Good morning you brave, wonderful ladeeez,
elba I find it so frustrating that all I can give you is words on a screen because I feel so much for you because I was you not so long ago.
I'm incredibly embarrassed and ashamed to admit that when I first started posting I was drinking up to 2 bottles a night every night and still thought I was not a binge drinker!!!! Shock horror. When I first started reading I thought proper binge drinking involved being out every weekend making big giant mistakes, dancing on tables, flirting inappropriately, falling over, fighting with my dh, embarrassing myself and others and waking with utter shame. So In my denial I was drinking up to 140 units a week of supposed controlled drinking (I'm pink with shame but as you've been so honest so should I). Of course I didn't go out any weekend as I'd rather sit in my overly worn seat on the couch drinking alone. I now know I wouldn't dare go out and show my bloated body straining out of my clothes, God forbid I might have to share wine, sip not gulp, and imagine wasting that glorious high with actual eating, these babes are fools!!!!!!
I also find it hard to write that for me there was much worse to come. I now know I was bipolar,a consequence of crippling PND. I was coasting on that level of alcohol, it brought me down when I was hyper and brought me up when I was darkly depressed, then came the crash.....,, I began drinking by day, by night, during the night, I once lost 2 weeks in a blackout, I know I managed to get to the shops but God knows how. My parents took care of my girls and at first believed I was just depressed then realised I was bloody paralytic the whole time. I've been uncouncious, my amazing dad had to break into my first floor flat to check I was still alive, I was filthy at times, covered in my own vomit and believed I had nothing left to give this world. I would eventually find my way back, go through horrendous withdrawal, unspeakable withdrawals, then we would all pretend it never happened and never would again and then 4-6 weeks it would happen all over again.
Eventually as my episodes got so close to possible death (Honestly looking back so close it makes me break out in s sweat and shudder at the memory) my dh took me to casualty a withered, pathetic version of myself. Every muscle in my body ached, I think my organs were screaming inside me to stop and that's when my recovery began.
I'm not telling you this to scare you because I now know I'm bipolar and that's what caused the dramatic swings in my behaviour and my coping abilities, I want you to know that there's no point you can't recover from, no shame in your alcohol intake, I could never have imagined a day without alcohol, hell an hour some days, I didn't dare to look forward and couldn't bear to look back!!! I was in no mans land.
So fast forward a year and 4 lapses later (last one in October) I am AF and loving it. Life isn't miraculously better but I am and that's the only bit of life I can actually control and that's hard to accept, still hard.
Anyhow I look like a different person, a bit bigger due to the bipolar meds but I go the gym, do yoga, go horse riding, read books but most importantly I am the Mum, daughter and wife these amazing people around me deserve, and I like myself, I'm really very nice and no amount of wine tastes as good as saying that.
This magical bus has given me love, hope and forgiveness and I think your and all the brave babes posting are amazing and courageous and searingly honest and that strength will translate to success, I just know it xxxxxx