The Brave Babes Battle Bus - All Going On A Sober Holiday! <crosses fingers that it stays sunny>

[Mouseface]

Hello, tis me, mouse

Welcome to The Brave Babes Battle Bus, grab yourself a seat, they're really comfy and a , oh and a home-made chocolate chip before they all get eaten!

We're a Bus full of alcohol abusers/addicts, some of us say it out loud, some whisper it and some aren't ready to say it at all just yet.

That said, there are a few of us who just have the occasional drink and that's something that they can handle. There are a few of us who must NEVER have another drink because that first one will lead to many, many more which will only ever end badly.

We're open to all....there are no requirements to join us on our journey to sobriety, there's support, great laughs, tears and tantrums here and that's just me!!!

If you'd like to see how we got here, follow THIS LINK

Hi all. I have studiously observed and tried to ignore your threads in the past but I am marking my place to join you after too many years of abusing alcohol. I will take some time to read your stories so I don't say the wrong thing but today is day 1 for me and I have fruit tea instead of my normal red wine and am feeling good (except for period pain)

Back soon ...

Hi babes,
koti Thanks for asking the questions that sort of opened the floodgates on my feelings. Now its out there I feel better. Hope you have got through day 1.

I have got through day one with difficulty and am now going to bed to avoid temptation.
Goodnight babesxx

xposted thanks faire the wise woman rides again.

rural feel free to vent your feelings here, we've all come to depend on alcohol for different reasons, someone here will understand what you're going through. No doubt about it, being sober will help you stay more in control of your life.

Welcome to NoNo gosh this bus is filling up tonight!

Well I went out for a walk with the dog and felt much better - amazing what fresh air and exercise does for the spirits! Decided to worry about coping with the kids when school starts when school starts. No point in dwelling on it for the next 3 weeks!

This bus really does go up and down some steep hills....

Rural - are you really sure it is worse for your son for you to leave your NSDH than for you to stay and be so unhappy. I left my exH when my DS was 4 and my DD 19 months. The kids have adjusted to it. It isn't ideal but I would probably have ended up attempting suicide if I had stayed. This may not be helpful to you. But when you are depressed and facing emotional abuse from someone who will tell you that you can't cope / are useless / need to try harder, you can't see what things could be like if you did get out

I appreciate you may not want to talk about this here and I apologise if that is the case

I have read back a bit and recognise a lot of how I feel in your posts. I think I need to stop drinking forever. I have never ever felt like that before. I always thought i would be able to control it if only I changed something else in my life. But actually I think that is bollocks and I need to quit alcohol and then the rest of my life will become easier to manage.

A question if I may. For those of you who have given up completely. How do you do it? I mean, obviously you just don't ever drink alcohol again. But do you tell yourself repeatedly that that is it for ever?Or do you take it one day at a time? Do you tell friends or no-one? I suppose I have never tried to do this before so I don't really know how to approach it.

Kotinka - I have been trying to find a way for years of controlling my drinking. Telling myself I will only drink at weekends (didn't work); or with others (didn't work); or only every other day (worked for a while). Then telling myself it was fine because I stopped drinking immediately I found out I was pregnant both times and stayed off for the whole 9 months. I have been justifying my addiction by thinking I just needed to find the absolute answer to controlling my drinking. But I definitely think that answer doesn't exist. I need to walk away (the boxing analogy from further up thread).

Not sure how to do it right now. Perhaps there is no way. You just have to do it. One day at a time?

Kotinka - yes I always thought non-drinkers were boring and I am more fun when pissed. However I am full of self loathing the next morning and I am not doing myself any favours health wise by drinking a bottle of wine a night (or half a bottle of gin). I worry about getting cancer - lots of my female rellies have died of it. And I am a lone parent so it is not responsible of me not to look after my health. Also drinking to excess in the evenings when alone with small kids isn't clever.

I actually think I have got to the point where I need to be able to be kind to myself. Abusing alcohol and pressing self destruct isn't going to get me there.

Evening lovely babes

Oh rural please just let it out here.I'm sorry but he sounds a right twunt : I've done some time with a similar ex-twunt and actually that is exactly when I began to drink to excess. Please imagine that every drink you DON'T have is a way to take back a little control. I'm so sorry, it is a big deal and horrible for you to have to live with.

welcome nonno I'm just stumbling along at the moment and have made it through day 4, in the long term I want to be teetotal but I know that that is a loooooonnngg journey for me.

joey hope it goes ok with the meeting.

soma I heart my kindle, and real books and newspapers and magazines and stuff on the back of packets and t'net. I'm just as happy reading Chaucer as chick lit or a hammy sci fi,I like non fiction and poetry too. I usually have a non fiction book and a couple of others on the go. A non fiction book a week sounds like quite a challenge though.

Night lovely babes ,

If we are a small sample to go by,then there are many people with a drink problem today.It's hard to find sensible advice and help to stop, though I may not have been looking very hard IYKWIM.

Night night lovelies. You've stimulated lots of different trains of through for me but I'm off to bed so can't reply coherently till the morning. Sleep well x

Morning all. I have woken with s clear head feeling hungry and not sick, dizzy and dehydrated. Walking to work and back again today (7 mile round trip) and planning on going to running club tonight which will be another 6 miles. Whoever said keeping busy is the key may well be right! Kids are with their dad till tomorrow morning but I only have them until sat morning as they then go away with him and his gf for a week. That will test the hell out of me as I will spend a whole week mourning them. And as they are going to France I won't even be able to call them.

Welcome NoNo, please please stay with us and give it a go; a major reason (and there are SO many) for giving up for me also was that I'm a lone parent (although ex-H is very hands-on so I don't really feel like one) and the thought of getting sick and the affect it would have on DD (12) was too much to bear. How old are yours? She's been away for the past week and coming home today :) I know what it's like to be without them. Then she's with me for a week and then off again with her cousins. I do miss her a great deal but I've learnt to cherish my time alone (being what I'd call a socially-poised introvert this isn't a problem for me). You sound so upbeat and all that exercise is a fantastic way to quell your desire to drink.

Gugg I'll read most things too but Chaucher might be stretching it....When do you do yours? Bed is my favourite place but I've recently started taking the kindle to work and sneaking it out and having a shifty read between jobs - it's only a matter of time before I get caught!

Hello to everyone else, I'm picking up my antabuse later and will feel much safer taking it again. One tablet a week will be enough to still the booze voice that can sneak up at any time and tell me it's OK to pick up. Even if I have to take it for another year, I know I'm doing the right thing.

Soba - thanks for the welcome. I have shared residence of the kids so they are with their dad 3 nights a week usually. I hate it and find it so hard even tho it has been 2 yrs now. Never gets any easier. But they are ok in the main. Both say they would rather be with me but both are fine when with him. They are 6 and 3.

I have wondered about going to the gp about my drinking. I really do want to stop and although I am not physically dependent I don't know if willpower alone is enough. How much do you have to be drinking before the gp will help?

Morning everyone, resisted the urge to have a drink last night, went for a walk in the wind instead which helped blow some cobwebs away .
Faire, what diet thread are you on? Like the positive daily thoughts you have written down, so today is "Think through Thursday", today I will think about why I want to be alcohol free.
Will catch up on rest of thread later.

Hello and welcome to nono - like you I tried very hard to ignore this thread when I first saw it. I didn't want to confront the realities of my drinking and in all honesty I was half hoping that it would be full of people who drank a couple of glasses too many on occasion - then I could just dismiss them as 'lightweights' . Instead I found a bunch of funny, interesting, deeply thinking companions - many of whom had drinking stories that triggered my own shame, and lack of willpower, and hidden anxieties about the damage I was doing to myself.

Although I don't drink, my choice is not to say that I'll never drink again. Hell, I said that phrase most mornings for years (only to have a drink in my hand by 5pm the same day ). Also I fear that for me, it would make me scared and rebellious and I'd stupidly and insanely fight against myself in the form of "who are you to tell me not to drink ever again". So what I say to myself, and others, is "I don't drink at all these days". For me (and I know this is a personal choice) this keeps the statement true and real, it doesn't scare me into being rebellious, and it also means that if I did have a drink (and I have had a few at a couple of points along the way) then it's not as if the whole 'not-drinking' thing is broken (which might just result in a very easy slide back into my former habits).

However I am very clear that for me controlled 'normal' drinking does not feel like an option. I never wanted to drink normally if that meant having one glass and leaving the rest of the wine in the bottle for a week. And the allure of intoxication still seems too much of a temptation to risk trying that experiment (again!).

Hello everyone hope the sun is shining where you are

Welcome NoNo good to see you here and you've come to a very helpful place. I have two DD's who are 16 and 20 and my ex and I have been doing shared residency since we separated over 7 years ago. It is really tough at times, especially when they are younger but my two talk freely about it now and both say they prefer it on balance and love having a good relationship with both of us.

I totally agree with Soma about the exercise and learning to cherish your time alone.

Soma Good for you for recognising that you need the safety of the antabuse. Can I ask does it have side affects that are an issue?

rural for your situation. I was in an abusive relationship with my exh, and I found that over the years I became diminished as a person, gradually believing that I was useless, boring, not clever, unable to think for myself, incapable, etc. etc. When the straw broke the camels back and we split up, I re-emerged as ME, which was wonderful . What was not so wonderful was that over the years I'd taken to drinking - partly because it was a secret rebellion against my controlling exh, and partly because it numbed the feelings and confusion.

I remember reading about 'cognitive dissonance' which can happen when your internal view of yourself and how things should be, does not match up to the reality that you are living (a psychologist would probably say I've paraphrased this very badly, so apologies for that). So for me I was brought up with strong values about marriage and family and stability and 'doing the right thing'. Yet I also believed that love was about respect and encouragement and trust and happiness. So to be in a marriage where that kind of love didn't exist was very confusing for me. To avoid the confusion I pretended I was happy, and I used alcohol to make that pretense easier.

Thankfully I'm in a life now where I don't need to pretend to be happy. Mostly I am very happy and content, and when I'm not, well that's OK too.

And I agree about the tough side of shared residency (waves to lelli and nono). I remember nights when I howled with sadness at the thought of my babies waking up without their mummy there (although most of that was indulging my sadness and grief rather than any fact or reality). But..... it was wonderful when I eventually met someone new. I am pretty sure that our relationship was made so much easier by knowing that 2 nights each week we would be on our own - free to go out if we wanted to, or to stay in, to make plans, or to be spontaneous. And it gave us more energy to be with my dc when they were being difficult (knowing that the next night there would be some respite), and genuine appreciation of both being with the dc, and being alone as a couple.

Hi there venus and thanks for your (brilliant) insight. So agree about allowing yourself just to be what you are at any particular time ..happy or sad or whatever...without having to put a mask on.

Much as I thought I was making it all better with booze, I would end up more upset than ever and depressed and angry with myself. Last week I had a sad moment listening to some music and I had a good cry and let the feelings just be there. Then I wiped my tears, cracked a smile and went out in the sunshine to do some gardening ..happy as Larry (who was Larry btw??)

Good morning babes and welcome nono.
Thank you all for your kind words, thoughts and advice re my nsdh.
It just seemed to all start coming out last night I feel very .
I know I need to control my drinking before I can start to take control of the rest of my life.
venus the way you descibe cognitive dissonance and your feelings regarding your exh is exactly how I feel.
koti NSDH is self employed and I do some work for him from home. He pays me a wage, this wage is really a shopping allowance. There is nothing for me to spend as I please. He will give me money for the hairdresser when he thinks my hair needs doing and if we are invited to a wedding or other family occasion he might give me money for a new outfit. I believe he only does this as I have to look my best in public if I am in his company.
I would love a part time job outside the home and am always on the lookout.
We do live in the middle of nowhere and NSDH does not do housework or childcare added to that I am an oldie so it is quite difficult to find anything.

Anyway got through last night and Today I will not be drinking.
Thanks again for your kindness babes
Bye for nowxx