The Brave Babes Battle Bus - BOINGing Into Spring, The Jesus(WhatNext) Way!

[Mouseface]

Hello, tis me, Mouse

I'm one of the Brave Babes aboard the Battle Bus, on the journey to sobriety.

We have drinkers, non-drinkers, inbetweeners, notquitesurers...... which is all fantastic.

No matter who you are or where you're at in your personal quest to get where you want to be, come grab a seat and join in the natter, just jump right in.

And, if you'd like to see where we've been up until now, HERE is a link to the last thread and the ones before it

See you soon.

Nonastemia - Welcome to the Bus :) I'm a 5 pm on the dot girl as well. I am trying to only drink at the weekends. Last week was when I joined the bus and I managed not to drink Monday through to Friday. I haven't drunk since the weekend but I've had some awful cravings.

Mia Welcome

Hi there Blanket

Mouse

How are YOU doing lovely? How is the wonderful Nemo - still nicking your chocolate ?

Thank you re client. I have decided to 'risk assess' remaining clients ... and perhaps start saving a bit more . It's so tough out there at the moment that even though I am damned good at my job its like little boy sticking a finger in the holes in a damn in some cases.

Saf and McGee - I read your posts with great interest.

Saf I feel similar to you re. AA. I feel that it would be letting the genie out of the bottle to tell people I was going - I mean, if you go then you are an alcoholic. If you go once, then don't go back then... you're still an alcoholic in everyone's eyes, you can't go back from that. Having said that, my uncle was/is a full blown alcoholic who went on binges lasting months, leaving his wife and six children penniless and alone. He has been clean and sober, minus one fairly serious relapse, for over 20 years and he was someone who was, to most people including himself a 'hopeless' case.

McGee I'm interested that your family (in particular your mum) is a trigger for you. My parents have a fairly negative attitude towards booze. My dad is disapproving of drink and once shouted at me when I requested a second glass of wine. He refused to give me the second glass - I don't know why. He has a temper.

My parents barely drink. If they do, it's a tiny little glass of wine over dinner. A bottle between my mum and me lasts all week. In a way, I would rather not drink there than have just one drink and be craving more. My dad is a depressive who has never sought help for it. I would put money on him having bipolar, as I do. He has mood swings and a temper.d

I have stolen drink from my parents whilst staying with them. For non drinkers, they have quite a hoard of booze - ancient bottles of champagne gathering dust, boxes of wine, crates of beer... I used to nick a bottle of red and drink it in my bedroom, after everyone else had gone to bed.

As for your Grandad - that reminds me of friends with families who drink. It's treated as a joke. I have, in the past, envied people with families like that.

Greyhound - interesting that our families are the opposite end of the spectrum. I used to think it was all great too - my family used to place bets on when my grandad would collapse and make sure we had plans to get him to a hospital... Now I just think its very sad that so many of us have a drink problem and that its just not tackled.

Its funny - my mum tells me that she drinks more with me than other people, so perhaps we trigger each other. Or perhaps we just enable each other.

I used to be nervous around my family - I am not sure why but with the wider family I felt 'not accepted' for a long time. It still feels very much that I am on the periphery but I suspect that is as much to do with geography. Anyway, so I drank because I was nervous. Then I think I saw that behaviour was glossed over, enabled and not tackled, so I probably did it for the hell of it. Or because I wanted a reaction, or I was angry or sad. Or having fun.

I love my mum to pieces and she is wonderful (you would all love her if she climbed aboard -everyone does, she is just lovely). But she will not stand up to my sister - she will not say "BigSisGee, its a bit unfair that MsGee and her family drive for 4.5 hours to see us all, then stay in a hotel so only get part of the day with us and then spend all evening in a hotel room, whilst we have fun. Perhaps there is a fairer way." Mind you, my sis has now decided that I am avoiding her suggestions to stay with us because she has TWO children and I can only produce ONE and am overwhelmed with jealousy. You can imagine how that went down with me ... bless my mum she did say in response to sis (who has not said this to me...) "erm, did you help out at all when you stayed last time".

Everything in my family is glossed over. No-one speaks to each other, it all goes through my poor old mum. I tried to break the cycle once and explained to Sis how she had upset me - I didn't exactly pick my moment and she screamed at me, slammed the phone down and I had to apologise for weeks before she would speak to me again. I am now the wrong party in that instance, despite the fact that I was trying to discuss something had hurt me.

Sorry ... think this is all coming out in preparation for tmrw.

Thanks for the welcome everyone. I'm Mia then, am I? I'll have to get over my association of the name with a woman I knew at uni on whom I wasn't overly keen... maybe I can replace that image with a fantasy me who can enjoy a couple of glasses of good red with a meal, without having to chuck back nearly a bottle of white beforehand and be so pissed that I don't remember the good red that DP has carefully chosen to complement the lovely food, or remember the food either, or what we watched on tv afterwards.

So I was awake until after 2am last night reading the last thread. I feel like I know about some of you a bit now, so I guess it's my turn to do a bit of sharing. I feel a bit scared and emotional to be blurting all this out, both because I'm ashamed and because I've never felt particularly anonymous on the internet. I know I am, mostly, but I always feel that someone who knew me in RL could easily recognise me from what I post. Anyway I think I need to just get on with it, because yesterday I felt that acknowledging and getting out there what the problems and effects of my drinking are would force my hand - stop me doing what I've done so many times before and just sweep the whole thing under the carpet again as soon as I feel a bit better.

Here goes then. I've suffered from depression on and off since I was around 15. I drank quite heavily as a teenager, from age fifteen onwards. I grew up in a pub with an alcoholic/heavy drinking father, so acess to booze was never a problem. I was drinking in combination with opiod painkillers which at that point I took in terrifyingly large doses - I am now when I think back. I still am reliant on take co-dydramol for back pain, and every other kind of pain, to be honest, but I'm careful to never breach the two tabs in four hours rule, and I try not to take them too often because I don't want them to lose their efficacy and I'm terrified the gps will try to wean me off them if they think I'm dependent I can't sleep without them though, or get through most days.

Yo-yoed on and off ADs throughout my twenties whilst smoking massive amounts of dope. Did quite a lot of E and hallucinogenics during my twenties too. Didn't really drink that much alcohol on a day to day basis during that time, but would go out and get hammered with friends on a regular basis. Always a spirits drinker at that time. As my twenties progressed and I smoked less dope then my drinking increased. A few g&ts bfore dinner, more problematic episodes of just getting too too too drunk when out.

Cleaned up my act when I got pregnant with my DD. Drank small amounts of wine when pregnant, no spirits, and luckily I lost the taste and tolerance for spirits then and have never regained it. I still love an occasional g&t but BAD things happen when I drink spirits so I know myself well enough now that it's a very rare occurence. So now it's 'just' the wine. I've been on citalopram for 6 yrs now and have accepted that I'll be on that for the rest of my life.

My situation at the moment is that I have a lovely, very supportive partner and a 9 yr old DD whom I home educate. DP also likes to drink, although he's a bit more ritualistic cultured than I am about it - spends hours researching wine, planning what wine he's going to get and what food to cook to go with it. I've always said that our hobbies dovetail perfectly... he loves choosing and buying wine, I love drinking wine... After reading on here the advice from someone to pour away all the wine in the house I did have a bit of giggle imaging DP's face if he came home and found me pouring all his carefully selected vintages down the sink.

So basically good food and wine are an enormous part of our lives and leisure time. That's probably the biggest issue I have with admitting that my drinking is problematic - that it would take away a big source of pleasure and shared interest if I didn't drink any more, and that I know that DP definitely doesn't want to stop drinking. The thing is though, although he drinks a bit too much, his drinking isn't problematic in the same way because he doesn't have that excessive/addictive personality. He's never the one caning the white before dinner or rushing to the fridge at 5/6 o'clock. He's not the one that'll have an afternoon weekend drink in a pub garden and want to 'push on through' and keep drinking. That would be me.

My short term memory has always been bad, probably due to all the dope, and now I just don't remember things when I've been drinking. I feel really embarrassed and ashamed to admit that. DP knows, but not quite the extent, because I can never remember what we've watched on tv. If someone rings then the next day I can't remember what we talked about. DD has always had an early bedtime, but now that she's HEed she stays up later and she's overlapping even more with my drinking. Several times or more lately she's talked about something that happened the night before and I've no recollection of it at all. I remember as a child/teenager there'd be these terrible rows or emotional conversations with my pissed Dad, and then the following day he'd deny all recollection of it. I didn't believe it - didn't believe that you could just not remember something at all that had happened twelve hours ago. I just really really don't want to become that person, that parent. There's a whole massive festering cess pool of unresolved stuff in my head about my dad, so I'll just leave that one there for now.

Anywaaaaaayy ...

I don't want to be the person trying to hide the fact that I can't remember what happened the night before.
I don't want to be the person who is hungover every day.
I don't want to be the person who is always irritable, and short tempered with DD.
I don't want to be the person who lies awake for hours most nights in hot and cold sweats of toxic anxiety.
I don't want to be the person who gets so pissed when people come round for dinner that I can't remember how the evening ended, or the food we ate.
I don't want to be the person who spends the whole week unsuccessfully trying not to drink, or not to drink too much, then gets happily plastered every weekend night and spends the weekend days in a hungover lazy fog where I don't want to do anything except kill time until 'wine time'.

I don't want to be ruled by drink and drinking, basically. I want to be able to enjoy drinking sometimes, but not construct my life around it. I don't want my drinking to adversely affect DD, which at the moment I think it does.

Bloody hell, you deserve a medal if you've got through this sewage outlet stream of consciousness! Thanks folks, I hope that seeing it here in terrifyingly stark black and white will somehow draw a line in the sand for me and initiate change.

Today I'm not drinking. There I've said it!

mia I think you said in your post about wanting to drink 'normally'. That's what I thought until I really questioned myself about it. Normal drinkers have a glass and then say 'that's enough, I think I'll have a cup of tea' or they have a glass and then go and put the washing away, or they meet friends for lunch and don't even think about drinking anything other than coke in the middle of the day. Normal drinkers share a bottle of wine with their dp for a special occasion, and feel a wee bit tipsy, notice that they feel sluggish the next day and then don't do it again for ages.

Well none of that behaviour is how I wanted to drink - what was the point in having one glass? I know that I didn't really want normal drinking, I wanted abnormal drinking without any of the consequences - no risks to my health, no hangovers, no weight gain, no bad behaviour, no expensive shopping bills, no anxiety about where my next drink was coming from. And it just doesn't work like that.

And msgee I am so ashamed to admit that I was like your Mum. I took my dd out to mend her broken heart once and got her so horribly, horribly drunk that dh had to come and carry her home

mia that was a strong and insightful post. I would love to drink normally too. There again I would also love to source a real unicorn for my daughter's birthday . Neither are likely to happen I'm afraid.

Not drinking today is a start.

venus ((( ))) I am sorry that my post made you . I chose to get drunk though, my mum didn't pour it down my throat. Your DD made her own choices too. plus I bet you didn't let her stagger into her workplace half way through the session and make a tit of herself I was already a big drinker when that happened - it didn't just occur, we set out for the day planning to drink.

Bravo Mia or NonMia perhaps? Well done for taking a big breath and getting all that 'out there'

That's quite a tall order you have set for yourself but you can do it. To start you will have to learn how to not drink and change some of those habits. You will find out where you want this journey to take you. As venus says, the kind of drinking you describe may not be an option but not drinking for one day is certainly an option for all of us. And if those 'one days' turn into three, or seven, or 21 all in a row, so much the better.

You will have read some of things we do to stay away from alcohol, so hopefully you have some strategies planned? For instance, will your dp have wine with dinner tonight, and if so, what will you have?

One thing you said stood out to me - So basically good food and wine are an enormous part of our lives and leisure time. That's probably the biggest issue I have with admitting that my drinking is problematic - that it would take away a big source of pleasure and shared interest if I didn't drink any more

So if there was no 'good' wine available, you wouldn't drink with your delicious meal? If you could no longer afford fine wines, that would be it, you would have to knock the drinking on the head ? I think not. I suspect you drink like you do because, like so many of us, you have no 'off' switch and if cheap wine is all there is, you will slug it back quite happily.

So, the good news is you can still enjoy your lovely meals with your dh because really they have nothing to do with 'fine wines' other than the fact that it's a good excuse to keep drinking. You enjoy the food and the company and you can enjoy it even more if, as you say, you don't come to the table half cut in the first place!

MsGee family are a big trigger for me too. All of us have a dysfunctional relationship with alcohol. Some worse than others. In fact I spoke to my dm last week in a rare phone conversation and she said that my dniece (who is only 12) has left her mum (my dsis) and gone to live with her dad because they had a row whilst dsis was under the influence and she said some nasty things . Dm said to me that she didn't think dsis had an alcohol problem because she went to work every day! I said I thought she was dependant because she drinks every day but dm saw that as normal. History is repeating itself there.

I have never, ever said a nasty or unkind word to my dcs and I thank my lucky stars that I found this bus and the strength to commit to it. I swore I would never turn into my mum but it's been a conscious choice. I love my kids to bits and want to be there for them for a long, long time.

< puts lid firmly back on box and walks away for a while >

people who stopped totally and do see themselves as alcoholics - talk to me please!

Hello

I am definitely an alcoholic, although I haven't had a drink for over two years; if I wasn't I'd have the odd glass at social events. As it is, I don't because although I might well get through the event with no disastrous consequences, I know the following morning, or the next difficult situation there would be the constant thought that a drink would be a good idea, and that drink would lead to another one and another, then hiding drinks, then being unable to sleep and getting up in the middle of the night to drink, then needing one before I could function in the morning. I know because that was what happened for my last year of drinking- a constant round of days or weeks off, followed by chaos. Perhaps if I had a drink today, that might not happen (experience suggests otherwise) but I do know if I don't have a drink today I won't get into that chaotic cycle of panic. That's why I see myself as an alcoholic.

Realising that I was an alcoholic was the best thing that ever happened to me.

mia - great post! you really can be the person you want to be, just do it a day at time! dont over think it all, just for today you dont have to drink, i find thats the easiest way!

as to drinking with your dd venus, oh fuck, i can relate to that! i still feel so ashamed of the state i got my wonderful dd into when she was 16 that it burns my soul! i took her out for dinner, you know, all wonderfully middle class with rocket salad and quail eggs and pinot noir , then decided a pub crawl round all my favourite biker haunts was in order - she was ill all weekend, dh was FURIOUS with me and STILL i thought it was an ok thing to have done it is one of the things i am most ashamed about in my life. NEVER will i be that horrible, selfish, awful mother again! (fwiw, dd still thinks it was terribly cool and laughs about it, on the one hand im glad she dosnet feel scarred and hold a grudge, on the other, i am mortified at the role model i wasnt!)

help - i totally agree with you! admitting i was alcoholic, although scary and sad, was the most liberating thing i have ever done - to just give in, give up and find peace in my life was and still is, wonderful!

thanks help.

i called the national number and chatted to someone there. can't get in touch with the local branch as they only have phonelines from 7-10 at night so no chance of arranging someone to meet me outside.

was able to relate to the guy on the phone really easily. wonder why that might be?

off out to walk the dog and drop off some clothes for ds at my mum's and stop and have a cup of tea in her lovely garden (please don't offer me a beer).

tonight i'm going to go to this meeting and listen and see if, as i horribly expect, everything sounds awfully familiar.

saf - you are very brave and wonderful!! good luck lovely!!

Hi there
I've been off the bus for a couple of days - have had a lot going on. DH and kids are away.
Yesterday I sold our house. I can hardly believe it's all happening. It was someone who had come to see it privately, not using an agent. Because we need to buy two houses out of one, I had to try and get the best price I could, so had to play hardball with the buyers who I knew loved the house and for whom it was under-budget.
Anyway, after days of stress and trying to work out what everyone's doing, yesterday we agreed a price, so our house will not have to go on the market.
As a consequence I was able to put an offer in on the house I want. I had to go to my maximum, but the offer was accepted and it's been taken off the market.
Still need to find a house for dh. There's one he wants to go and see. It's not ideal as it needs 'the works' doing, but it's chain free. Our buyers are selling two houses to buy one, and have both sold. One is exchanging tomorrow, the other one's buyers are rock solid, have done a survey and are ready to go.
The people I'm buying from have seen a property they are interested in and if they have an offer accepted the seller has no chain.
It felt scary selling without an agent, but our buyers seem totally committed. And the same agent is on both sides of our transaction (selling our buyers' properties and the one I want to buy), so that makes me feel a bit 'safer'.
It's been a hellish couple of weeks though, with all this going on.
Now I've got really mixed feelings - excitement about the future, but also sad because my marriage is ending and my family breaking up.
I did drink a fair bit last night, I was so hyped-up with having to negotiate two transactions in the space of a few hours I felt like I needed one.
Today I'm exhausted and a bit sad, am going to try not to drink. I woke up at four this morning, hardly able to believe what is happening, and I couldn't get back to sleep.

I've decided I don't want to be UnhappyLizzie any more. My name isn't Lizzie in RL btw. So I am going to follow kirsty's example, and change my name to BizzyLizzie.

I'm going to try and check in on here every day from now on. I have no drinking events planned, so want to try and stop for as long as I can, one day at a time. Also this thread grows so fast I don't want to miss stuff and I want to get to know other people, not just come on here and update about myself, as I have today.

Mia - I so recognise myself in your story. Drugs were never part of my life, but only because I was never offered anything other than a joint that made me feel so ill that I never touched dope again. I know for sure that, had the opportunity to take drugs been there, I would have become addicted.

I had a boyfriend in London who took coke. He wasn't addicted, but did indulge recreationally. He kept that part of his life separate to his life with me, thank goodness. At the time, I resented the way he didn't invite me to his druggie parties but he was a selfish character and I am relieved I didn't get more involved with him.

For me, booze is a relaxant and an escape from boredom. I am finding the long, empty afternoons during the Easter hols mind numbingly boring. There isn't much to do - I take the dogs on long walks, I do odd jobs, but my dh never wants to go anywhere and the time drags. Right now, I am thinking about a bottle of wine tonight but I will try to resist. I have managed the last two nights to resist.

Joining this forum has really helped me and I hope it helps you too.

SAF best of luck at the meeting, hope it is helpful. Do let us know how you get on.

Hi. I am UnhappyLizzie no more :)

Lizzie that sounds incredibly stressful about the buying and selling. I hope you can soon look forward to your new home, although it is sad that your marriage is ending and that this signifies part of your life ending.

MsGee your sister sounds like mine. The screaming and slamming the phone down if you complain about being treated shittily. This is what happens with my older sister and me. I mostly avoid her now, she's pretty toxic tbh.

Greyhound I know it's not really funny, but I couldn't help laughing when you said you'd stolen booze off your parents. I don't blame you, what a waste leaving it to collect dust!

MsGee I agree with Lizzie about your sister. She sounds incredibly manipulative.

Jesus if you were my mum, I probably would have thought you quite cool. It's funny how your attitude towards drink changes as you grow older. When I started uni, it was such a novelty to be able to get off your face without your parents knowing. My girlfriends and I regaled each other with stories of each other's drunken behaviour. There was no shame, more like pride.

Lizzy Those bottles in my parents' house drive me mad! I mean, for non drinkers, they are well stocked. I was always terrified of getting caught drinking at their house!

Well done Lizzie .. no point being unhappy!!

My house is just going on the market too .. you sound a lot more amicable with your STBX though. I love my house but better to move on by myself than put up with the lies

This Bus has really given me a boost - I feel so positive about the future

To stem off alcohol cravings, I highly recommend eating the best part of a tub of Haagen Daaz Belgian Chocolate ice cream.

Today I will not drink and tonight I will have another lovely, non-dehydrated sleep. I will not keep waking up to drink water and I will not see my blood shot eyes in the bathroom mirror and I will not have a fuzzy head tomorrow.

Please God.

Saf - bloody well done you! Wow, you are brave Keep us posted xx

Hello again. I just wanted to reply to some questions and posts while I've got the chance - DD will be home from her dad's in an hour or so.

helpyourself Wed 11-Apr-12 07:55:00
"Some top tips make sure you eat lunch and perhaps buy your favourite treat for teatime, so you're unwrapping a chocolate bar at witching hour, not reaching for the fridge. How did you not drink yesterday? Did you 'white knuckle' it? I don't know the book, but it sounds like the distraction helped yesterday- and us Brave Babes grin."

You're absolutely right about having something to eat before the witching hour. I know from experience that if I eat a decent snack between four and five then I can resist the urge for a glass of white. So why don't I already do that every night? I think because often I've already decided that it's that lovely feeling of the first glass going down, so I want to want it, iyswim.

But that is the main thrust of my plan to resist the booze today (and tomorrow and so on) - is to eat at the right time to ensure that I'm not hungry at 4-5pm which is when my resolution crumbles. Preferably a healthy low-gi snack. Failing that, cheese - the only thing I'd find as difficult to give up as booze. Yesterday I was buoyed up by determination and I cooked as soon as DP got in from work at 5.30pm. I did make comfort food rather than a healthier option, but that's ok.

chasingtail you've described me exactly! In past efforts to cut down I've eaten earlier - had a small portion of DD's dinner, as I cook for her much earlier, and that has helped.

Fairenuff Wed 11-Apr-12 14:08:12
"You will have read some of things we do to stay away from alcohol, so hopefully you have some strategies planned? For instance, will your dp have wine with dinner tonight, and if so, what will you have?"

Er... I'm not entirely sure...
I've been feeling strong all day about not drinking tonight, then I got back from walking the dog and thought 'just to make sure, I'll take the bottle of white I know is in the fridge out, and put it back in the wine rack' - if it isn't chilled, I won't drink it. Oh but how enticing the bottle looked, all frosted with condensation. Big ol' yearning just stopped me in my tracks - not to drink it there and then, but to put it back in the fridge and look forward to 5pm when I could... well you get the idea. I did put it in the rack though, and I'm not going to drink tonight. I just typed 'not going to drink white tonight' then changed it, and realised that I'm negotiating in my head about having a glass of red. I'm not going to drink tonight because I typed here earlier that I'm not.

I'm banking on the fact that the cravings for drinking subside into a fancy once I've eaten, so if we have something for dinner that DP won't drink red with, I'll be able to resist the urge to have a glass after dinner if he has one.

My pattern, as was my dad's, has always been to drink, then eat. He'd spend his 'session' drinking (lunchtime or evening), then eat at the end and go to bed. That's what I'd always done too. DP is the opposite, he might have a beer or glass of white whilst cooking, but he doesn't sit and drink before meals like I do. He'll be tempted to open a bottle of red after dinner though, and if I've eaten, I don't usually drink much of it.

Faire "So if there was no 'good' wine available, you wouldn't drink with your delicious meal? If you could no longer afford fine wines, that would be it, you would have to knock the drinking on the head hmm? I think not. I suspect you drink like you do because, like so many of us, you have no 'off' switch and if cheap wine is all there is, you will slug it back quite happily."

You're partly right but not entirely. I wouldn't drink shit wine with great food, no. If we couldn't afford decent wine to go with nice food then I think we would go without, yes. (I'm not talking very expensive, by the way - between £6-12 ish). However... I'm no connoisseur of white; I just want a familiar bottle costing around £6 that is very chilled and takes the edge off. I'm not after the 'experience' of the wine, really, I just want it be cold and taste nice and make me feel fluffy. A G&T with lots of ice and lemon would do the trick just as well, but I figure gin is even worse for me than the wine.

Would I drink cheap shit if I couldn't afford anything else? That's a really intriguing question actually and I'm going to give it some thought.

Really sorry for these epic posts, folks. I'm always far too a bit wordy but I won't post this prolifically all the time, promise. I'm just trying to get some things straight in my head and it's a huge relief to be able to say this stuff to people who understand these feelings.

saf well done you for picking up the phone. One of the ways in which I know that I have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol (aka an alcoholic ) is the way it would totally consume my thoughts. In a way that was different to anything else I wanted. So I might come home feeling hungry (or just have a bored mouth) and rummage through the cupboards and fridge - but basically anything would do. Sometimes a couple of biscuits, sometimes some cheese, sometimes a few mushrooms or a raw carrot, sometimes a fried egg sandwich. But any of them would do really. What I NEVER did was wander round at 11am obsessing about having a fried egg later that day, or buying eggs and hiding them so that no-one would know how much I'd had. Yes sometimes I'd get a craving for chocolate, but once I'd had it, the feeling was gone and I didn't wake up the next day wanting more. And I could always stop eating chocolate before I was actually sick.