Day 6
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Join Date: Jun 2011
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Day 6
Hi everyone, it's my long workday today (7AM-10PM) and I'm a third of the way through it, on lunch break, thought I'd check in. Today is the 6th day without a drink. I stayed up too late last night like a fool, but I was completely entrenched in Caroline Knapp's "Drinking: A Love Story" and stayed up until almost 1 AM reading it til I was done! When my alarm went off at 6 AM I thought I was hung over because I was SO tired. Which is funny because there have been too many nights to count that I have stayed up with a bottle or two of wine and gotten up with 5 hours of sleep. The difference? Today, I'm just a little tired. A little? This is something I thought about.
I have spent so much time being hung over, so many days at 50% or less of who I am and what I can do, that I just called it "tired". Since I was actually hung over EVERY day, my sober "tired" is my drinking "normal". Because my drinking "tired" was actually hung over and my drinking "hung over" was actually "incapacitated". I have a fairly flexible job and I'm naturally very good at it so I have been able to just scrape by and do the bare minimum, leaving plenty of time to be inebriated, and plenty of denial and lies. People think I'm "tired" because I work hard!
"Drinking: A Love Story" is amazing, I recommend to anyone here who has not read it yet, and especially to women. For me, who suffered from anorexia/bulimia actively for at least 8 years, coinciding with cocaine and alcohol abuse, it was particularly moving. I even hail from the same part of the country as Caroline and have lived in all of the cities she mentions. It was so profound and very important for me to read. I'm so glad she got sober and shared her story with us.
Last night I wanted a glass of wine. I was preparing for this morning's 7 AM work meeting, and had just eaten dinner. It was a rather intense feeling, a physical feeling in my stomach, like "you just ate this food, you MUST wash it down with wine" and I started to feel claustrophobic in it. I swallowed, and breathed, and focused my eyes, then drank some water through a straw, and started looking at pictures I took of my trip to the hot springs, then, when I started to feel better, I organized my closet. After that, I was able to finish preparing for the meeting. This was a really, really strong trigger. I had some physical feelings the first couple of days, but very mild. This one, the evening of day 5, furthers the understanding I have from reading "Drinking" that my relationship to alcohol is rooted in my eating disorder. "HALT" is thus a little different for me.
I think it's going to be really important for me to keep perspective and remember how far I have slid. When Caroline spoke about when the slide began, talking about a beginning point where she/others just threw in the towel, I reflected that I know when mine was. I can think back on two different points in my life where I abandoned varying amounts of myself to the spiral down, thus catapulting the move down. I've stepped off the elevator and I'm sure I can find another low, but I want up. My other low might be death and it's not melodramatic to say that.
One last thought on day 6: I'm a very unique individual. Of course, we all are. What I mean is that I look different, act different, and always have. I was even voted "most unique" in my graduating high school class. (Not "prettiest" "smartest" etc, lol) This made me feel fairly ashamed when I was younger, because I wanted to be pretty, well liked, fit in, etc. I learned to embrace some of it. This is another part of being "unique". I'm literally surrounded by a world of alcohol. It's in my work, my family, friends, etc. And I'm not going to do it anymore, and I'm embracing that. I'm different. I have a really cool glass water bottle with a funky red case on it, and I've taken to putting fancy bright colored straws in those big Perrier bottles. I've already gotten a few comments, and I kind of like it.
In other words, I'm remembering that I'm pretty cool. And trying to create little habits that reinforce and manifest that identity. I'm not the chick with the funky haircut and the semi-permanent wine breath who always wears enormous sunglasses and packs breathmints. I'm the bright eyed woman who has the funky straws in her cool waterbottles. It's a good start, a reinforcement, another way I'm moving slowly to rewire my brain. Day 6... not going to drink today. I hope you all stay sober with me today!
xoxo
Bexxed
I have spent so much time being hung over, so many days at 50% or less of who I am and what I can do, that I just called it "tired". Since I was actually hung over EVERY day, my sober "tired" is my drinking "normal". Because my drinking "tired" was actually hung over and my drinking "hung over" was actually "incapacitated". I have a fairly flexible job and I'm naturally very good at it so I have been able to just scrape by and do the bare minimum, leaving plenty of time to be inebriated, and plenty of denial and lies. People think I'm "tired" because I work hard!
"Drinking: A Love Story" is amazing, I recommend to anyone here who has not read it yet, and especially to women. For me, who suffered from anorexia/bulimia actively for at least 8 years, coinciding with cocaine and alcohol abuse, it was particularly moving. I even hail from the same part of the country as Caroline and have lived in all of the cities she mentions. It was so profound and very important for me to read. I'm so glad she got sober and shared her story with us.
Last night I wanted a glass of wine. I was preparing for this morning's 7 AM work meeting, and had just eaten dinner. It was a rather intense feeling, a physical feeling in my stomach, like "you just ate this food, you MUST wash it down with wine" and I started to feel claustrophobic in it. I swallowed, and breathed, and focused my eyes, then drank some water through a straw, and started looking at pictures I took of my trip to the hot springs, then, when I started to feel better, I organized my closet. After that, I was able to finish preparing for the meeting. This was a really, really strong trigger. I had some physical feelings the first couple of days, but very mild. This one, the evening of day 5, furthers the understanding I have from reading "Drinking" that my relationship to alcohol is rooted in my eating disorder. "HALT" is thus a little different for me.
I think it's going to be really important for me to keep perspective and remember how far I have slid. When Caroline spoke about when the slide began, talking about a beginning point where she/others just threw in the towel, I reflected that I know when mine was. I can think back on two different points in my life where I abandoned varying amounts of myself to the spiral down, thus catapulting the move down. I've stepped off the elevator and I'm sure I can find another low, but I want up. My other low might be death and it's not melodramatic to say that.
One last thought on day 6: I'm a very unique individual. Of course, we all are. What I mean is that I look different, act different, and always have. I was even voted "most unique" in my graduating high school class. (Not "prettiest" "smartest" etc, lol) This made me feel fairly ashamed when I was younger, because I wanted to be pretty, well liked, fit in, etc. I learned to embrace some of it. This is another part of being "unique". I'm literally surrounded by a world of alcohol. It's in my work, my family, friends, etc. And I'm not going to do it anymore, and I'm embracing that. I'm different. I have a really cool glass water bottle with a funky red case on it, and I've taken to putting fancy bright colored straws in those big Perrier bottles. I've already gotten a few comments, and I kind of like it.
In other words, I'm remembering that I'm pretty cool. And trying to create little habits that reinforce and manifest that identity. I'm not the chick with the funky haircut and the semi-permanent wine breath who always wears enormous sunglasses and packs breathmints. I'm the bright eyed woman who has the funky straws in her cool waterbottles. It's a good start, a reinforcement, another way I'm moving slowly to rewire my brain. Day 6... not going to drink today. I hope you all stay sober with me today!
xoxo
Bexxed
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