The Brave Babes Battle Bus - Blowing Away The Booze In The Autumn Breeze.

[Mouseface]

Hello.

Welcome to The Brave Babes Battle Bus.

I'm mouse and I have an abusive relationship with alcohol. I can't have just the one drink, ever.

I'm not alone here, there are Babes who are sober and have been for some time, Babes who are still drinking and trying their best to stop or cut down and then there are Babes who aren't ready to stop drinking. Yet.

So, why not come and say hi?

No judgy pants allowed on here I'm afraid, cakes and cheeses are!

And for those who want to know a bit more about the Bus, HERE is our journey so far.

It is a crutch and I am very aware that it is poisoning me. You are right absolutely.

The abuse is verbal, emotional, financial, mental, not physical. Physical would be easier to deal with.

I have the papers to instruct a solicitor but I am really really scared of the consequences. :( I cant leave, I dont want to say too much 'cos he knows I love MN so would have to endure the whole course of events.

Your doctor is enabling you to be quite honest IWW - by saying "yes, it is all terrible" (and it is, he is right) "so don't stop drinking, not now, not til you are divorced." The lovely ladies on Relationships will give you what you need to get out, including our very own and very lovely Mouse but they will not let you keep saying "I can't", "I'll do it tomorrow", "Alcohol is helping me". It's going to hurt. A lot. And then it is going to get better and better, for you and the DC. Are you willing? Do you at least want to be willing?

When I relapsed (started drinking again) after my mum died 4 months ago, I nearly lost my daughter completely. The independent and very senior social worker refused to give me any latitude because the most significant adult in my life had just died. Because next time it would 'just be something else'. I was bloody furious, and crushed, and distraught, and angry. For a good couple of weeks.
And do you know what, there would always have been something else. It mightn't be abuse or bereavement. But that was the mindset I had and still have if I'm not careful. Poor me, my life is crap.

My circumstances are not great. Nor are yours.
But for me, it was finally time to step up and say, I'm done. I'm done with making excuses, with being a victim, with depending on external situations to make me happy and contented and to feel like I'm worth something, or blaming sometimes those same people, places and things for how terrible I feel and how awful my life has got. I'm done with fighting and with trying to control everything I can in the hope of making myself feel better.

Putting the alcohol down was just the start. It just gets better from there.

And Zany, Mouse and I could name so many of you but it would sound like some utterly self-indulgent Oscar winning speech so, um, anyway, yes, DD is home for good a week on Saturday. Good things start to happen to grateful alcoholics.

Right, I'm going to do something useful like clean the bathroom. Life beyond my wildest dreams - I am really grateful to you ladies and MIFLAW.

That's the thing MIFLAW, clearly I can choose not to drink. I'm not drinking now. I don't drink every day. I can go for weeks without drinking.

It's just that sometimes I do pick up, almost always in social situations, through a lack of willpower and not wanting to have to explain to people why I'm not drinking, although having said that sometimes I go through phases of drinking alone at home too thinking it's easier that way as at least I won't then have to deal with the consequences of making an idiot of myself in front of anyone. I get sneaky then and make sure I ring people who may phone me before I start drinking so they won't phone me later and hear that I've been drinking over the phone.

I just keep thinking that if only I tried harder, I could just stick to the one or two, or not drink at all. But I guess if I could do that I would have been doing it all these years.

I don't know, I really don't. But I do know that certain friends and family have looked at me like I'm being ridiculous when I've mentioned the word alcoholism. They all think I shouldn't drink because they know what I can be like when I'm drunk, but none of them would describe me as an alcoholic. It's clear they think I'm being melodramatic.

Well said Saf and Noteven

Excellent posts.

I cant leave, I dont want to say too much 'cos he knows I love MN so would have to endure the whole course of events.

IWW - so you are putting MN or him over your right to live a safe and happy life? Is that right?

It doesn't matter what form of abuse he uses on you, it's abuse. End of.

Please, go back to see your GP, look on the website that I posted for you, talk to people about what is going on.

MAKE IT REAL.

This isn't going to just stop. He's not going to some home one day and say sorry. I know that and so do you.

Please don't bury your head in the sand. Start to plan how YOU want to live your life.

I'm sorry to sound so harsh but I've been there, so have others. We can see from the outside what he is doing to you and you are letting him. I know it's hard. I KNOW it hurts, it's scary. You think that if you leave, he'll follow you. He'll try to win you back.

But something made you go and get those papers didn't it?

Use them.

It's time to take the steps, big or small, to being YOU again.

IWantWine I'm so sorry to read that you're experiencing domestic abuse as well as problems with alcohol. It's incredibly common for women who are experiencing abuse to try to self-medicate the pain with booze - no-one can blame you for that.

Are you receiving any support from domestic abuse services? Women's Aid are really good - the service they provide is completely nonjudgemental, confidential, and no-one there will tell you what to do either. They will simply listen to you and talk you through your options.

These two issues are obviously very inter-linked for you. It's an awful lot for anyone to have to deal with. Sending you much virtual moral support.

noteven

Wow. I am blown away at just how well things have turned out for you. You did what it took, you did 'your time' and you fought. You won, you did what was required no matter how very soul destroying it was for you.

As I said before, your story (IYSWIM) was very close to my own heart at the time and I struggled to deal with hearing that you had put drink before your own DD. For which I will always be sorry for.

YOU DID IT!!! You bloody well did it!! xx

Noteven - congratulations on getting your DD home permanantly. What wonderful, wonderful news!

Bafana - Your post is truly inspirational. I can only hope to get where you are. I am pleased for you and also encouraged by how you feel about your life now.

I have had a tough day. Have had to keep busy not to keep thinking about alcohol, which is quite tough for me, as I've pretty much located every shop, supermarket, corner shop, petrol station, cafe, etc., that sells alcohol. Anywhere that I might not get 'noticed' for buying alcohol with 2 kids in tow.
I do have a very clean house though!

Blackduck - can I ask how your day has been?

NMB x

Day 8 of my diet. In the staff room, I kid you not, one home baked chocolate cake, one home baked coffee cake, one lemon cake, one blueberry cake, one bag of custard donuts, one bag of chocolate donuts, three bags of jam donuts, one packet of choc chip cookies and two more cakes that had not even been put out yet!! Sheesh.

Welcome Blackduck, how has your day been so far?

Mouse I was too fragile to hear it at the time. But forget it - ok? :) There is nothing to be sorry for. We are both of us here on this thread for a reason.
But yes, alcohol came before DD. And if I pick it up again, I will do it again. But not picking it up again isn't that easy, I have a total blind spot where alcohol is concerned. This thread is great and today even if I only get to stay as a cautionary tale of how bad it can be then so be it!

Some of it perhaps was circumstance - I was drunk 3 times in 3 months in front of DD and my GP followed by my family phoned social services on me - and DD's father refused to care for her when I went in to hospital. That's how little it can take - and it's take 6 months to get her back. I could blame or make excuses but what I need to do is accept that everything is as it should be. Whether it's as I'd like it to be, or not!

"That's the thing MIFLAW, clearly I can choose not to drink. I'm not drinking now. I don't drink every day. I can go for weeks without drinking."

We are maybe talking at cross purposes. When I say, choose, I mean that at any point, whether you had your last drink 2 weeks or 2 minutes ago, you can say, "no thanks" and walk away. The people who CAN do this - normal drinkers - have no more willpower than you or I. Quite simply, they don't need willpower because drinking isn't a battle of wills for them. They don't want to drink, so they don't. YOU ONLY NEED WILLPOWER IF NOT DRINKING IS A STRUGGLE. And if not drinking is a struggle ...

Of COURSE some of your friends will not believe you if you say you're an alcoholic - apart from anything else, you say yourself that you hide some aspects of your drinking (another thing that normal drinkers don't do and which doesn't involve willpower.)

You don't need your friends' approval to address your drinking. You don't even need to tell them (as you say, you sometimes don't drink ,so it's not going to surprise them.)

I personally am pretty convinced I am an alcoholic. But let's say you never really find out - you get to the end of your life and God, or Jehovah, or Bob Monkhouse or whoever tells you, "yes, you were" or "no, you weren't." Having seen how unhappy I got because of drinking I would rather abstain now and be told, "no, you weren't an alcoholic, you needn't have stopped" than drink like I used to and only be told afterwards "yes, you were one, you should have packed it in."

I can see the sense in your words MIFLAW. And it helps to have someone who's a)an alcoholic, and b)sober tell me that I'm not being silly and that it's not simply a case of mind over matter.

Can I ask how long you've been sober? And how you've found it at things like parties and social situations? The fun always seems to be where the drinkers are, and I just feel as though I'm always going to be missing out. Same with dating. It's just more enjoyable if you've both had a few drinks, it oils the wheels, it becomes easier to relax and talk to each other, it's just better. No-one can convince me it isn't.

I feel that in order to avoid the temptation to drink I'm just going to have to socially isolate myself. Either that or I go to parties, don't drink, as I have done before, and stand around all night making terribly polite sober chit chat with other non drinking people. The ones having all the fun don't want to hang out with you because you're not on their level, and you go home early. Yes you may not have a hangover in the morning but you didn't have any fun either.

I do realise how negative I'm sounding, but I can't imagine life without booze. I don't believe people when they say social situations are better without it - I secretly think they're just saying that to make themselves feel better about the fact that they can't have a drink.

Makeyourown - you are being truthful and that's good. Right now, you can't see a future without alcohol. I was in that place for an awful long time. I would tell DH or a friend that it wasn't a problem, that I was going to cut down, but I knew in the back of my mind I wasn't. In fact, as I was saying it, I was thinking about where my next drink was coming from.

WIll Young's song sums it up for me now: I will lose the highs, but at least I'm spared the lows.

I know (I HOPE) I'll never have a drunken night on the tiles

in the midst of all the heavy stuff your post has made me chuckle like a loon faire you are surely exaggerating?

mind you last night i ate 3 dime bars and a kitkat. i am on day 43 of my cycle now and desperate measures were called for.

iwantwine - can i suggest a first step in all that advice up there? change your username. it's a quitters name and you don't want to be a quitter. you need some umpf now.

makeourown - i suspect you're just remembering the nice bits of those social situations - somewhere between drink 2 and drink 5 before it all turns to embarrassing shit and if you're anything like me sneaking around in the kitchen to get more booze even though it's openly available, being slightly aware that you're talking shit to the most inapropriate person you could have chosen, that you're staggering a bit, that the children are looking at you like aunty lush/fagash lil.

i could be wrong.

No swallowedAfly you're not wrong. When it turns to embarrassing shit it is the worst and believe me I should know!

But like you say, somewhere between two and fourish drinks is much much better than stone cold sober.

What I really want more than anything is to be the kind of drinker that can stay happily in that place. I've been trying for years to be that kind of drinker though and it hasn't happened yet.

I thought I had admitted defeat a while ago, but recently it has all risen its ugly head again. The thing is, it doesn't turn to embarrassing shit every single time. Sometimes it can be ok. There is no rhyme or reason to when it will and when it won't though - I can't predict it.

The other thing is, that when you're in that embarrassingly pissed stage, it's easy to convince yourself that you're performing better socially than you are. I don't know if you're anything like me, but I can half think I'm being terribly entertaining and outspokenly knowledgeable and interesting and only in the morning look back and cringe.

So what's to be done? Do most people who have achieved long-term sobriety tend to choose friends who are not really drinkers? Because if that's the case, I'm going to have to get myself a whole bunch of new friends

it has the illusion of being better than sober yes. you can't freeze in that zone unfortunately.

not being funny but given you've tried for years it doesn't work does it?

and yeah i sometimes think i'm being terribly interesting or worse that i'm having a really intimate conversation with someone who really wants to listen only to realise the next day i've monopolised some poor sod and dribbled on at them and someone was probably apologising for me behind my back. oh my god. it actually pains me to think of that

- these are for you all

i hate those flowers! tacky yuk yuk. no offense to you - you didn't create them

I knew you'd hate them . Remove the symbol and replace it with a huge THANKS.

Noteven I am so so so so pleased for you. How brilliant that you will have your DD back full time. Don't forget to admit though if you feel stressed etc, thats what we are here for. Talk about pot calling kettle though as I never hate to admit that I need support or help. Doesn't stop me telling others though . YOU have come a hell of along way these last few months - don't forget that.

Typing on a laptop for the first time so I may annoy you by deleting my posts by accident and being a night time lurker/poster.

Noteven - i misread you very badly and I apologise for that.

I guess I'm the newbie on here.

On friday I found out my Mum has a tumour on her kidney - 10 days till she sees consultant and up to 4 weeks till operation - pretty much puts your life into perspective when it's entirely possible that your Mum will die.

I have sisters and a brother ....................

BUT

I have to stop drinking

PS happy birthday Isindie (((big hugs)))

and Thurso - I am so touched that you always remember me

and Mouse -

I am in a pretty bad place at the moment.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

and I am off for an early night.

sleep well BBS

xx

Oh sweetheart.

Thank Jeff you are posting again.

I always wonder where you are. How you are. How the drinking is going.

You DO have to stop.

Are you ready yet? xx xx xx

COME BACK SILVER

Silver {{{{hugs}}}}

Don't give up hope just yet x

Saf on my life it's the truth but am a bit because I didn't have time to read all the posts first so sorry for ignoring everyone. Been to pilates.

IWW I just wanted to add that I think you should get a second opinion from the GP. If there is no physical reason to stop it would do the world of good to get a day or two sober under your belt. I don't understand why the GP has told you to continue drinking in moderation when you have just explained that you have a drinking problem . Doesn't make sense.

MYOB You still seem to be under the illusion that alcohol is a reward, treat, good for you, a nice thing, desirable, etc. What makes you think life will be so bad sober if you haven't tried it that way yet? I know it's not easy, I struggle with the same concept . The best way to socialise sober is to drive. And one of the many bonuses of socialising sober is that you get to see what 'fun' drunk people are really having .

noteven fabulous news x