The Cutting Down / Giving Up Booze Thread (Part 14)

cathybird

Morning all, 16/21 for me please.

Barny1979

17/26 AFDs today

cathybird

Morning all, 17/21 for me today please.

Freedom_beckons

I hope anyone can help me. I haven't drank for 3 days and don't even fancy one! That's because I have reached rock bottom and stand to lose everything I hold dear to me. Not family but respect from others and I always care what other people think of me! I have read this forum with interest over the past year (but never felt it was me), well not until now! I am getting help but don't know how I let my life get this far. I hope this is anonymous and thank you for reading. Honey I want to be like you (just fast forward the years)

Wanna_Bee_Free

Freedom_beckons wrote: »

I hope anyone can help me. I haven't drank for 3 days and don't even fancy one! That's because I have reached rock bottom and stand to lose everything I hold dear to me. Not family but respect from others and I always care what other people think of me! I have read this forum with interest over the past year (but never felt it was me), well not until now! I am getting help but don't know how I let my life get this far. I hope this is anonymous and thank you for reading. Honey I want to be like you (just fast forward the years)

Hiya Feedom beckons! Wow, three days is a great start - well done and even better you don't even fancy one. Welcome to the thread, I hope you find it helpful. If you would like to set a target for the month it's never too late. Or you can choose the 1 day at a time spproach if you prefer. There are 13 days left in November.

Regarding being anonymous, you choose what to share so if that's a concern for you I'd say just be careful posting things that might give someone clues to who you really are.

If you have been reading on here you'll know I'm in no position to offer advice but I find posting on here helps me. It's likely Honeybear will be along later to offer you some sage advice.

Look forward to hearing how the weekend goes for you.

Freedom_beckons

Thanks Wanna Be Free, I thought no one would reply! I will keep you updated.

Wanna_Bee_Free

Saturdays on here you can sometimes see the tumbleweed!

Do keep me posted, have a good day.

Honey_Bear

Freedom_beckons wrote: »

I hope anyone can help me. I haven't drank for 3 days and don't even fancy one! That's because I have reached rock bottom and stand to lose everything I hold dear to me. Not family but respect from others and I always care what other people think of me! I have read this forum with interest over the past year (but never felt it was me), well not until now! I am getting help but don't know how I let my life get this far. I hope this is anonymous and thank you for reading. Honey I want to be like you (just fast forward the years)

Hi Freedom Beckons! :wave: I'm so sorry it's taken me all day to get to the Forum but I had an early start elsewhere today.

Three days is a great start and now that you've got a bit of momentum behind you, you're in a great place. My life was exactly where yours is when I stopped - if I hadn't stopped exactly when I did, my OH would have ended the relationship, and quite rightly. That would have been the end of everything that mattered to me. My behaviour the last time I got drunk was nothing short of disgusting. Let's be honest, that didn't come out of nowhere, either. My drinking had a problematic edge to it for years before that last occasion.

The good news is, you can do it. Lots and lots of people have decided they don't want to be that drunken person any more and by seeking out the support that works for them, have managed to knock their drinking on the head. It isn't as easy as falling off a log, but it's perfectly do-able if you tackle it systematiclly.

I don't have much truck with the idea that we all drink too much because we have deep-seated psychological problems that need to be addressed before we can be sober. I also don't have much truck with the idea that I am helpless when it comes to booze. I think we're all far stronger than we realise and the first thing we have to do is to empower ourselves to find all of the solutions out there and work out which ones suit us individually.

If you think you have a serious problem, in other words you get the shakes if you don't have a drink, you MUST get medical help as soon as you can - see your GP. Withdrawal is not something that anyone can or should try to tough their way through - it's a chemical imbalance and interventions are available.

If, like most of us, you're in the habit of drinking more than you should and you're tired of being that person, then gird up your loins and accept that you're going to put a fair bit of effort into changing a very bad habit for some good ones. Booze is insidious and the more you can find out about how insidious it is, the better off you'll be.

It's the wrong time of the week for you to go to your local public library to borrow every single book on the shelves on giving up booze that's available, but that's one of the things I did. It didn't cost a penny. If you're not a member already look up your local authority's website and find out how to join and where your nearest central library is for the widest choice of books on any subject. Branch libraries won't give you a lot of choice, and the more you're willing to read, the more varied the point of view, the more likely you are to find out something that resonates for you.

What you can do this weekend is start googling blogs about alcohol. I found reading blogs by women particulary helpful, and have a few favourites that I still read. If you've got kids, reading blogs by a mother will resonate more than one by a single man in his 20s, for example. I also found blogs by women who are roughly the same age as me particularly helpful, but that's just my preference.

I don't find the AA group approach helpful, but if you think you might, google AA and see what kind of meetings are available in your area. For example, I live in Plymouth and there are, I think, only two groups available in the city centre, one Open and one Closed. I considered the Open group as my fallback position - if I couldn't do this on my own, I always knew I could go along to one of their meetings. It was super-helpful knowing they were there, so thank you AA for putting that information out there, but it was so far from what I wanted to do that every time I felt a serious urge to have 'just one drink' I knew that if I did, I'd have to join an AA group - and just knowing that helped me not have that drink.

One drink, three and a half years on, is all it would take now for me to undo everything I've achieved so far, and the only way I think I'd understand myself if I took that drink would be if I were already drunk. That sounds more mad than it feels - sober, I'm much less likely to do anything that stupid; drunk, it would be absolutely what I would do because I did, for years.

While you're in the early days of giving up, don't put yourself in situations where you'd automatically drink, like going to the pub, socialising with friends that always drink when you're with them, eat dinner at the same time of the day with a glass of wine etc etc. You cannot play around with this issue if you're serious about stopping doing it, sadly. For a few weeks it means a lot of early nights so you don't feel the temptation to pour yourself one while you watch TV to relax. After a few weeks you'll be getting used to new habits to fill your time and you'll be able to dip your toe back in the water of socialising.

Work out now what you're going to do on Christmas Day when your family and/or friends expect you to have a glass of something because it's Christmas. You can tell them the truth, or you can lie and say you're on antibiotics and you can't drink with these ones. Whatever works for you is what you need to do for a few weeks while you learn to live without booze. I promise you it's worth it, but there will be times when it seems like a giant pain in the a**e and some people, frankly, make it tougher. You need to avoid those people until you're sure you can be polite to them and trust yourself not to want to have a drink just to shut them up. You are far more important than they are, so don't lose sight of that.

Start an anonymous blog if you enjoy writing (I enjoy writing but don't want to bother with a blog and I like everyone here), or post here every day if you find being accountable helps, which I find it does.

Two resources that I found absolutely invaluable are Belle at her website Tired of Thinking About Drinking, particularly her 100 Day Challenge, which you'll know I mention regularly, and an American questionnaire about where we are on the scale when it comes to problematic drinking. I can't find the questionnaire at the moment, but as soon as I have I'll post the website link.

One of the things about drinking it's important to recognise is it never, ever gets better if you have a problem with booze. Facing up to that was incredibly helpful - if I had a choice, I'd still be drinking and pretending my lapses were occasional and surprising when they occurred. Actually, by the time I stopped, they were happening fairly regularly and that situation couldn't continue.

You are 100% guaranteed of your anonymity unless you choose to say something that identifies you. If you do that and then realise you've done it by mistake, go back to that post and delete it as soon as possible. (It's more likely to happen if you drink, obviously.)

I hope something in amongst all of that is helpful. Good luck with it and keep us posted about how it's going.

Willowtree222

Freedom_beckons wrote: »

I hope anyone can help me. I haven't drank for 3 days and don't even fancy one! That's because I have reached rock bottom and stand to lose everything I hold dear to me. Not family but respect from others and I always care what other people think of me! I have read this forum with interest over the past year (but never felt it was me), well not until now! I am getting help but don't know how I let my life get this far. I hope this is anonymous and thank you for reading. Honey I want to be like you (just fast forward the years)

Hi,

You're here and have made the first step. I look forward to seeing how you're doing. There's so many supportive people in here that can help if you're needing support, someone to talk to.

Good luck on your journey to who you want to be xx

cathybird

hi Freedom Beckons - will only add to what others have already said by saying this thread is the single most helpful thing I ever found when it came to cutting back on booze. Good luck, you're certainly not alone.