KC1, thank you for your thoughts... Actually, one thing I have learned it is better for me not to do is to use the children as an excuse to drink, or not to drink. I mean, I am very, very aware if I am alone with them that if something happens to them I better be sober. I am not going to lie. I have drunk in the past with them in the house - Then if I have thought I may have overdone it, I have vomited as much as possible... sorry this is really sick and too much information, probably. An then i have stayed awake close to them until I considered myself sober enough to sleep without being a danger. An still I would wake up in full panick every half an hour to check.
Fortunately, so far, they have been sick several times in the night (one of them with febrile convulsions and she hardly made a noise) and luck of all lucks I was always 100 percent sober... My problem is the hiding. If I use my kids to focus on the non-drinking I will for sure get in a big binge when they are not around. And I travel at least once a month. Every time I try to tell myself I am not an alcoholic because I do not drink everyday (although I would like to) and because I keep some control, i only need to think of what happens when I am alone... It is total chaos. My kids and my husband are keeping me 'under control' because I am too ashamed to show this to anybody. But if I do not start doing this for myself I am goingo to get to a very bad place.
It is so liberating to write about this. By the way, English is not my mother tongue. I wonder why I did not look for a forum in my own language - Is this part of my hiding too?
Wish best of lucks to all of us and see if we can get into a very sober July.