Super Sober Me

Wow. I’m a sober slacker. In reality, it was a busy weekend.

A rainy sober Saturday, involving a trip to a car dealership to start the process of getting a new car, and then lots of shopping/return errands. We had a nice dinner in and then got the whole family to watch a movie together. By the way, it’s true that when you start looking for it, you see just how prevalent alcohol is in media. The characters in this movie met every type of emotion with some sort of alcoholic beverage. In fact, in the whole movie, there was only one part where a character drank water. Every other beverage that was shown on screen was booze.

A sunny sober Sunday. Long walk with the dog, followed by some seriously hard yard work. We’re making a new parking space on the side of the house. Digging is a bitch. Digging in rocky soil is a super bitch. I was actually happy to volunteer to be the parent who brought one of my kids to their Sunday afternoon sports game in a town 45 minutes away, because after all that hard yard work in the sun, you better bet I was a little sad I couldn’t follow it by some beers on the porch while we patted ourselves on the back for a productive day. Hard work followed by cocktails is a cornerstone of my marriage, and trying to figure out a new normal is tricky. I can’t lie, I miss it, and I’m a little worried about how our marriage will change if it’s gone forever. But then I made it through the sports game, finally got home, had a nice dinner prepared by my husband, and fell exhausted (and sober) into bed.

Monday was a busy day at work, a little more digging when I got home, a dinner to make, and before I knew it I was off to bed.

Here I am on Tuesday. Day 23. In many ways I feel like I’m doing damn well. But then other times when I start contemplating that this might be forever, I get kind of scared. I have heard other people say that the idea of sobriety scares the hell out of them. I always felt like sobriety was a huge bummer, but I never thought it was scary. Now that I think that forever is one of my possibilities, I do feel kind of scared. I guess it’s being scared of the unknown. I know what I would like to imagine life with alcohol would be like. I also know what life with alcohol would most likely actually end up being like. But I have no idea, really, what life with no alcohol would be like, because I’ve never tried it. I’ve given it up for short times for health gains and lowering my tolerance (or so I thought), but never with the idea that it might be forever.

But for now, I’m sober. For 100 days I want to be sober. I’ll worry about forever after that.

A Thursday and a Friday. Thursday was busy, with a band concert for one of my kids. It’s funny that before I used to feel like I had to drink be able to enjoy these events, then drink more when I got home to unwind. Now I am happy for these events. I definitely am more present and enjoy them for what they are. Then I am grateful for them taking up my drinking time. By the time I get home it’s all business. Time to do one or two necessary tasks to be ready for the next day, set the coffee, then get ready for bed.

Today was also a busy day. I left work and went to look at a car I want to buy. The dealership was about 35 minutes away, so between the drive out there, the time spent there, and the drive back, that was a good portion of my afternoon. Once I got home I helped my husband with some yard work and now I am typing this post. I am EXHAUSTED all of a sudden. Probably just a busy week, but still. Whenever I have anything unusual going on with me these days (something physical, or emotional), I wonder if it’s PAWS.

It’s a huge win for me how easy today has been considering it’s a Friday. Just a few fleeting thoughts about how in the past I would have been looking forward to having some beverages to start the weekend. But nothing I would even call a craving. It helps a lot that between the car hunt and the yard work this Friday looked a lot different than most Fridays do.

Here’s to hoping the rest of the weekend is just as easy!

Right now, this is feeling easier. I know I’m living a fairly quiet life these days. The end of the school year will bring many evening events. Some, I will need to be “on” for and normally I would have a drink or two before going to those, then come home from those and have two or so drinks to wind down from those. I’ve really only had one of those nights in this go-around of sobriety, so I’ll get more practice at that, I guess.

On other evenings there will be opportunity to drink. I’d probably have one drink before so that I could just drink one drink at the event. As a mom where I live, this is probably the safest socially acceptable choice. But I’d be obsessing at the event thinking about how I wanted more to drink. Was I drinking my one drink too fast? Oh! One of the other moms at my table ordered a second drink, should I do it too? I always did, then obsessed on the way home that the one-drinkers had judged me. So when getting home I’d have a few drinks to relieve the anxiety.

Now, at the drinking type of event, I’ll have to suffer the social stigma of not getting a drink at all. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I’m still working on my response when/if people ask why I’m not drinking. I want to have something planned and solid so I don’t regret what I say later, and I don’t tell every person something different. I know my response will change with time, but I want to start out with a solid message.

OK, more health concerns. Weight gain. I know that I am not a big person, but I was recently very disappointed in my appearance. I gained 16 pounds over 10 years. I know that doesn’t sound too bad, but about 10 of those pounds have been in the past year and a half. It has been enough to make all my clothes just a little too tight, so I am uncomfortable and aware of my weight gain all day long. I am refusing to buy bigger clothes. I don’t want bigger clothes, I want a smaller body! It’s also WHERE the weight ended up. I always had a trim waist, but between having kids and then the weight gain, it seems to all go to a really unflattering spare tire.

I have tried lots of exercise and I eat healthy. I’ve had a bit of success in the past doing intermittent fasting, but lately that did nothing for me. I had to finally admit that drinking was making me gain weight and/or really hard to loose weight. This was a realization I REALLY did not want to make. It took a lot of reading to finally admit to myself that if I really wanted to be in the kind of physical shape I want to be in, I need to stop drinking. I know I don’t owe it to anyone to have a good looking body. Maybe it’s the messages my mom programmed in my brain, but I know that feeling good in my clothes will make me so much happier.

I took these measurements on Day 1. The only thing I am measuring weekly is my weight. I’ll do all the other measurements on June 1st, since I quit on May 1st.

Weight – 136.0

Waist – 33.5

Hips – 40

Thigh – 22

Today was my weekly “Weigh Day” and I am at 133.0. I really want to celebrate those 3 pounds, but my weight tends to fluctuate a bit even from one part of the day to another, so I want more data before I get excited. I think 125 would be a really healthy goal for me.

What am I doing besides not drinking? Well I’ve been continuing my daily morning walks, which are about 2.8 miles. As mentioned in yesterdays digestion post, I started some jogging this week. When I jog I go slightly further, 3 miles. On the weekends I often do a bigger 3.5-4 mile walk.

I continue eat fairly healthy. I am not into starving myself. When I have a meal, I have a real meal. I have snacks and they are about about 50/50 health/not healthy. Monday-Friday I try to do 16:8 intermittent fasting – I do not eat anything besides having two cups of coffee (which do have about a Tbsp. of half and half in them) until lunch (around noon). I am usually successful in this 4 out of the 5 weekdays.

Starting a week before I stopped drinking I started a push-up/sit-up/stretching routine. It’s just 20 minutes, but it’s nice to feel my muscles again. I credit not drinking with allowing me to keep up with this. I’m fairly solid on doing it 6 days a week so far.

That’s it. I will admit that if I don’t loose weight/inches I will be disappointed. It’s certainly not the main reason I want to stop drinking, but it would be a side effect that would give me motivation during the hard times that I know will be coming.

Tuesday. I am noting a current trend of lessened cravings on week nights. Like tonight, I knew my husband was going to be gone from about 5-8. Normally, I would have taken this opportunity to do some drinking at home without having to hide it, or hide the full quantity of it, from him. Today, I only had a fleeting thought about that when leaving work. Before, from the moment I stepped out of my work building until the moment my car was at the stop sign at the edge of the parking lot, I would have had an internal battle to turn left and go home, or turn right and go to the liquor store. Turning right won way too often. When it didn’t win, it was often because I remembered about some booze I had stashed away at home already, or some beers or something at home that I was pretty sure my husband wouldn’t notice was missing.

By the way, secret drinking is HARD when your spouse works from home.

Anyway, here I am at home, alone, and what am I doing? I’m typing this blog and eating a bowl of pasta salad for dinner. I’m contemplating starting a rom-com type movie after this that my husband would not be in to. Then I need to pick up one of my kids from practice at 7:30. And guess what? I’ll be totally sober to do that.

So easy day, I’ll get to a health concern…digestion. Problems with my digestion started and increased so slowly it took forever to realize they had to do with my drinking. I was also clueless about what alcohol does to your body before I started reading/listening to all the quit lit, so that didn’t help my light bulb turn on either. It started with me getting really gassy after lunch. I mean REALLY gassy. And that’s embarrassing when you’re at work. I would walk around, crop dusting, trying to move enough that none of my coworkers could ever pin it on me. At the time, I blamed it on these healthy salads I was having for lunch. I though, “This is weird. I used to be able to eat these salads, but as I age, I must be having trouble digesting so many raw vegetables at lunch.” My ability to be in denial was impressively strong.

Until this point, I had been blessed with very regular bowel movements. When I started having very loose ones, and then diarrhea, I would jump to wonder if I had caught some sort of stomach bug or ate something bad. But eventually, I couldn’t pretend that alcohol wasn’t the problem. There was a direct correlation with how much I drank, and how bad my digestive system performed the next day. I also started getting heartburn for the first time since pregnancy. And then that started happening more and more often.

One night I woke up and my stomach hurt so bad, and my heartburn was so bad, that I had to just get up, creep downstairs, and sit in the kitchen and sip water and eat Tums. I was so worried that I had done irreversible damage to my digestive system. Did I have an ulcer? Was I ruining my intestines? My colon?

Things got so bad that I had to stop running (ok jogging) in the mornings. I had too many close calls with pooping myself. I even did. Three times over the span of about two years. That is so embarrassing to type out, but there it is. I don’t want to forget all this later. I would ease up on my drinking, and get back into jogging, then start up with my drinking, and have some serious repercussions. Then I would ease up again. I would even keep track of how far I could jog before needing to stop and walk because I felt like I was ‘in trouble’. Finally in the last six months I didn’t jog at all. Even to go on my morning walk, I would make sure to use the bathroom several times before heading out.

By then, I knew this was all related to my drinking. The three separate sober months(ish) that I did cleared things up, so it was undeniable. And low and behold, I am 16 days in and doing great now. Pretty much back to my regular self (pun intended). Yesterday I tried jogging again and I was absolutely fine! My heartburn would return when I ate spicy or super heavy foods until a few days ago. Now that seems to have cleared up too.

At my last physical my doctor told me that now that I am over 45 I need to get a colonoscopy. I was seriously procrastinating on making that appointment. I was so worried they’d find something horrible. I think this week one of my goals will be to schedule it. I know they are booking kind of far out. I hope that by the time I have it, I’ve undone some damage and their news won’t be too bad, but there is always that possibility that I did something irreversible to myself.

I tried so hard to undo all the negative effects of drinking with all my water drinking, exercising, vitamin taking, and chia seed pudding eating, but while I’m wishful, I’m not stupid.

A Monday. An easy day. I am so thankful for easy days, but they also worry me a little bit. I worry that I’ll forget why I’m doing this.

So today I’ll recall a few of the health problems I have been having. For the next several easy days, I’ll recall a few until I’ve gone over all of them. Many of these I know are created or negatively impacted by my drinking. Others are just possibly impacted by my drinking. All of them I hope will be improved by taking a good long (maybe forever) break from alcohol.

Headaches – This probably does not need a lot of explanation. I will add that I woke up most mornings with a headache. Actually, I woke up in the wee small hours of the morning with a headache. This headache often lasted until mid-morning or so. It was rarely really bad, but it was almost ever-present. I just functioned every day with a mild-moderate headache. Obviously these were a direct result of my drinking and I have had very few headaches since I stopped drinking.

Sleep – Most nights I could barely stay awake until 9. The alcohol I drank would just put me to sleep. Almost every night I would wake up sometime between 2 and 3am. I would lie awake, absolutely hating myself and my life choices, for about an hour to an hour and a half. Often I would would be a hot sweaty mess. If I had straightened my hair the day before, it would be curly when I woke up! Then I would fall asleep around 4, only to have my alarm go off at 5. If I was with it enough when going to bed, and worried I’d have a bad night’s sleep, I would take two Benedryl. This didn’t completely stop me from waking up, but it seemed to keep the awake portion shorter, and there was somewhat less self-loathing. My sleep issues were also a clear result of drinking.

Since stopping, my sleep has greatly improved. Most nights I have no problem falling asleep, although for some reason I always have a small worry voice in my head saying that without the alcohol I might have a hard time falling asleep. I have to say I haven’t had one night where I had a really hard time falling asleep. I (mostly) sleep through the night. My dog likes to wake me up periodically to have me put his blanket back on him (I know this is ridiculous, but not my biggest battle at the moment), but I am able to fall right back to sleep. I am having a LOT of dreams, and some of them are weird. While I don’t feel like I have crazy more energy during the day, I certainly feel more well rested.

That’s all for tonight. Time to fold my laundry, brush my teeth, and get in bed. Sober 🙂

Holly shit I am humbled. Lake life = drinking for me. I knew that, but now I KNOW that. To get out of the car after a 3 hour drive and not have a few beers to take the edge off. Not “treating” myself to a beer with lunch, because, hey, we’re at the lake! And then to not have that cocktail on the deck around 5pm, followed by several strong beers (sometimes MANY beers if there is a late night campfire involved). Wow it was hard not to do that.

I was so close to saying fuck it and drinking when I first got up there. SO freaking close. My hand was hovering above a beer in the fridge. But I went into the bathroom and did some breathing and made myself promise to have one NA seltzer first. Which I did. I chugged that seltzer. Then cracked and second. Our neighbor came over with some cupcakes she had baked. I double fisted those suckers. My husband looked at me and said, “Are you REALLY going to eat BOTH of those?!” I’m usually much more reserved with my sweets. I looked at him and said, “If you take one of these out of my hand I will punch you in the face.” Message received. We ended up watching a movie on the couch and then I went to bed sober. I was actually worried I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep, since up there I ALWAYS have alcohol in my system to help me nod off, but I slept okay.

After getting through that first night the second was only slightly better. I am frustrated that I spent most of the day, when I wouldn’t have been drinking anyway, thinking about how I wouldn’t be drinking that night. A huge part of this abstinence is getting alcohol to take up less room in my brain, and this weekend it’s like it did the opposite.

Anyway, by then I had bought a bunch of NA beers and hop water (which I had never had before and I liked okay). My husband didn’t know that I bought them and he went out to the store as well on his own and bought me two kinds of NA beer too. So now I’m stocked up up there. The NA beer helped quite a bit. By the time we got through cocktail hour, then dinner, I was happy to sip another NA drink while we watched another family movie. Had a great night’s sleep and feel great today.

So it was a win, but it didn’t exactly feel like it. I hope after a few more weekends up there without drinking the whole drink/don’t drink thing will not take up so much space in my head.

Now I’m off to a sports game for one of my kids and ready for a Sober Sunday evening. Sober Sunday at home seems like a piece of cake after Sober Friday & Saturday up at the lake!

Tough afternoon and evening. Big trigger for me – an event in the evening where I had to be “on” and in host mode. Worst of all, I was worried that an overbearing asshat would show up and be contentious. He did, and he was, and he behaved worse than I had imagined. And along with the two other leaders there, I had keep the ship sailing.

Normally I would have had a drink to steady my nerves before going. Then I would have probably snuck a second drink because I felt the first one didn’t do enough. Then I would be paranoid at the meeting that people could tell I had been drinking. Focusing and “performing” at the meeting would have been extra hard because I would have been working through a buzz.

Then I would have come home and had a bunch more drinks, right before going to bed, just to calm down.

Instead I ate dinner before going over. I took care of a few tasks so I didn’t have to do them later. I ate chocolate. I had the meeting, and now I’m typing. I had two CBD gummies when I came home. I don’t think they do anything, but I haven’t taken any since I stopped drinking, so maybe I’ll notice something this time. I don’t want to feel intoxicated, just relaxed.

I should feel super proud of myself for not drinking, but I don’t. At least yet. But I don’t still feel like I need a drink, so that’s good. I feel okay. Nothing horrible happened because I wasn’t able to have a drink to calm my nerves. I just had nerves, dealt with the nerves, and now they are slowly leaving my body.

I’m off to Maine tomorrow. We have a cabin up there. Life at the cabin and drinking are one and the same. I have had days/evenings where I have not drank up there, but they have been the exception. Few and far between. So from one trigger to the next!

Well I’ve made it to double digits!

Started off feeling good today. Slight headache when I woke up and I was like, “Hey. I’m being robbed. Why should I have any kind of headache at all?” But after a glass of water I was all good.

For some reason at the very end of the work day I got really agitated over something small. I kink of let it get under my skin. I was still irked at the grocery store where a guy in the check out line next to me was being rude to the cashiers, and I got (internally) so mad at him. I spent the whole ride home thinking of things I should have said to him to stick up for the cashiers. By the time I got home I suddenly realized I wanted a drink SO BADLY. I definitely used to angry drink sometimes. I mean, I drank for all the emotions, so that’s no surprise. I know in the past I would have had two, strong, quick drinks to numb my anger.

Instead I prepped dinner (with some extra banging of cupboards and cutting boards). Sat on the porch with my dog. Did the Wordle. And I got through to dinner time. Then I had a Zoom call set up for this committee I’m on (I think it may have been my first Zoom call with this committee totally sober, yikes!).

Now I’m typing this out, and it will be bedtime to me. Day 10 done. Whew. There are so many ups and downs. I almost wish the highs were not so high, because today’s low was nothing catastrophic, but it was such a dip from my glorious high point that it felt extra low.

So now I just need to do this, like, 9 more times. No biggie?

Another sober day, hooray! Feeling tired now, but it was a solid week day.

Despite waking up in the middle of the night more often than not and hating myself and swearing I would never drink again, in the past two and a half years, I’ve only taken a couple breaks from drinking.

There was Dry January of 2021. This was spawned by us both feeling like we had been drinking way too much during the pandemic. We both felt like we could use a re-set. There was zero intention to completely quit. I felt like I was doing something SO radical, just to go for a month off alcohol. I made it 14 days before I started secret drinking by myself when no one was home. I did that about three times. Also, my husband and I decided that if we went out to dinner it didn’t count if we had drinks at dinner. Of course. We’re so logical. Also, we considered 4 weeks a month, regardless of what the calendar said. So I drank about 6 days out of 28. I white knuckled my way through all the sober days. Most evenings had some-to-many hard cravings.

There was Dry January of 2022, the success of which was very similar. This time, though, it was spawned because for the first time ever, my husband found one of my secret bottles of booze. There was a huge confrontation. We’re both drinkers, but he had no idea that I was sneaking alcohol. A lot of things fell into place for him that day and he realized I’d been doing it for awhile. I was so ashamed. He was dumbfounded. After his initial shock and some anger, he was very supportive. I swore that if I took another month off (this was literally on New Years day that he found this), and then I still had a problem, I would seek help. I swore to never hide drinking from him again.

Then we were at mid-October of 2022. I had gone right back to secret drinking on and off after Dry January. I secretly pre-drank before our friends came over, then drank some more, and ended up being super drunk in front of them. At one point I came inside to drink water and try to force myself to be more sober (never has worked for me) and I ended up passing out. Our friends and my husband were still out on the porch socializing. I woke up at 4 in the morning with a huge portion of the night missing. My husband was so embarrassed that I just ghosted everyone. I had to admit I had been secretly drinking again, because it did not add up how I had gotten so drunk so fast.

It’s crazy to realize it, but I had been drinking WAY too much for around 10 years, and this was the first time anyone outside of my marriage had been impacted by it. And I was mortified. And my husband was, rightfully so, pissed off. Still supportive, but pissed at the same time. So I quit for 4 solid weeks and this time I did not cheat one time. The 29th day, my parents came to visit for a week. I told my husband, that I HAD to start drinking or my parents would raise eyebrows. The last thing I wanted was for my mother to be judging me for having a problem with alcohol. And with that, I went back to where I had been before very fast.

I’m only on day 9 this time. I can’t wait to be on day 29 because it will be my longest stretch. I have to say, even though I’ve had some hard times in the past 9 days, this time seems very different. I hope I’m not jinxing it. About 95% of my waking hours I feel so sure that I never want to drink again. The urges seem so much less. Instead of feeling like, “I just have to get through this sober period and then I can get back to drinking” I am daydreaming about what might life might be like for me if I never go back to drinking.

I’ll end this post with another plead to the universe – let this feeling stick for good!

Day 8 feeling great? I guess so. Feeling pretty good at least. It’s a Monday. Morning routine was fine (happy I prepped those lunches!), and work was fine too. I had a bit of catching up to do since I was out sick last Thursday and Friday. But work was good, and even though my husband had to go away for just tonight (yes, again. No, he does not usually travel this much) I only had a fleeting thought about how my usual M.O. would be to drink in his absence. Which is weird. How did that become a habit, and why did I continue it?

I’ve also been wondering about how long it will take my body to recover from all the drinking. To the extent that I am able to recover. I understand that I may have done damage that cannot be reversed. Anyway, I mean, I’ve been drinking heavily for 10 years. I hope it doesn’t take 10 years to undo!

I may be selling myself a story, but I’d like to think I was pretty healthy considering my drinking. I say this because increasingly since my kids were born I have become more and more health conscious…except for my drinking. I walk (briskly – my dog makes sure of that!) about 3 miles a day on weekdays, and often further on weekends. In the summer, and to less extent the spring and fall, I swim, bike, paddle board and hike.

I make almost all of our meals at home. I eat a well-rounded diet. Partaking in processed food is a treat for me. I used to love desserts, but I stopped craving them as much because I lost my sweet tooth to either age or booze. Oddly, I have very good will power for almost everything in my life except alcohol. Vitamins? I take them on a routine basis. Skin care routine? Solid. Even drunk, I would force myself to floss, brush, and all the rest of it every night.

And the water! I have been crazy about water. I knew I was drinking too much alcohol, and I told myself that water was the antidote. The very first thing I do every morning is drink 12 ounces of water. I drink water after my morning walk, all day at work, and then to varying degrees at home. Many times I have tried the “I’m going to drink one glass of water in between each alcoholic drink” trick. The problem is, once I started drinking, I prioritized alcohol way too much.

So now, I just have to hope hope hope that all the good things I did for myself were able to hold off some of the deleterious effects of all the drinking I did. I feel like a little kid squeezing my eyes shut, crossing my fingers (both hands, and then crossing those hands at the wrist, of course) and whispering, “please please please please please please please” into the universe.

Please. Let me not have done stupid, needless, irreversible harm to myself that will shorten my life, or negatively impact the quality of the rest of my life. Please.