The Giving Up/ Cutting Down alcohol support thread - number 13

smiley_77

Thanks for all the encouragement and well dones everyone.

I am better at dodging drink at home. But I've not been out socially due to financial situations so I don't know what challenges that will bring. Anyway wont be for a while yet. Ho hum

Barny1979

14/26 AFDs today, double smiley day

cathybird

I got home so stressed tonight, would have loved a drink, still would, but declared so have resisted. Have realized I've only got four more days to reach my goal for the month but since I will do that by the 25th that will theoretically leave me nearly a whole week of potential drinking! Thinking I might do one or two extra AFDs.

debjay

Not an AFD today but definitely a ALD. Not sure where that leaves my ALD score though

satchmo1

16/27 AFDs today. Happy weekend everyone!

ManPants

So

In bed 13/31 AF

Another day achieved and achieved easily as well. No hankerings or plotting to be avoided today. A small victory in a long battle.

Well done Honey Bear. on your resolve. I suspect I would have taken the Prosecco.

SPS X

Sandypan

Morning all, happy Saturday and because I resisted last night I've got a clear head for the mountain of things I've got to do today! I've managed to resist most evenings this week although it has been difficult and I would have loved a glass of wine or a g&t after work every night. I bought some more 0% Radler beer £1.25 in Home Bargains for 4 and that takes the craving away because like many people have said on here I don't have a stop button!! Also I have been finding that if I do have one I think we'll I may as well have a blow out tonight for not having any on the other nights!! This isn't good and I have to get out of that mindset so not drinking at all is the answer for me!

Can I have a carrot munching bunny please Shaggy, I'm also trying to lose weight! Last night I've managed 14/21, so hopefully on track for reaching my target again this month.

Sending good vibes to everyone, this thread proves the power of people coming together with a shared goal can make a massive difference on each other's lives and what is even more remarkable is that we haven't actually met!!

Arkers

Good Morning,
Not feeling 100%, asthma bad as I have a chest infection, also fairly immobile hobbling around on crutches. Went to bed early as I was all on my lonesome so another 1 AFD please Shaggy. I wasn't sure what I should set my target at so erred on the side of caution, however, I love my jumping star and carrot eating bunny!!!


Arkers x

Honey_Bear

Arkers wrote: »

Honey, I went to a similar funeral a few years ago, so I can relate to exactly what you're saying.

Thanks for saying that Arkers. I still email Belle from The 100 Day Sober Challenge every day to say I'm still sober and the email I sent yesterday was about the issue of an alcoholic's funeral where booze was apparently de rigeur. She says that the same thing happened in the same circumstances to her, at her 39 year old cousin's funeral. As Sandypan has mentioned, the combination of this thread (and for me, the other virtual support) is amazing and makes what was impossible possible, and also takes it to the next stage. Now that I know there are at least three of us who found the same ironic nonsense in the same circumstances I can relax a bit more about my reaction. So, thank you once again.

Dizzy_Imp wrote: »

Perhaps people SHOULD talk about the reasons behind untimely deaths. For a variety of reasons, I wasn't able to talk about why my first husband killed himself for a long time and I know it contributed to my excessive drinking.

I'm with you on this, Dizzy. I travelled up to the funeral with mutual friends and went to visit Jane's husbands (long story, but a lovely one) the evening before the funeral and so the subject was referred to gently, mainly because of how we feel cheated, short-changed and sad about losing her so comparatively young.

I think the time just after a death, before the funeral itself, being afraid of saying the wrong thing is uppermost in everyone's minds so we're cautious and respectful to the deceased's memory and the grief of those who were closest to the person. Jane's drinking was an open secret and everyone knew it was what had killed her. Her first husband said, very quietly just before I left the wake, 'I've never said this before to anyone, but I loved her, you know. I just hated her behaviour.' How heartbreaking is that? It sounded to me as though he was really desperate to talk honestly, so that may be a start.

What's so frustrating about what we can't say in those circumstances is that if there was a single person there (and I bet there were several) who wanted to treat her death as a wake up call and knock their drinking on the head so that something good could come out of something so desperately sad - that opportunity was lost, nothing was learned and everything carries on as it was before.

In your circumstances, Dizzy, I hope the fact that you've just put the information into the public domain means that you are now free and ready to talk and if that's a change - Good. Six years of not being able to talk about really important things because they're too challenging is too long.

stupotstu wrote: »

So

In bed 13/31 AF

Another day achieved and achieved easily as well. No hankerings or plotting to be avoided today. A small victory in a long battle.

Well done Honey Bear. on your resolve. I suspect I would have taken the Prosecco.

SPS X

Well done, StuPotStu, on the 13 days.

If it had been at the start of the process of stopping drinking, if it had been, say, in the first few months, I might have too. I'd certainly have found it difficult to say no. But it's been over 18 months and I now find the idea of drinking faintly ridiculous, so it wasn't hard at all. I just don't want to do it any more.

Stopping and starting is actually much harder than just knocking it on the head completely, which is tough for about two months and it then starts to become a rather attractive way of life. Fairly early on I found myself wandering home after a night out at the pub or a dinner, conscious that all I felt was a great sense of relief about not being !!!!!! for once, and knowing I'd wake up feeling pretty okay and not embarrassed about my behaviour.

Long before I knocked it on the head someone called Annie started a blog called A Dappled Path. She managed 60 days once but most of the time she gets as far as day three or four and then doesn't post for a day or two, or she puts the blog behind a log in wall so I lose sight of it for a few months and then ... Day 1 appears again. It sounds like hell and my heart goes out to her. That's been going on for more than two years.

So, for me the choice was always knock it on the head completely, stay stopped and find a way to live with it contentedly, or go down the road of stopping and starting and living with the risk of the best relationship I've ever had teetering on the brink of collapse, inevitably, once and for all. I chose sobriety.

19/31 please, Shaggy.

Barny1979

15/26 AFDs today Declaring early