Super Sober Me

Day 7 is in the books! It started off on a high. I woke up, felt great (and SO proud of myself). I was two nights into this with my husband on board and figuring out what to do with myself in the evenings on the weekends. I really started to think that maybe this time my resolve was bullet proof.

Then, this afternoon I was chatting with a group of parents who were regaling their escapades from the night before. It sounded like it was a night that would become legend. The kind of night that just cannot, in my mind right now at least, happen without alcohol. And I got kind of depressed. Some of these people are good friends, and I know with certainty that when it comes time for me to be at a social gathering with them, they will totally accept me not drinking. But I just felt like even if I am there, I won’t be actually part of the action. I’ll just be hanging around on the outside of the group, kind of aloof. And sober. Boo.

Then I went home and cooked a big Sunday dinner and prepped lunches for myself for the week. Cooking, especially on Sundays, is a huge trigger for me. I drank so much flavored seltzer (non-alcoholic!) that I hardly had room for dinner.

And I got through it. I did. And now I’m happy I did. Not quite as happy as I was this morning, but that’s okay.

I did not drink last night! And I told my husband about the 100 days.

There was a clutch moment where (as predicted) he finished up work for the day, leaned out the window (I was on the deck) and asked, “cocktail?” My anxiety soared like I was about to go onstage and give a speech. I knew this was last moment I could back out, but I said no thanks. He assumed I was still feeling crummy (which was true, but a few days ago I would have been well enough to drink) and brought me a (non-alcoholic) seltzer and his own cocktail out onto the deck. He had a lot to unload (as I mentioned, crazy day for his company). And after that I took a breath and told him I was planning on not drinking for 100 days and that I was on day 5.

He said he was proud of me, and that he would stop offering me drinks. He said he would try to cut back or even stop, but tonight wasn’t the night for him. Which is fine. I kind of feel like I want to deal with my own journey right now, without helping him with his. That might sound selfish, but while he definitely drinks more than the recommended 2 drinks per day for a man, he’s not the one who was sneaking booze. Also, if him getting sober is anything like him having a cold, I just can’t right now.

By the way, right after the first clutch moment was a second. I had not told him about the 100 days yet and he was going into the liquor cupboard to make his cocktail. Would he notice that the wine I bought to replace the wine I drink on Friday was not the exact same wine? I couldn’t find the exact same one, so I got the same kind of wine with a similar looking label. He did not say anything so I assume he did not notice. Like I said, he’s not big on wine.

This is the exact kind of situation that is causing me to get sober. This, “Oh my god I’m going to get caught! Why did I think sneaking booze was worth it? I love this man. Why am I deceiving him? What kind of looser am I?”

Anyway, it’s all out there now. I’m not sure he totally believes I’ll do 100 days, but if he doubts me, he’s not saying so. At least now I don’t need to explain my not drinking to him.

After that we had a quick family dinner, celebrated an accomplishment of one of our kids with an ice cream cake, watched two Ted Lasso’s and went to bed.

Today was gorgeous. It’s been a very slow start to spring where I live. I woke up feeling great, and went for a big walk with the dog. I always go for a walk with the dog in the morning, but sometimes I had to force myself, and often I was feeling way less than 100%. Today was not like that. I cleaned up the house a bit, went to buy some flowers, then joined my husband in the yard to do some work on it.

Now it’s time for another nice evening on the deck, without booze. This is the hardest part. This is the part that, if I were able to moderate, I would save my drinking for just this part. A cocktail on the deck, while I unwind with my husband. We really were great drinking buddies. I’m hoping that if I keep hanging out on the deck with him in the evenings without booze, it will be just as enjoyable.

Feeling a lot better. That was one bad 24 hour stomach bug! Once again, I am so happy drinking was not involved for so so many reasons.

My husband came home last night. As you know I was horribly ill. His body clock was 5 hours ahead. He just wanted to have a beer and get in bed, and that is what he did.

This evening will be a different story. It’s just about 4:30 on a Friday. Pretty soon his office door (he works from home) will pop open and he will say something corny like, “Let the weekend begin!” There’s been a shake-up at his office. Lot’s of work drama to unpack over a few drinks. He will undoubtedly expect me to drink with him. As far as he knows, I’ve been a teetotal angel the whole time he was gone, and now I deserve a drink.

I don’t want to drink. I mean I do, but I don’t and I’m not going to.

But I have two ways of going about it. I can still play the stomach bug card which is a totally plausible excuse. Or I can tell him about the 100 days sober. If I tell him, it’s one more reason for me to not give up. The first reason, by the way, is this blog. How embarrassing to start a blog about your 100 day sober journey and not follow through. Can you imagine?

Sober and sick.

I woke up with a stomach bug. Running to the bathroom all day, achy from head to toe, HORRIBLE headache, low grade fever. I do not think this is in response to me quitting drinking at all. But if I was still drinking, and I had had a few last night, I would definitely be wondering, at least at first, if this was a hangover. I’ve rarely had nauseous hangovers. Mostly just the headaches and general lethargy that have become my normal, but I still would have given it a good wonder.

So even though I am so very ill right now, I am so happy I have not been drinking for a few days. Hopefully my body has a bit more energy to fight this off.

That’s all I can give this post today. Sick, but still here and sober.

Still sober!

I did a really scary thing today. It will be the last time I do it. I went to the liquor store to buy a bottle of wine to replace the one I drank on Day 0. We don’t drink a lot of wine, and we don’t keep a ton of it in the house. I know my husband has been watching the levels of our liquor, and probably counting our bottles of beers and hard seltzers. He’s really not a big wine drinker but since we have so few bottles in the house I was worried he would clock that this one is missing when he returns from his trip tomorrow.

Not a big deal, just one bottle. But after a Friday night of drinking, and then a Saturday night of drinking too much, I made a big deal about how I was going to dry out while he was gone. When he comes back I plan on telling him right away that I have committed to not drinking for 100 days. But I’m not ready to tell him everything yet. He does know a lot, but not everything, and I’m not ready to deal with him dealing with the full truth while I’m just getting used to this sober thing.

Over the past three years or so I have been having secret trips to the liquor store to buy booze to replace booze before he notices too much is missing, or to buy secret booze that I kept hidden and would make myself a pre-drink with to get started before we had drinks together so I could maintain the appearance of moderating in front of him. This has lead him to asking, “how did you get so drunk so fast last night?” many times. To which I respond, “I made the mistake of drinking on an empty stomach again. It went right to my head.” Which usually worked.

When I say I would go to the liquor store, I mean several stores, because I don’t want the people who work at our regular, nearby store to clock how often I’m buying booze. I make trips there for “us” but also occasionally for “me”. However, I keep other stores on rotation. And even though they might only see me every few weeks, I am burning with shame each time because I feel like I just did it last week. Because I did. At a different store. And every time I go in, or out, I am terrified I will be noticed by someone I know.

I was doing something that made my life harder, so I could go home and do something else that made my life harder.

And for what? Chasing that buzzed feeling. That lovely humming feeling. The sweet spot. But honestly, I was hitting that mark so rarely these days. I either moderated, but my tolerance is so high, as well as my anxiety, that I wouldn’t get there. Or I would over shoot by sneaking drinks, and get drunk, and have to work my tail off to look not-totally-drunk in front of my family.

Even if I manage to land on the sweet spot, then what? This is what happened last Friday, and I was so damn proud of myself on Saturday. Then I got greedy or cocky or both and got too drunk on Saturday. It’s not worth it for the few times I get there. It’s just not worth it, and I need to keep telling myself that over, and over, and over.

A Tuesday. Morning, no problem. Work, no problem. Sports game for one of my kids occupied two and a half hours this evening. And here I am, 8:30 at night. Safe to say I have made it through day 2.

I did hear a bit from the booze beast today. Just a little whisper of, “Really? We don’t HAVE to do this, you know. Your husband doesn’t even know you are trying to do this yet. You could just try to moderate again!” I was able to shush him up pretty quick, though.

Also, here’s a trigger I didn’t know I had: checking the weather. The weekend looks like perfect weather, and for me and my husband that goes hand in hand in getting a lot of work done and then rewarding ourselves by sitting in the sun and drinking. I’m worried about how bummed I’ll feel when I do all the work and I don’t get that reward.

Generally I don’t feel so bad about it when I drink on Friday and Saturday nights. Normal people drink on Friday and Saturday nights. Many normal people even have one drink too many on Friday and Saturday nights. Unless I really go overboard, I don’t wake up hating myself on these nights because I feel like I did something a normal person would do. I had some drinks and had some fun, so what? I am going to have to remind myself that even when I don’t go overboard on the weekends, I don’t like waking up not remembering everything that happened the night before. I would say I don’t like waking up with a headache and having to force myself not to be sluggish, but that is more my norm than not, so I don’t really know any different (yet).

Memory lapses have been happening more and more over the past two years and they are probably what scares me the most about continuing to drink. I have always been someone who blacked out when I had a ton to drink. I have probably had about 10 times in my life, starting in college, when a major portion of the evening is gone from my memory.

Recently though, when drinking what I think, in retrospect, was just a combination of one drink too many on an empty stomach, I’ll have missing pieces of the evening. And the drinking that causes this almost always happens at home so the bits I’m missing are conversations with my husband or kids.

I’ve been living with dread hovering over me about this. I want to die when my kids look at me funny and say, “You already asked me that last night. I already told you this.” Or my husband says something similar. Sometimes he knows that it’s because I drank too much, and he has even called me out on secret pre-drinking before we start drinking together. Because if I really only drank the drinks he saw me drink, I should definitely remember our conversations from the night before. Oh. The. Shame.

Other times I’m able to cover it up. I gas light him and say things like, “Well we didn’t decide exactly what we were going to do. We only discussed it. That’s why I’m bringing it up again.” (This works when he has also had his fair share. While he still has the memory, I take advantage of it being a bit fuzzy.) With my kids I say things like, “Listen. You don’t know what it’s like to be a mom. I have 100 balls in the air right now. Sorry I don’t remember every word we said last night.”

Sometimes I’ll bring up a topic and I’ll be able to sense from their initial response that we talked about it the night before. I’m getting good at sensing that I’m walking into one of these situations. Sometimes I’ll even get a small flash of memory back, reminding me that yes, we did talk about this subject, but of course I can’t remember any details. In those cases I do a flash bang distraction and turn tail on the topic. I think once I said something like, “Do you smell that? Does it smell like natural gas to you?” and everyone completely forgot what we were talking about and started sniffing around the house.

It’s really good to type these things out. It is so sad that I am missing out of these last few years I am going to have of having all four of us under one roof. How unnecessary and depressing. I would say it’s tragic, but tragic things can’t be avoided. This can and it’s all up to me. I’ll never get back what I’ve lost, and I might be mad at myself forever about that, but at least I can not miss all that is to come.

It’s so sad that I deceive my family to hide my own problem. I can do much better. I know I can, and they deserve it. Also, all this self-loathing, deception, and distraction is exhausting. I really want to know what life would be like without it for awhile. I have a feeling it will be better.

I thought today would be day 1. I thought a hundred other days would be day 1 too, so no surprise there.

My husband left for a work trip this evening, so being alone with the wine left in the fridge, I had to (HAD TO) finish it. But it wasn’t even enough to call one glass, so I had to open another bottle. Then I drank it until it had a little less than a glass in it, then dumped it. So I had exactly a bottle of wine. I didn’t even feel like drinking but if there is a little left in a bottle, and you are all alone with it, you might as well finish it. And if you do that, it is definitely pointless unless you drink more. Sadly, drinking a bottle of wine did not make me feel ‘drunk’. I barely feel buzzed. This might be different if I was trying to socialize, or even parent, but right now I am alone with no demands, and I feel only slightly more buzzed than normal.

I really want to know if my life would be better without alcohol. I want to string together 100 days. I’m hoping that will give me some insight. I’m writing this blog to keep me accountable so that I actually make it to 100 days. If at that point I’m still not sure, I want to go for a year. And then I need to decide, is alcohol going to be part of my life, or no?

Obviously so much has lead up to this point. I have, however, drank a bottle of wine, so that will be a story for a different night.