You're doing great Jupiter.

Thanks silentrun. :wavey:

Went into town with littlest for him to pick birthday gift(s) spent every penny I had (I only took cash, no card), even his busfare (accidentally).
Decided I would have to tell the bus driver he was 4 almost 5 ( under 5s go free)
GS was outraged when I told him how I was going to get us home. :scared: No almost 7 year old who is small for his age wants to pass for almost 5
But given the choice of walking two miles home, in the rain, or going back to the shop with one of his toys he agreed it was an emergency and called for drastic action, like fibbing about his age if we were questioned (we weren't)
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I'll be in trouble if he tells his mum or dad :peek

They think I'm a delinquent to start with :salook:

Oh yeah he picked a 10 games compendium. Which was quite funny, because I was going to get him the same thing off the internet and my son said he wouldn't be interested in that! :lmao
He got this octopus football game thing.
But what finally broke my bank was this mad little cat thing that turned inside out??
It was on a barrow in the market as we walked to the bus stop. Apparently "EVERYONE at school has them" :theyareon

I wanted electronic battleships game. He was up for that, but the toy shop , quite a well known one, for some reason only had Battleships from Germany. Written in german. No english. I couldn't tell if it was the electronic version and the shop assistant didn't know (and couldn't read german either)

Quite a few of their toys were like that.

I notice stocks are down in every shop.
Can't get quite a lot of food things I was after this week.

I have my preppers cupboard well stocked but I ate all the goodies ages ago, like the crisps and chocolate. Now I can't get any multipacks of marmite crisps. Gutted :dot:

I did notice that the supermarket I go to today had no white long grain rice for the last 2 weeks or garlic or a lot of other random things but still well stocked in gin. I noticed because I had to queue for the till up the booze aisle. But wasn't tempted, felt a bit queasy looking at it after the last go at it :boggled:

That's awesome you got some grandma time in. I bet you're fun to hang out with.

You're doing it Jupiter, you're doing it for real this time.

That's so encouraging silentrun thankyou:ValA006: I feel like I'm doing it for real this time 😀 not drinking that is! Jury is still out on the smoking

Yes, I have fun with the littlest 🙂 they grow up so fast! My eldest grandson is 12 now, in secondary school doesn't want to hang out with his old grandma so much 😦. Middle one is 9 in a couple of weeks. Seems 2 minutes ago since they were babies :rohno!:
Seems 2 minutes ago my eldest was a baby and he's 38 now!
Funny how time warps, I was 18 when I had eldest and it seems 100 years ago I was 18 not 2 minutes :lmao
Although I can't get past the fact I'm still 25 in my head. Apparently we all have a hologram of ourselves in our brains and it never gets us older than 25. I read that somewhere 😆

Tired tonight. Will have a rant about why I'm so knackered tomorrow 😀

Oh yeah, talking of time I'll have 40 days tomorrow. Revisiting some of my earlier threads ..CRINGEFEST :a090: especially the ones written drunk. Was that not long over 40 days ago??
What a nightmare that whole last month of drinking was :e052:

Jupiter’s still acing it! :D

So good to read, very proud of you. Well done and let’s make it 40 more. And then many many more.

I think it's amazing you are tackling smoking too. You're healing from it and it's helping your healing from the alcohol abuse. It's my arch-nemesis. I quit for long periods then pick up again thinking it will calm me and it never does because it's always long enough that I'm no longer in withdrawal. I also have a big problem with sugar. I keep trying tho. I'm hoping I'm forging that pathway in my mind and it will click for good one of these times. It's really just a momentary feeling that gets me to go back. If I stopped getting suckered by that I really am doing the work.

I'll share this video with you if you haven't seen it yet. It is really true when it comes to drinking and I noticed it with the smoking and sugar too. I've put so much effort into learning how not to be a smoker and how to eat for my body's health that it clicks and I'm riding the bike backward effortlessly for a few weeks or months. Then something clicks back and I'm riding the bike the old way again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0

It's money making me quit silentrun. I haven't got £30 or more a week to spend on tobacco. If I had £15 at this minute I'd buy some :cry2

That video was really eye opening!!! It really brings home 1000 times more seeing the neuroplasticity in action rather than reading about it :eek:
I never ever looked at it as having to unlearn how to do anything! I knew you had to learn to do things differently stopping an addiction but not unlearn the old way in the way that video brought home so clearly!
LIke the man said "knowledge is not the same as understanding!" For the first time I understand what the brain is up against.
Thank you for posting that, I feel like a lightbulb has gone on in my head :notworthy I actually understand, although again as the video shows, it's practice that works!

I have been smoking 37 years, that pathway is mighty strong 😬


FDM...Hello my little Hollander, thank you for the flying visit :wavey:

Day 40

I haven't been counting day by day on here, because am just going to keep a weekly count.
But today is a special day for me. Just because, when I was reading on here while I was still drinking and in my black hole, then the first few days after I stopped, I saw people on here declaring they had 40 days and genuinely thought it was impossible that I would be able to do that!!! Or so my AV told me :)

I don't know why I latched onto that number as impossibly high, but I did.
Now I'm here! And it's not that I think "yes, I can relax, I've cracked it"
It's that I did something that I once was 100% convinced was impossible.
Somewhere along the line, I developed a defeatist attitude to everything. So now I will have to take a look and see what other false beliefs I have are dictating my life.

On a different note, looking forward to leaving for my daughters tomorrow, just taking a break from cleaning, because I hate coming back to a messy house so been shovelling it out all day. But I am thinking ahead to when I get back.
Like that video silenrun linked (really really struck me that video did) can't afford to take let my concentration lapse into old automatic behaviour.
In the past, when I have gone visiting or to any special away from home "do" I have been very good cutting my drinking down beforehand and not drinking while I have been away. Not even when those times like weddings and Christmas, christenings etc where everyone around me has sometimes drank for days (not alcoholically of course)
Then soon as I get back to my lonely little boring life I pick a bottle up on the way home and start drinking.

Have to be careful of that this time. Especially as when I get back, my eldest son and family, who I usually see everyday, will be in London for a few days as treat for littlest grandsons birthday.

Congrats on 40 Days!

Definitely need to plan for triggers. I skipped a few travels early on and approached family events cautiously. We are a family of heavy drinkers.

Now it is 2nd nature to go and focus on the reason for the event and not the drinking part.
I find I enjoy them much better now.
Especially the day after.
Have fun!

Thanks fishkiller I aim to have fun :) And see how huge my daughter must be by now :)

I haven't drank for at least a decade at social events. Usually because I have been pre-warned not to.

And it doesn't even bother me now people drinking around me. But every.single.time I get home, it's bye bye the rest of the week. There won't be any drinking on this visit, my daughter doesn't drink much to start with and given up completely since she became pregnant. Infact at he wedding, she got some pomegranate juice in for me to toast with and for my meal. I took a gulp and it burned on the way down, the waiting staff had mistakenly given me wine. I wasn't even tempted to say nothing and immediately got it changed. No idea why drinking never bothers me in company?!
But even when I am on a no one drinking visit somewhere, I always pick up a bottle on the way back...not this time though... first time for everything..right?

I did manage to get some money for baccy though. I CANNOT go down as crabby as I have been without them (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it) I'll try again when I get back.

Six weeks

Here early Sunday morning at my daughters house. The place is huge and really nice although parts still under completion.

I forgot to leave my keys with my son to feed the cat. So I got in touch with a neighbour who is going to pour some dried cat food through the letterbox. The cat has plenty of water and can get in and out of the cat flap to do whatever she needs to do.
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Daughter went in a total huff for a bit last night. She hasn't asked about my stopping drinking since I told her about the AA thing I tried to do in the beginning. I told her it wasn't for me, but I hadn't drank. She was all "you've tried it alone before, it didn't work" I tried AA before and it didn't work by that reasoning!!

I tried everything before apart from not drinking. Anyway I told her I said I would stop drinking, didn't say by what means.
Anyway she came around in the end

Hey J,

I'm so glad to see you have reached one of those seemingly unachievable milestones. It's really good to stop and take store every now and again, isn't it? You are wise to watch for a beast attack sometime after this visit; that little bugger is crafty as all get out.

I'm a little confused by your daughter's huff. If she hasn't asked you about drinking, how did the topic of doing it alone come up? Did she broach the subject by asking you whether you were going to meetings? I've come to realize quite late that when (non-alcoholic) people asked me that question, they really meant "Are you still sober?" But they didn't want to talk about it, not necessarily or not yet. Sort of like reaching out to the stove to see if it's still hot - it is or it isn't, and that's enough information for the time being.

My daughters remain wary, each at their own place in the spectrum. Youngest doesn't speak with me, middlest still has an eye out for the other shoe that might drop at any time, and eldest takes a trust and verify stance. In every case, when I'm on the ball enough to remember that every interaction with them needs to be all about them, things go well. Sometimes it's hard to do, and sometimes I am very self-conscious about maybe having flubbed it up, but... so far, so good. And that's the very best I can do. Don't drink and just be present.

Of course, I'm taking a wild guess at what might be happening over there; just sharing my experience in case any of it might be helpful to you.

Brilliant thinking on the letterbox solution for the cat!

O

Thanks O 🙂 Good to hear from you 🙂


Last night she asked if I was still doing AA ( because I told her about it at the time, weeks ago) and I said no, there were things I didn't agree with, like dredging up things with a stranger that were my own personal business.
As she hadn't wanted to talk about my drinking, I didn't have the chance to say I had stopped AA but haven't drank. So she went off on one as if I had gone back on my word about not drinking, even though she has never asked me if I had been drinking or not the past couple of months
Then after she had the rant about me giving up AA and not being able to do it alone in past, she wouldn't let me speak!!! (I've tried AA plenty in the past too which seemed to slip her mind!)
So I couldn't say I hadn't drank for weeks. It took an hour and a half with her saying "shush" everytime I tried to speak before I finally blew MY top and got my story out.
Then we sat in stony silence for an hour before she made a remark about the film we were watching and asked if I wanted a brew.
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Then that was it. We've been ok today, had fun 🙂 And going out for a meal tonight 🙂

To her, it looks like you are taking the first step to relapse. You're not doing it alone. I used this site for my recovery and I worked every bit as hard as someone in AA and I got free. This site isn't as active as it was 8 years ago but you still have several people here who are ready to listen as you undertake recovery. Time will prove you've escaped . It will prove it to her and it will prove it to you.

Yep, yep I get it. It's tricky for 'them,' so we have to help them. How do they ask without bringing it up? How do they avoid the floodgates of explanation and justification but feel somewhat reassured that we are still on course?

The last thing they want to hear is "no, because here's why." It sounds just the same to them as "It's different this time. I swear!" I don't know how many times your kids heard that, but I know how many times mine did and I just wore out the plausibility. Not because I didn't mean it Every Single Time, but because they just couldn't understand how I could mean it and then start drinking again. Who could blame them, right? I couldn't understand it myself.

I've found that the best response can stand on it's own but allows for follow up should my kid (or sister or friend) wish to pursue the conversation. "Are you still going to AA?" Matter of factly: "Well, I haven't had a drink since (insert date or timeframe), and have been helped greatly by the daily support I receive in a newer recovery program." I used to just itch to say more, but practice and patience have taught me that some of those things won't matter later - and if they do, the opportunity will arise.

O

Yes, I preferred it when she didn't want to talk about it! I am just getting on with it. I don't want to tell her about this site incase she starts poking around on here 😆

I'm sick of my excuses myself and don't want to feel like I have to justify myself in doing what I am doing.
My recovery is my recovery.
I don't want to be trying to explain the past, because there is no excuses or justifications or apologies that can make up for the past...I've already been over all of that a million times. It helps neither of us.

I'm just sick of the whole sordid thing to do with drinking, including trying to put right what cannot be put right. The past is gone.
She has learnt her own ways to cope with my behaviour for her own self preservation.
I am having to learn to deal with the remorse of what I did in drink for years
Now it's time for a new chapter.
I can't convince her I have changed my view of drink and my relationship with it for good.
It's down to her how she wants to deal with her doubts. I can't remove those for her.
I cannot take away the pain my addiction has caused her in the past
She can't take away my guilt and regret.
We are both dealing with the fallout of MY addiction.

What is done is done.
The only way is forward. I'm just going to see how things develop.