Mags1

Morning, itchy, if you wrote a book, I would read it.

Glad you got sorted, Dee.

Happy Sunday to all, I've two weeks off now with hubby, just catching up at home with chores and having day trips. Thinking of a barge for a day at Skipton, sounds nice and relaxing.

InParticular

I still have the fascination. I wish I didn't but I do. I still miss it. I am terrified of picking up again, because i KNOW what it would mean. But the funny thing is my brain tells me it would make my life easier, even though I know it is exactly the opposite. It is loneliness and boredom speaking, my AV is choosing this moment of weakness to attack me. I have to say I'm closer to drinking right now than I have been in a long time. I'm starting to get the angry, resentful sorry for myself feelings that I remember from the first year. Like, "why me?" It's lame and I hate it. And I feel like after almost 34 months sober, shouldn't I be a bit stronger than this? How can I suddenly feel so weak again? It is depression, definitely, playing with me.
I just wish I was stronger, sometimes. And I'm scared because I don't have my support system here.
Sorry I've been such a thread-hijacker, lately. I want to say thanks for all the support here, you guys. It is really helping me.

I wonder how LB is doing with her new little one? She must be so busy/tired. Probably writing on here is the last thing she is thinking about right now. But I hope she knows we're all rooting for her and thinking about her!

Dee, you're moving back to the city? Are you excited? That's a big deal.

Dee74

Thoughts are one thing IP - acting on them is another.
So far you've been plenty strong enough.

I don't see any reason why that shouldn't continue

You have 24/7 support here and theres at least some English language AA:

Alcoholics Anonymous Berlin - Meetings of the English speaking fellowship of AA in Berlin, Dresden and Leipzig

not sure on SMART or LifeRing or anything else but I do know they have online meetings


you don't need to test the waters again - others have done for you
There's no answers back the way you came - if there were you wouldn't be here

D

Jeni26

Hi all. Just popping in to touch base.

IP...you have taken on so much. To move to a different country with no place to live or job to go to..to travel independently..to mix with people who all speak a different language..wow. You have already achieved so much!

I wonder if it's that feeling of isolation that is triggering these drinking thoughts? Maybe the solution is to find support and friendship where you are. You might indeed find that at English speaking AA groups. Whether you want to follow the philosophy or not, at least there are other sober people and you might be able to forge friendships with others and extend your social life.

It seems to me that you are doing really well. Our AVs do indeed pick times when we are stressed or vulnerable to talk to us. Ignore the voices. They lie. Always.

I'm still sober and coping with a stressful time much better than I was. My Dad is receiving hospice care at home and I'm with my parents most days. It feels the right thing to do but is emotionally draining. But there are good things happening too..my daughter passed her exams and got accepted into her first choice university. I'm so pleased for her but God, am I going to miss her.

Big changes ahead for me. Within the next few months I will lose my Dad, have my daughter leave home, leave a job I've had and loved for the past 12 years, and move into another job which is closer to home.

Change is unsettling. I'm not very good at it, and like you IP, my AV has been screaming at me. I had to double up my efforts in sobriety. I have leaned on support, been to see my Doctor, and been put on meds to help with stomach pains (diagnosed as IBS brought on by stress). This med has had the side effect of curing my insomnia! That has plagued me forever.

So I'm sleeping better, praying, meditating, and talking to sober support. And I'm really practising gratitude, because there is always something to be thankful for....and I've got a lot. I get little flurries of panic every now and again, and I know it's time to re-focus when I do.

Love to you all. Sorry I haven't got time to answer you all individually..but I think of you often xxx

Dee74

Sorry I forgot to comment IP - yeah I am excited...things will likely be a lot more social for me there....

I will miss the slow pace here tho...

Jeni - the support here won't change
D

Jeni26

Dee...big changes for you too. Positive ones by the sound of it. How wonderful.

I hope the move goes as smoothly as possible. Maybe you need a faster pace of life and more social time? Everything happens for a reason.

Thanks. I know SR will always be here for me. This is a very special place and I never move far away from it.

Dee74

Thanks Jeni...the fear of a few weeks ago has gone. I learnt a lot from that.

As rough as things might be ahead, I feel certain you'll find gold amongst the stones too.

Take care
D

feeling-good

Toots - thanks for asking, neice in law has continued to show improvements but has still not opened her eyes... every improvement is a baby step but still considered significant, so that's good news.

It's quite hard to be supportive from afar (this part of the family live in the USA) but prayer and talking about it seems to help. Thank you to everyone here for your prayers and kind thoughts.

Nothing else to write but all is fairly good otherwise

Dee74

You and your family have my prayers too feeling-good
D

dorothyparker

Feeling-good, I'm sending prayers from this side of the ocean!

IP, I moved to London when I was 19 and it was super hard but today, these years are the very best of my life. It seems to me I was fearless but if I analyse, I was truly nostalgic too. I took some classes and that helped a lot. And then, I spent my days going to museums and galleries. Berlin has a huge music scene and tons of free gigs to attend to at night in cabarets and bars. At least now, not drinking is much more "trendy" now.

Itchy, it did help to read your post and see the reasons people relapse. On your list mine would be: I'm miserable anyway, and wanting to end it all with alcohol (as it is a slow form of suicide). There's also, I'm miserable, alcohol will soothe that or will not make it much worse. You're right to point out the progressive sneaky aspect of the disease. We seem to be OK about drinking and suddenly, it becomes a tyrant, obligatory as you said.
Reading Allan Carr helped me see that. and btw I would read your book on alcohol. Have you ever thought of writing one?

Dee, I'm not sure what the big smoke is (fires in Australia?) or a party like scene ? but I do hope you and your partner will find new cool aspects to living there.

Have a great Sunday.
Dottie.
xx

InParticular

I'm slowly getting out more, baby steps! I just was walking along a pathway near my place and followed some thumping music and people, suddenly found myself at Berghain, which many consider the best dance club in Europe at the moment. It is HUGE! It used to be a power station and is legendarily hard to get into. I hung around for a minute then continued my walk. Four pm and people everywhere, a few years ago I would have been right in the thick of it--makes me feel old and I'm still young! It's ok I know I'll find my groove somewhere. I found a nice park with a cafe, lots of people playing sports and hanging out in the sun, I had a sparkling water and read my book, it was lovely.
Tomorrow is the first day of my job! I am getting picked up at 8am by my boss to take me shopping for tools and boots etc.
Dot I don't think not drinking in Berlin is very trendy haha. But I will keep an eye out for that. I am really trying to practice patience; it's not going to all happen at once. I think my relapse reason would be feeling isolated and using it as a way to connect with people.
Oh I got a job managing the marketing for a tech startup out of Napa Valley in California! Exciting! I will be working lots now so I don't think boredom will be a problem. And hopefully I won't be here complaining as much either.

Itchy

Jeni,
You are so much more now. I think your misgiving might be because you knew you could do it all along and wasn't sure if it was what you really wanted.

We've stayed here and curtailed our travels to be here for her parents, our only remaining ones. Her mom went from healthy and still working in her own home beauty shop, to losing too much weight in agonizing pain with doctors medicating her to no avail. We got her to the better hospital in the area and she has been there a week. It turns out her spleen was very enlarged and she had one lung filled with fluid around it! They finally found she has non Hodgkin's Lymphoma and has now been in hospital for 9 days and they have her hydrated and eating again. Despite that she looks like those holocaust survivors. She had not been able to keep food down for a month we found. They put in a shunt and she got her first chemo Thursday. Despite all that with a quart of fluid removed from her lung sacs, and IV hydration, she is able to rest and keep food down. It took a week for her I/O to start working again. But she is recovering. I told her I'd shave my head when she loses her hair. She thinks I'm kidding but I did that with a college buddy who had to do chemo and ten years later he is fine. Only problem is I'm not one of those guys who look better head shaved, and I have a full thick head of hair!

My FIL has been occasionally getting lost driving and he just lost it when his wife looked to be dying. It turns out she has been keeping most of his issues under wraps. He is undeniably becoming demented or early stage Alzheimer's or both. They live three miles from the hospital and he ended up 15 miles away in another town trying to go see her. He is messing up on his meds so her brother who lives next door and she are taking him to and from the hospital. Meanwhile our cancer patient is making plans with my wife, her daughter to change living wills and get her to take over collecting from tenants and paying bills as he can no longer comprehend why no check numbers are next to auto pays and ATM withdrawals. They are not wanting, but now her mom is worried her dad is going to completely mess up their finances so she is having my wife, her daughter, take over for now. Her son my BIL is terrible with money and lives with his family on their property, so he can take care of the property, and ferry his dad, but it looks like my SH is going to cover as long as needed. Her dad, fortunately recognizes he has a major problem. So he's not a problem yet, if ever. He is more afraid of having a problem driving and s relieved to have some help and stop hiding it all. My MIL has known the extent of his problems for a while without confiding in anybody. She is relieved to get to work with her daughter protecting assets and keeping any lawyers out of it. Thank goodness for their cooperation in their own care. From her attitude I think my MIL has a few more wins in her. My FIL, who hopefully never gets belligerent, well, he won't be getting better.

We are doing great with it and they are as good as they can be. It is one day at a time. It has been rough on her suddenly having both her folks mortality slap her in the face at once. But she's doing what needs to be done and took off work for a week for the crisis stage. We are going to handle the inevitable fine. And don't have to fight them or put them in care yet. Her Grandma we kept in our home until she did not know who she was, her husband was gone so she could not stay alone. It looks like they will get to stay home with some family support. And it really looks good for her mom if she keeps improving. Her doctor did no tests and convinced her it was degenerated disks and spine. Then did the addictive drugs for pain and then the withholding because of addiction. She actually wasn't but now is getting her actual problem diagnosed. All this dropped in my wife's lap within a month. Glad we got her to a different doc.

I think MDeities many times consider geriatric medicine a waste of resources and treat patients minimally. It does not help that we have a right wing conservative religious right that promotes us versus them. It seems that unless wealthy or a deacon of a church, we get changed from an us to a them at 80. All of the over 65 folks are on Medicare here and it seems they get treated second rate by some MDeities too. If a doc is reading this, you know what an MDeity is, only if you are not one. Thank goodness the real docs outnumber the MDeities today.

Rant over. We are great, life is a cycle, and we are experiencing a changing of the guard, with both shifts planning for no surprises or problems for the next family watch. I hope we can do as well running the family.

Hi Toots!

DP, you are more than you realize too. Thanks. You make me feel like my parking stub is always going to be validated. More below.

IP! Isn't it strange how the irrational is so believable with our set ups to bail on sobriety. Our reasoning isn't reasonable, just believable. Once we drink we don't give a spit, at least I didn't. The only reason I stayed moderated is that I find going past a gentle buzz extremely horrible and unpleasant. One drink over and as much as I wanted to keep drinking the ill feeling of alcohol made me stop and slow down until I was again just buzzed and stopped rising towards slurring and stumbling. I did not moderate, but wasn't running away from anything either. I have had all my needs met my whole life and felt like it was all fun because I gravitated to and did what I loved! But it gradually took more to get and maintain that buzz. Before I quit work to drink fulltime it took four beers to get my buzz. It is progressive even for us inherently stable and at cause people. See I let it in, and when I felt too much buzz switched to a half shot in a tumbler with lots of ice until my buzz dropped but I never rebelled against myself. It was like I was making my dry mouth satisfied, and my mind was too because my alarms were going off that my buzz was becoming unpleasant!

I have no escape clause and found reading the relapse threads not only not threatening to read anymore, but they helped make my fear of relapsing cause one, ( the alcoholics reading will understand that irrational statement) to go away entirely!

I learned, defined as a change in behavior. Once I read into each the root excuse or reason we told ourselves, they really only boiled down to one.

Deep down, and not subconsciously either, each had not become a non-drinker. Every person who relapses had their fingers crossed from the start. They wanted the option, the escape clause, however put, to allow them to get sober long enough to get well enough to get sick again.

I don't care if it is three days, three months, three years, or three decades sober, they were knowingly only taking a break from drinking. All they need is an irrational but believable-to-them fulfillment of their mystical premonition that there is a cause besides us.

What change in behavior and thinking do I have? From day one I was disgusted with alcohol in all forms. I had my whole life refused any narcotic pain relievers because they messed up my abilities, impaired me. I simply found out the hard way that even though I still hated getting drunk, and kept it at a buzz, really, that my body went into massive tremors, shaking, vomiting my first coffee with scotch doubles in it to stop the shaking. Which were really bad mornings because I was coughing from three packs a day. Had anyone seen me all swollen faced but pale, spilling coffee all over the table but desperately trying to keep it down to become normal again. Not drunk, just buzzed took drinking in the morning to be marginally functional. But my body was losing the battle for damage control, barely keeping me strong but weaker by the month.

I never did quit normally. After a year of daily fails to stop I decided if I could just get detoxed, just that much of a headstart, and safely clean systems with no alcohol in me, I would be able to let my non-drinker out that had been internally developing for two years, since I am a doer not a talker. My belief became if I don't quit I would be dead after one more year like the previous two. I gave myself fully to "never again" the day I woke up, had only three shots in three coffees to be able to be sober enough to drive to the hospital, and checked in. I would only notice alcohol once in a while and think how my fairly new alcoholic self would have gotten spifaced when a month later my younger brother dropped dead at 56 of a massive MI. And he was a non-smoker, rare drinker, and runner in great shape. Even his doc was shocked. I used to travel a lot and drink a lot before and during long flights, not from fear but because a slight buzz enhanced the fun. I took a commuter flight over to our regional hub Dallas, and found my connecting flight to his town broke. There were no other connecting flights from JFK to upstate NY where they lived. To add insult to injury American Airlines the booked me said that they were not responsible to get me back home. I had to wait for several hours for them to finally realize they blew it. They at first acted like I was being unreasonable in not accepting a flight the next day arriving five hours after his funeral. Then flew me home. This was one month after I got free of alcohol. I grinned at myself because I did think that anyone would blame me if I drank in that airport then. And all that talking on the phone had me parched so I headed over the nearest bar and had a tall cool drink of Coke regular which was special because I normally drank diet. I needed the sugar energy. I had no desire to drink alcohol a even a mild buzz would make me less able to deal with the jerks at AA. (American Airlines! - get your mind out of the bottle! )

I have no "reasons" or conditions in reserve ready made to excuse my letting the alcoholic me back into my life. I toasted my kid brother called the family and explained the situation and that I couldn't get there from here.

I was not surprised that, if anything, the thought of drinking right then would be just plain silly. No great drama, certainly no heroics in this story. When anon-drinker all their life runs into a problem do they first think of drinking? Not no but heck no! Like I did, they fix the problem, not the blame. Blame the absence of alcohol for the intensity of my grief? No. My only thought was how stupid it would be trying to balance my drinking and problem solving which was impaired when buzzed. My actual attention to alcohol was limited to about 30 seconds of enjoying the absence of any urge to drink.

Then later the idea of relapse sounding inevitable scared me, but then I saw through that as just another "reason." Again I felt confidant because deep down in my soul I am a warrior and scholar, and brutally honest with myself. After dusting away the cobwebs of the library and study of my mind I found no ogres or demons hiding in the corners. Everything was out of place and gave me fits trying to put it all back in order as it took a few years of leaving things where I dropped them that I had to figure out new places for some of my old favorites, now that I could fully comprehend and enjoy every nuance again. But it took a couple of years to clean up that mess in my mind. Nowhere I like and respect the Id of my self again.

You see, I don't want or need alcohol. I learned, defined as an observable change in behavior. Not just something to repeat because it is popular or expected. Not for SR, AA, or any friend who supported me through my PAWS here, family or friend. I just like a tidy place, inside and out. Always have. Nothing special, just another life in motion, enjoying the trip because the destination is the same for us all. Ignoring that, just makes it impossible to live enough, in time. (triple entendre int.)

zerothehero

I decided to crash your party to see what the year plussers talk about. It gives me hope. I'll be joining your club after Christmas. Woo-hoo!

Itchy

Mags darlin, thank you. Its a better world with you and many here in it!

DG0409

Hi Zero- always good to see you around.

DrakeCKC

Greeting fellow Overs Hope all of you are having a sober and pleasant evening, night or day, whichever fits your time zone. My dog and I returned from a walk and we sat in our condo's garden watching the bats and the birds feast on insects at twilight. A muggy night, the bugs are everywhere!

Last week, my therapist suggested I see my MD as I have been particularly down and negative. So I did and now I am on an antidepressant again. Been a long time. He chose zoloft as it also is prescribed for anxiety.

Oh joy.

You see, I should be a guinea pig. If a medicine has a negative side effect, I will have it. So far I have several. I will give it a whirl and if it is unbearable.. I will suggest we try again. I do think that I am not as gloomy as I was, but it is still early. My 3rd day on them.

Nothing else new and newsworthy here. Just to the Overs!

DrakeCKC

We'll keep the light on for you Zero!

Itchy

Drake,
It sucks that you have to deal with that, but really is great that you are taking care from yourself! I hope it settles in and the side effects go away. I had some PAWS left after a year too. Dee has said it many times. It took more than a year or three to get here, and the trip back can take as long. I was still seeing noticeable improvements, in hindsight, my second year of recovery.

InParticular

Drake, good luck with the Zoloft, I hope the side effects aren't too bad. Just take it easy. That sounds nice with your dog. Oh my GOSH I miss my dog more than anything. I think about going home just to be with him. Like he's my kid or something.
So I started work yesterday and it's so awesome. Landscape drawing is so fun, and working from home is even better! I think I'll only get to work from home a couple days a week but actually that will work for my restless mind.
Itchy it sounds like your family has a strong healthy hold on what's happening, dealing with it like champs. I wish my family was like that! I just got an email apology from my brother for trying to force me to speak to my mother who I haven't talked to in over three years. Sigh. She wanted to be my facebook friend and doesn't understand why that's inappropriate. Seriously???
FG how are you?
Dee--it's comforting to know that you are still learning like the rest of us. Even the all knowing Dee still has lessons to learn, there's hope for the rest of us!

DG0409

Hi Overs.

I am settled in back at home now after my work trip. I have several large work projects going on at the moment. Thus far in recovery, I've been doing kind of the minimum to keep things rolling at work, but now it's time to ramp up my game. I'm going to be very busy for as far into the future as I can wrap my mind around. The tinge of anxiety that I feel thinking about it reminds me that I need to stick to my recovery techniques- taking things one day at a time, remembering to take time to take care of myself like not skipping meals and taking a little time to center myself regularly.

I'm looking forward to a productive day.