DRY 9!!!!!

[CheesyNachos]

The DRY 8 thread suddenly came to an end! 1000 messages before we knew it.

THis is the thread for those who are abstaining and who want to abstain from alcohol. :)

All are welcome.

Previous thread is here.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/2432985-DRY-8?

New thread :) Welcome to all new people and lurkers , and to all just because we have a new thread :)

Hi everyone.

Hope everyone had a good day. How are you bubble? And Bam? and everyone?

I am well. Hosted Sunday lunch yesterday. When I was drinking I would have started drinking as soon as I started cooking. (Cook's reward!!). Yesterday I got everything done AND took DS swimming AND was able to do his homework with him before everyone arrived! One friend brought me pink roses and a bottle of home-pressed apple juice which was delicious and tart and tangy and gorgeous with soda water. I drove home another friend who was feeling very tired and who had hurt her shoulder, then got home and cleaned up, read bedtime stories made cups of tea for DH and I and went to bed early.

Utter Bliss.

I was doing so well but I didnt make it through Day 16. I had a horrendous day at work and some other stresses and it just tipped the balance and I drank on Friday and Sunday. Sunday worse because I drank in the day - just like before.

I feel so fed up with myself. I shouldnt have let work get to me like that. I have an exam tomorrow and am revising at home but I have made sure there is no alcohol in the house because I am feeling too vulnerable to resist temptation. I would just like to be out of it. I was really feeling my anxiety was starting to improve but one little thing and it all went out the window. I had a session of wind down yoga planned for the evening which I was looking forward to but I didnt go.

Hi everyone,

Thank you cheesy for our lovely new thread.

And thanks to everyone for your support this weekend, I feel like I've let everyone down, but it goes to show just how powerful that urge can be. vxa I know exactly how you are feeling but I keep telling myself 'never give up giving up' so I shall persevere and hopefully become that lovely sober person I aspire to be.

Custard I probably could change the locks as long as I gave him access to the property but the divorce papers are due to land on his doormat any day now and I don't want to antagonise him and have things delayed.

I've just changed my sheets so I have lovely fresh bedding tonight, good excuse for an early night, with Horlicks this time.

Found you . I hadn't realised I had ended the last thread.

Feeling rubbish today. I have a pain in my side that over the course of the day has radiated round to my back. I feel quite nauseous too . I hope DS settles and sleeps well tonight.

Vxa think of what you can maybe do differently next time and don't give up giving up.

Sea do you have anyone with you to keep an eye on you? Little Miss Paranoid Cheesy is immediately thinking about symptoms of eptopic pregnancy or appendicitis. (Daughter of a nurse..... we immediately think of worst case scenarios).

Take care there.

DH is away tonight Cheesy.
I am definitely not pregnant. I think it may be a virus as my throat and head now hurt too

Oh Sea you poor thing.

Hope you feel better very very soon.

Yay, glad I found you again. Day 5 now, having my first 'flat' day where I'm bored, fed up and that's when I'd usually be heading for the wine aisle. But I'm not. I've got chocolate cake and cream to help instead.
sea hope you're feeling better soon!

Sea, appendicitis crossed my mind too.

Hope you feel better soon.

Morning everyone, finally found the thread!

Pink well bloody done on day 100... the first 100 of many I'm sure.

bubble - you're doing amazingly well to be going through divorcey stuff (I'm sure I've probably mentioned my own car crash divorce) as well as doing this. It's a stress like no other. It's fantastic that you were straight back on here posting - please don't feel like you've let anyone down. It's a journey and the most important thing is to get back up and still be facing in the right direction. Feel free to PM me if you ever want to talk about the particular hideousness that is separation/divorce/single parenthood, particularly with a difficult ex. I've been there and got the proverbial tshirt...

vxa again, well done for being straight back on here. You know you want this. IMO that is the most crucial part of the whole process: knowing that abstention is the answer and will bring peace and contentment, rather than being a grim place of misery. "Progress not perfection" as Lucy would say

Owl - well done on Day 5; the first few are the hardest.

All okay here. LIstened to the new Bubble Hour last night which was about a huge rally held in Washington last weekend about Facing Addiction and changing the perception of addiction from being a moral failing to a preventable disease that can be treated. Found it particularly moving as they described the feeling of being there with tens of thousands of people in recovery, and the parents who have lost a child to addiction, to try to 'change the conversation' about addiction in the realisation that current drug/alcohol policy does not work. At one point one of the guests reads this poem, The Sleepless Ones and it made me quite emotional!

Just checking in. I feel like I have been hit by a double decker bus, but am otherwise ok. Thanks everyone, I am certain it is just a flu type virus.

Will catch up properly later as it hurts my eyes to look at the screen.

Hope you all have a good sober day.

Good to see you Sea.

Hi Teapot :)

Hi everyone.

Listening to the Bubble Hour now while cleaning the house.

Hi everyone. I have felt too ashamed of myself to post these last few days, but I have been lurking. I have drank every night, and I really feel down, and like my body is starting to scream at me to stop. I don't have any "symptoms" as such, just a general feeling of nausea, depression and bleurgh. The kids are on their October break now, and I want to be sober and well to do stuff with them. I just need to find the will power to do it. I know DP wants to stop and live a normal life too.

You know what's most annoying? We had it in our hands and blew it. At the end of Dry January, we both felt good, and I didn't want to drink again. I DREADED drinking again. And yet I told myself it would be alright just once. I wish I could find the momentum again that got me through January pretty easily.

[tea] for everyone on here, and for you sea.

The only way you'll feel sober and well Bam is by not picking up that first drink. I don't believe it works by relying on willpower - you have to truly accept that the drink doesn't even deliver you where you want to go. It's not working for you any more. Is it relaxing you? Is it helping you cope with life? No. It's shit, it's making you feel like shit and full of shame. There are NO benefits. The alcohol is the problem and it needs to go. Take it one day at a time but the crucial thing is just knowing that when you think you want a drink, lifting that first glass to your mouth is the precise thing that WON'T get you where you want to go in life.

Bam so glad you are here.

I find also that when I slip it tends to trigger several days of drinking. The hardest part is getting back to a Day 1. Can you do Day 1 today? Schedule something nice... trip to the cinema? Bath and bed? Downton Abbey on iplayer? Just get the Day 1 under your belt again and tomorrow will be easier. Promise.

Most of all.... be kind to yourself. What Teapot said up thread.... for some reason we as a society perceive drinking as a moral failing..... alcohol is ADDICTIVE!!!! Do not beat yourself up... dust off, get back on the horse. Take some vitamins. Take it easy today. Most of all... stay with us and post often. :)

hugs

Not sure why hugs came up as a hyperlink. :)

Hugs anyway.

Hugs to ALL of us who are fighting the good fight.

If it helps Bam, I've been there many, many times. Had months off the sauce and then somehow got myself into thinking that I could have it under control. Every time, it's gone straight back to the same old routine of downing a bottle and a half, feeling guilty and bad, telling myself I'll keep it to weekends and failing. It's bloody hard!
I dunno, this time something is different in me. I feel glad to be getting myself free at last and like what was said earlier, I'm not going to feel like a bad person or a failure for getting addicted to something that's addictive, but am just going to recognize that I don't have control over it, so it had to go out of my life.

Thank you everybody. I aim to make today Day 1. I have no money until tomorrow (funny how there is always cash for booze though, eh) so my aim is to clean up the flat a bit, have lunch, then go for a walk. We live near a beach, so it should be bracing! My main difficulty kicks in when DP gets home, but we have been talking so much recently about how bad the booze makes us feel, how it wastes our cash, how we only ever argue when we have booze, how we hardly ever have sex etc, so we are both determined. Tomorrow, when I have some money, I will go to the supermarket with the boys and get the ingredients to make a chocolate cheesecake. That's the plan.

Last night, DS1 stayed at my mum's house. DP leaves for work early, and so from about 7am DS2 was shouting for me to get him up. I felt so rubbish that I had to just keep shouting through to him that I would just be 10 minutes. I finally got him up at about 8.45. I lay there feeling so bad. The boys deserve better. You are so right teapot - it's not about willpower, it's about knowing that it's the wrong path to go down.

And you're lucky that you have had that realisation Bam. Another way of looking at your Dry Jan experience is that back then, you hadn't realised you had to stop permanently. You have now realised that. So you're in a better position now than you were then - even if it doesn't feel like it.

Your boys do deserve better, and you will get there. You're only one month and one day away from being in a better sober position than you've ever been, and you can get there by just getting through Day 1 today.

Just checking in. Had a couple of drinks with a meal on Friday and had planned to drink before I went out. The thing is it just makes me want the third door of moderate drinking. Back dry again now, with no plans to drink. I know that having those two drinks on Friday made no difference to my enjoyment of the evening so perhaps that's just the lesson I've learnt.

Lots of posters on here are having a hard time at the moment. Alcohol is everywhere ands it's only now I realise it. I'm going back to read the new thread in full now.

What's everyone up to tonight?

That's interesting Hadron, why did you plan to drink before you went out?

I had a very stressful day today, and one in which I would "normally" have drunk alcohol. My mother and her husband descended upon our house, at very short notice, which meant that I had to do lots of cooking (I did actually enjoy doing this in the end but was a bit stressed about it), and then from the moment the DC saw them, had to endure the noise of two very overexcited children performing for the GPs, with competing screeches for attention, ballet performances, tears, a song recital, more flouncing around, showing off everything they've learnt at school in the past 6 months, etc etc etc etc . I had a bad night's sleep last night and felt very On The Edge. My mother turned up with a couple of bottles of wine for her and her DH, which previously would have been primarily for me and her. I would have sunk into the wine before, to blot out the endless NOISE, and instead was very aware that I was a bit tired and a bit grumpy and conspicuously not coping that well. But it was over at 7.45 when I managed to bribe them up to bed, and I sat in my room in the quiet for 20 mins before going back downstairs to face the adults again. I just needed some time for myself, and all was fine. I poured away the wine they left behind and am now about to go to sleep. Have been pondering the fact that I found it all so hard to cope with and was a bit too shouty, and I do think I would have found it easier if I was numbing with wine. But then I wouldn't be sat in bed as I am now feeling calm and okay, I would have drunk a bit more than I wanted and be feeling miserable if not now then in the morning...

Teapot you coped magnificently! Much better than I would have done I suspect!

Tonight I braved a trip to a fair in a city a long drive away (think horrible vertiginous rides and noise and lights ) with three teenogres. Lovely Friend (parent of another teen who went) and I sat in nice hotel and chatted and caught up. She drank a glass of wine (she has no problems with just one!) while I had coffee. We had a lovely conversation with each other, and also chatted to some other parents of other teens who were also, like ours, wasting money on horrid fairground rides and throwing up fairground junk food enjoying themselves outside at the HUGE fair.

And I came home and had nice food and drank fizzy water :) I have a huge headache due to fair noise, but oh the difference between this year and last year! (No alcohol involved!)

glad, teapot, your recent events show us exactly why we should stay dry, life is so much better without that poison we can't help but consume, but in the end it consumes us and the improved life we could have.

bam and vxa, don't beat yourself up, you're back here so at least you have the will to change things, if not yet the willpower. I really thought I'd nailed it this time and I too have had a few blips, but as teapot said 'at least I've got back up facing the right direction' and that's a huge improvement on previous attempts to change things and each time I get back up I feel stronger and more resolute.

teapot, thank you especially for your kind words. Unfortunately, I have been here before. My last divorce was a blur, I weighed 6 and half stone by the time I came out the other side (I'm almost double that now). I have drank through most of my second marriage, apart from when I was pregnant/BF so it was probably doomed from the start.

I have the day off work today so plan to enjoy some well earned me time, after I've cleaned house of course! Made a head start on that last night so not too much to do. Wednesday was always my 'weak' day but I've got past that now. Feeling good this morning, waking up sober is the best feeling ever.