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.