Good morning, my delightful and thoughtful sober Undies!
Fradley, I'm happy you bounced back so quickly. All of the thought and care may at times seem like a lot of effort but it is so worthwhile.
WWS, happy you have the weekend off! Too bad about the rain but you'll have lots of sunny weekends and rain is a blessing too :-)
BF, my dear, I hope you know we all care about you and a relapse is not a moral failing. Coming right back here is a really good first step. If you can care about yourself as much as we do, then I know you can get whatever help you need. No shame, no blame!
Carlos, always good to see you and I enjoy your sober wisdom.
Toots, I carefully read your posts because you have much good stuff to share :-)
Key, sending good vibes for your mother's visit. If it becomes difficult, just pop in here. We didn't get to where we were in 90 days and it does usually take longer than that to get really comfortable. I love how I feel now!
Glee, hard to say for sure what happened. During the last 4 years of that 13 I had 3 drinks - only away from home and when I wasn't driving. As a matter of fact, I was on cruises over the Christmas holidays - one drink per cruise. That worked well and I had no thoughts of drinking any other time. Then I had gastric bypass surgery (the traditional type) and a year later I tried one glass of wine "to make sure I wouldn't pass out or otherwise make a fool out of myself". At least, that was my perceived rationale! That was the start of a 3-year spree and it has been h*11 to get past that. I think that there were several things at work:
1. The beast was most definitely still lurking!
2. The gastric bypass changed biochemical factors in such a way that I am now even more at risk than I already was. They used to think it was "transfer of addiction" from eating to drinking but they have more recently discovered that there are other physiological changes contributing strongly. The incidence of alcoholism among those who have had the "RNY" gastric bypass is double normal, thus very high risk even without prior alcoholism. For me, it was (without knowing it) almost a foregone conclusion.
3. I have severe PTSD and substance abuse tends to be more common among those of us with this condition. So I think that except for family history, the deck was completely stacked against me being a normie.
4. I had just retired.
There are far worse things people deal with!
I know that I absolutely cannot drink, ever!
Hi to all!