day 3 for me, probably won't be able to get back online until sunday or monday, but I won't be drinking. Tonight I have a bunch of shopping/packing to do, then the next 4 days I'll be camping, no booze.
The thought of not having to worry about moderating my drinking in the future has been a relief to me the past couple days. I've spent so much energy and worry on how much I was drinking and how much I drank and how to drink less in the future, that it's really impossible to explain how any of it was worthwhile at all. I was consumed with anxiety and problems by something that is supposed to relax you. In the end, it doesn't. I'm happy to let it go.
I need to be more wary of things that trip me up. Home wine and beer brewing was a part of my life, and I have many reminders of it in conversation with friends and just in my own yard. I can't get rid of all those reminders (well maybe if sold everything, moved, changed jobs and didn't talk to old friends), but I might be able to refocus or re-purpose them. My hops vines for one are really only useful for making beer, but make an attractive climbing vine and I would really hate to kill them. Just walking by them at times can be worse than going to a restaurant in terms of the AV talking to me. For me though, it was a part of my life, and someone else can use the hops if they want I and I don't really want to tear up my yard to exorcise things I would have at one time use to make beer or ferment into wine. I need to find ways to quiet down the AV, by refocusing or if only by the passage of time. I also have a last batch of beer I had been aging, and I just plan on giving it away and getting it out of the house. Most of my batches were consumed quickly so I don't have a cellar full luckily. It's just frustratingly frequent how brewing, beer and wine come up in conversation, but we live in a drinking culture (in the US and elsewhere) so if it wasn't that it would be something else. In time, it will lessen and people stop knowing me as a homebrewer and drinker.