way.

I saw my brother yesterday. He has been with my parents and I said he needed an award for bravery. Even dh has noticed that my dad will almost inject you with alcohol. Brother has same reasons for over-drinking as I do. What a mess.

SAF one of my major faults is I always tend to say "this is what I am going to do ..." but usually end up making excuses as to why I didn't do something or why I have changed my mind that something is a good idea (probably a form of procrastinating?) which is why part of me feels that once I have made the decision to walk and then managed to put that decision into action (if that makes sense?) that this will help me in other areas of my life.

X-posted SAF, above was in reply to your earlier post, wasn't trying to suggest you should stop procrastinating about sorting out living room, hadn't even read that post

I AM procrastinating by being here when I should be getting back to my cleaning

Fairenuff

It can be very difficult not to project SAF, would you normally have much to drink when you go to your friends?