Hello Brave Babes! I know I haven't posted much lately, but I have been lurking and reading all your posts. I've backed off from posting because I'm pretty happy with the amount that I'm drinking now, but I am still drinking above the recommended weekly limits so I don't feel that I'm the best person to give advice to someone struggling with their drinking! Also, I've been much much less preoccupied with drinking lately, so it hasn't felt helpful to talk about drinking.
I feel like I've established the routine of not drinking at all on Mondays and Tuesdays and having a glass or two on Thursdays and Fridays (half a bottle max). The weekend nights I've still been drinking nearer a bottle, but I've been much more mindful about what I'm drinking, and I'm drinking less on those nights too. The changes have all been gradual so I hadn't really realised how much things have changed for me since joining the bus. I read through my posts from when I first joined and wow, how different do I feel now!
At the beginning of April I wrote
"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 often 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."
I'm 
to say it, but two months on, I'm no longer that person. We haven't had anyone round to dinner, so I haven't passed that test (and I drank too much last time we went to DMIL's), but I'm a lot more confident now that I can tackle social occasions without getting more drunk than I'd intended.
I think that for me, the drinking was a symptom rather than the cause, and that now I'm feeling better in myself I'm better able to resist the temptation to numb the bad stuff with wine. It's a negative vs positive cycle, though, isn't... Feel bad, have a drink to feel better, feel better for a short time, then feel even worse, have a drink to feel better... rinse and repeat. Or feel ok, resist temptation to have a drink/drink too much, feel ok the next day, even a bit better, so don't feel the need to have a drink, until the preoccupation starts to fade etc etc. I'm in a positive cycle at the moment, but I know it takes vigilance not to slip back into negative habits.
I was unsure whether to post because I know that controlled drinking doesn't work for a lot of people and I don't want to sort of 'set a bad example' or something (god that sounds really patronising! 
) to someone who is arguing with the demon that says 'go on go on, one won't hurt'. But I think there are probably a lot of lurkers who don't want to stop drinking completely but just cut down and replace that negative cycle with a positive one, and that's where I feel I'm at right now so maybe that'll reassure someone that it is sometimes possible. 
I'm also less irritable overall (although premenstrual now...) now that I've stabilised on my current dose of ADs, which really does make a big difference to me. I'm more able to not react to DD's provocation petty annoyances. Again, that's a positive cycle because the calmer I am, the calmer she is, and the fewer 'incidents' there are so I'm less stressed and more able to deal with it calmly when she is rude or arsey or whatever.
I'm doing a first aid course both days of the weekend as I'm joining St. john's Ambulance as a volunteer, hoping to become a community first responder. I've also chosen to do an extra evening's training with them on Friday. Until now, there is no way I would have chosen to spend a Friday night doing anything other than eating and drinking - when I had a shift on Friday evenings I always felt very hard done by. Nor would I have chosen to do something over a weekend that would restrict my drinking (need to be on the ball the following day so couldn't drink much). So this is quite a big change for me. Yesterday and Monday I didn't think about drinking/not drinking at all - it simply didn't enter my head as I was too busy thinking about food! On Monday I started a low carb diet, planning not to drink until Friday and then just a glass or two of red each weekend night. I want to lose weight but also see if I can knock my sugar cravings on the head. I drink so much tea and am so often wandering into the kitchen looking for a mouthful of something sweet to pep me up - it's really not good. I'm sure that this contributes to the craving for white wine in late afternoon - i'm after the sugar and the pick-me-up.
Well, sorry for the epic post. Just thought I'd update. Hello all the new Babes; I've been reading your posts and rooting for you all! mouse hope you're feeling better. silver good to see you back and hope it hasn't been too awful dealing with all the condolences at work. I hope you can find some solace here on the bus.