Houndheart

Congratulations on Day 11 next30!!! That is awesome. I just hit 10 weeks thanks to this place. And I just figured out that I have saved at least $770 so far not buying wine daily! Of course waking up sober is the best side effect of not drinking....but the cash aint too shabby either!

Cornczech

Man, one thing about reading the posts here....I am certainly not unique in my habits!!! I too have (I am still drinking, though trying to wind down to nothing) a few stores I frequent...I live in a BIG city, so aside from a few recognized faces who I KNOW look at me with that, " that chic's got a PROBLEM....!!", I am just another face in a sea of faces. When I first started to relapse several months after rehab, I tried everything to hide the crushed beer cans, (imagine this little gal stomping on beer cans like a redneck....at least I don't crush them on my forehead, I guess.....), from my husband...hid them in my sock drawer, in my shoe rack...you name it...then I would try to sneak them out with the regular trash....
As bums and everyone else can dump their garbage into our bin, it is AMAZING to see how many brown bags are sitting in my trash bin while I am trying to hide MY shame.....

FinDuVin

Well, not only did I "invent" a teenage family who drank all my booze, I also claimed to be the organizer of various focus groups and other activities that implied lots of people to buy booze for. What an idiot I must have seemed like.

Toronto68

Hound, it's great that you have passed 10 weeks!

Fandy

i often wonder if the revenue has gone down in the liquor store across the street from my house? or if they wonder what happened to me?

love the story about the invented teenagers and focus groups....I was never THAT clever, I just a lot of "company".....snort.

I was always worried about the opinion of the recycling guy....our stuff gets picked up from each house...every recycling pick-up day, my extra huge can (with wheels) was loaded with wine bottles....now it's almost empty...catfood cans are much smaller.

FrankBarone

Not quite the same but I've often did it with different bars. I have a few where I'm well known but would always avoid each one for a week or so to avoid being reminded of what I'd been up to the previous time I'd been in.

Houndheart

Jim---very creative indeed! LOL

Houndheart

Fandy---Was that a special ordered Extra Large Recycle Bin with Wheels?

Houndheart

Thanks T-68. I am getting there. Today, Today, Today....and all of a sudden...10 weeks. That is amazing to me....

I was just done with feeling how I had been feeling.

next30

I tried to figure out what I will save from not drinking but all you can figure is the booze itself. For me that was 30-60 bucks a week. Not to mention mixers, asprin, energy drinks, things I broke because of being drunk, things I bought online and found out a few days later when they showd up at the door. That was always interesting.

BurningChrome

Hehe :-) So glad to see this post and realize how common this topic/issue is! I live in VA where we have state run ABC stores, there were 4-5 around where I lived and worked, I kept a little coded letter on my calendar at WORK, so I would know which store to go to next... When you get to that point, you just KNOW you have a problem! 2/20/2010 was my last drink. Gets easier by the day but I sure do miss my daily buzz... It's Far too easy to recall all the fun times and far too easy to forget/ignore the bad times, embarassment to family and friends, the low self esteem, etc., etc... This is a harder road but life I think will be far more fullfilling (and I only have to watch TV shows once instead of 3-4 times ;-)
Stay strong!
..Mike

LifeIs

oh yea,

I used to buy my wine in 5 lire demijohns. Never the same place within a week or so. Or, if I did the rounds to quick, then I would chat with the people and tell them how I was having "visitors" coming.... Oh gosh, I wonder if anyone fell for that....

Of course it is always difficult to get the empties out of the house for re-fill and not have the neighbors see. I think a lot of my time was spent sneaking bottles in and out....

Geez, glad that's over with!

LovesToTravel

I hid my empties all over the house. It has been almost six months and I found 2 bottles the other day. In two different cupboards! It is reassuring that we were not alone in doing these crazy things. Before SR I thought I was.

Fandy

I bumped this up for the newer members who may not have seen it...after reading Atman's thread.

Grace2

I can relate to that. I even used to say to the check out girl, when purchasing my wine, that it wasn't for me, it was a birthday present for a friend!! How obvious I must have looked!

Peter G

Here in Singapore they sell booze at convenience stores, and on my block there are a few around that keep a smallish supply available. So I would rotate here as well, but usually it was out of need alone, as I would literally drink one store out of their entire booze supply every few days. I started off worrying about what the owners thought, but eventually I couldn't have cared less - although I had to find alternatives to feed my lunacy.

Had my system worked down to 3 different stores - one of the stores usually had when the other had not. Funny how that seemed so normal to me, less than 2 months ago.

Hope4Recovery

I pretty much stuck with three bars - one close to work, one close to home, one in between. The one thing I miss is the female bartenders. I would rarely get loaded in public so I really didn't care. I'd have 2 - 4 beers at the bar after work, pick up a six pack at the bar on the way home from work, and go to the bar near my house on Friday and Saturday night. Never went to the liquor store - maybe once or twice a year. Also didn't get really loaded the majority of the time since i stuck with beer and could drink tons of it. Despite sticking with beer, i became physically addicted and drank pretty much every night for the past 2 years. Now i am embarrassed to go eat at the bar near my home without drinking which kind of sucks because the food is very good. I'm staying away from bars for now. Not a good place at this point for me.

Toronto68

I tried the Rate This Thread feature for the first time (on this one). This was indeed a good one, and I liked seeing all the people coming in to say they used to think they were the only "genius" in the world to have lived through this one example of _nonsense_.

sobermax

HAHAHA! So familiar.

If sober, I used to rehearse my casual 'just dropping by cause I'm having a lovely party' demeanour on the way to the shop, buy whatever I wanted, pay for it then pretend to have forgotten the extra bottle I had been asked to buy for someone else. EVERY TIME! If drunk, I didn't care at all.

Also, I'd buy as many vodka miniatures as I could, neck them on the way home and dump the bottles in my neighbours' bin so my wife could only discover the wine.

Stang

I didn't give a sh!t.

The girl on night shift at the local convenience store would have my Budweiser ready when I got to the window. I had beer cans sitting out on the porch, I walked my dog drunk....I just did not care. I guess thats the other whacked alcoholic way of thinking.