209 replies to this topic

[inspaces]

The NO drinks club

This is for the weak at heart

This doesn't mean you can't ever drink again

You just can't drink today

and you have to say this everyday

you know who you are.....
1. the lineup of meds are already taxing your liver

2. the drinks bring on the deep ugly depression the meds are trying to keep at bay

3. the hangovers not only drive you depression deeper, they are far worse than ever before
********worse hangovers are because your liver can't deal with the meds + booze********
4. While some nights you can get away with 1 or 2.... other nights its like 6+

We are the ones that our friends and family may not even know our problems with alcohol
****and we never tell them******

So come one, come all....
I'm at 5 weeks tonight.... this was a hard post to create because I'm putting myself on the line, making myself accountable ....

take a stand
make a commitment
right now

and post often - when it is easy and you feel proud of avoiding drinks AND when it is hard to not drink but you figure a way to not drink - share your strategies!!

Be proud of each day you don't drink and be sure to post about it!!

VE Here, Adding spam to the post
The crazystore section on addition is here. It's deliberately 12-step agnostic.

[kdbee]

Great post! I should write all of this down on a small piece of paper to carry around. I haven't been drinking as frequently as usual but when I do drink (prob 2x a week) it's a lot. And, yes, it feels like shit.

But yes...one day at a time.

[inspaces]

thanks!!



I wanted to share one of my strategies....

schedule something early in the morning - something you cannot be hungover for - like tomorrow I'm getting up at 4am to go to an indoor bike class that runs from 6-9am....

drinking tonight is absolutely not an option lol

[darkchylde]

5 weeks!!! awesome; so proud of you IS!!!

[Velvet Elvis]

If this proves popular I'll pin it.

[r2mnot]

Thanks for starting this thread, inspaces. Congrats on the five weeks.

This is for the weak at heart

I'm one of those.

We are the ones that our friends and family may not even know our problems with alcohol

Um, I'm not one of those. EVERYONE knew. Cleverly concealing a bottle in a paper bag and hiding in the bushes to drink really doesn't fool anyone, ya know? There's lots of other things that clued them in. Drunk people are seldom subtle.

I had my last drink on January 22nd. Over the years I've been in several tx centers, a few loony bins, AA, NA etc, and had various lengths of sobriety. The main things that have helped me this time around are getting diagnosed, (That was huge. I didn't know I was nuts until a few years ago.) taking medication and this forum. The people here have been very supportive, even when I was posting drunk. I've kind of given up on the twelve step thing, but it works for a lot of people, and I might go back at some point.

So, for now, no more drunk posting. (or drunk phone calls. Those are really bad.)

Edited by r2mnot, 13 December 2009 - 01:05 AM.

[cairn]

Thanks for the post. It's great timing.

And five weeks is brilliant!

Edited by cairn, 13 December 2009 - 05:35 AM.

[crazy]

I've printed out this post and made several copies to keep around the house and in my purse. Re-reading your post is going to be one of MY coping stratgies because I found it to be so inspiring and true. I haven't had a drink or self-medicated for eight days now and honestly, the thought of never doing it again is difficult and makes me sad. I wound up in the looney bin in large part because my drinking and Rx drug abuse exacerbated my mood swings and panic attacks; I've been out of the psych hospital for two days now, the experience was a nightmare and I never want to go back.

Being so newly sober, the coping stratgies I'm going to try are as follows:

• re-read your post about the No Drinks Club rules
• remind myself of the experience in the psych hospital
• remind myself what a toll my MI drugs are already doing to my liver and that what I was doing made it worse
• think about the people I met in the looney bin and how much I don't want to become one of the ones who has destroyed their lives and bodies because alcohol and drug abuse

Thanks again for starting this thread. Let's keep it going and get it pinned!

~Robyn a.k.a "crazy"

Edited by crazy, 13 December 2009 - 05:40 AM.

[inspaces]

I've printed out this post and made several copies to keep around the house and in my purse. Re-reading your post is going to be one of MY coping stratgies because I found it to be so inspiring and true. I haven't had a drink or self-medicated for eight days now and honestly, the thought of never doing it again is difficult and makes me sad. I wound up in the looney bin in large part because my drinking and Rx drug abuse exacerbated my mood swings and panic attacks; I've been out of the psych hospital for two days now, the experience was a nightmare and I never want to go back.

Being so newly sober, the coping stratgies I'm going to try are as follows:

• re-read your post about the No Drinks Club rules
• remind myself of the experience in the psych hospital
• remind myself what a toll my MI drugs are already doing to my liver and that what I was doing made it worse
• think about the people I met in the looney bin and how much I don't want to become one of the ones who has destroyed their lives and bodies because alcohol and drug abuse

Thanks again for starting this thread. Let's keep it going and get it pinned!

~Robyn a.k.a "crazy"

YAY!! and congrats on 8 days!! and thanks for your warm words of encouragement. I am going to print out my post too and keep it with me.

Thanks VE for considering pinning this thread - that would be sooo nice

I hope to get some long term "no drinkers" on board - I still can't imagine myself going like a whole year w/o drinks... but then again, we don't have to think that far in the future - just today

R2Mnot - congrats on your success so far, one day I'll be able to put a date like yours a post... So my Date is Nov 7th

For anyone reading this post, afraid to 'throw down' - i realize that there's always a chance for relapse - don't worry about that, join and then we can figure it out

[inspaces]

one little footnote.....

I realize joining the club just before major holidays is very very hard! But i like to think of it as this...

Get thru the hell of the first few weeks AND it's a holiday season.... then it will be easier after you are past it... Kind of like boot camp

[Shannie]

Congratulations inspaces and crazy - I understand what a struggle it can be and I wish you both the best.

I'm actually not a member of the "no drinks club", but I sympathise with its aims. I was tee-total for a while (during early recovery from a major alcohol abuse problem) but now I do generally manage to do "normal social drinking" - although when you're a young person in Britain, it's questionable whether the social norm is actually healthy or desirable, given our nationwide problems with binge drinking. But that's a separate issue, haha. I follow certain rules like never, ever drinking alone (that was my pattern when I was in the midst of the madness), not keeping alcohol in the house and not drinking when I'm feeling in a "risky" mood (depressive symptoms and bad thoughts that it might be tempting to try and drown out...). I think that thorough and honest self-monitoring and self-awareness is vital and so far that approach seems to be working for me. Sometimes I can feel the desire to get blotto rising up in me after I've had the first drink...not at all common these days, but it still happens sometimes. When it does I switch to drinking water right away and say out loud to my friends, "Right, I've had enough to drink - I'm not having any more", or something along those lines. If I put that out there it helps me to stick to it.

In fairness, I sometimes think that I probably should totally quit drinking again. I suppose that after my AA experiences I have a faint guilt associated with drinking. I'm not supposed to mix alcohol with mirtazapine anyway and sometimes hangovers can f**k up my mental equilibrium for 24 hours or so. But to be honest, when I was tee-total for several months I felt like a bit of a social pariah. My current day-to-day social circle knows nothing about my history and only one of them is tee-total...and the others keep dissing him as being a weirdo for not drinking at all and speculating as to "what his problem is". This helps me to keep justifying drinking to myself - albeit drinking in moderation rather than the "sessions" that are so common in university life. Alcohol is a central part of socialising in Britain - my sister no longer lives in the UK but comments on the horrendous pressure to drink every time she comes back to this country. I choose to do it to fit in because frankly, for me, social isolation and too much time by myself is far more dangerous than drinking on one or two evenings per week. I guess it's all about choices and balancing the risks.

[Anna]

Good thread, it's a good idea.

In feb, I will have had no drinks for 6 years. I was a terrible, terrible drinker and yes, people knew I was a drunk.

AA was really helpful for a long time, although since moving to Tucson, I really haven't gone to a lot of meetings. (I feel faintly guilty about that).

What helps me is remembering how non-functional and destructive I was while drinking, and how I couldn't really be there for anybody. And, how much harder it is to STOP than to stay stopped. As well as what kind of madness ETOH would do to my moods, and meds. My husband doesn't drink either, so we kind of support each other.

I'll definitely post on the thread, and I think it's a great idea.

Staying busy and trying new things while in early recovery, can be helpful, as well as getting support from other people who have been there. Congrats on 5 weeks, (and 8 days).... that's great.

Anna

[inspaces]

Shannie... that has to be very tough living in a society everyone drinks and promotes it so heavily, I've done the controlled drinking thing and while it starts out just fine, it eventually grows into so much more. Seems like you are sort of re-thinking the "no drinks" concept. Best of luck in what you decide is best.

Anna - congrats on 6 years!!!! that, to me seems insurmountable - you give inspiration to newbies like me and I love your thought of how STOPPING is so much harder than staying STOPPED I agree 100% as i still have a clear cut memory of stopping for the first 2 weeks, which consequently fell right over Thanksgiving (classic drinking day).

I was talking with a friend this morning about not drinking and we talked about a strategy. When you have that urge to drink... go make something else to drink - like hot tea or an tall glass of ice water. I have found that sometimes I am flat out thirsty and would naturally reach out for something with alcohol in it. But having hot tea has always turned out to be a tasty alternative - I now have about 10 different kinds of tea

in fact, i'm going to have a cup of tea right now

[r2mnot]

Another thing that helps me to stay sober is to remember how very, very sick I was. I drank daily for ten years or so, never being fully sober for very long. It was very bad. I lost jobs, got a DUII and spent the night in jail and finally ended up in a nut ward to sober up. I still drank one more time after that. Or maybe it was a couple of times? Anyway, I don't EVER want to be that sick again. If I choose to drink, it's pretty much guaranteed to be even worse.

I want to live, and I want my life to matter. If I drink, I don't think I would survive very long, and what is left of my life would be wasted. I've wasted enough time.

[crazy]

- although when you're a young person in Britain, it's questionable whether the social norm is actually healthy or desirable, given our nationwide problems with binge drinking. But that's a separate issue

Interesting you say that, Shannie, I recently saw a British made documentary on the problems Britian has with binge drinking, especially the young people. It was part of what made me wake up and realize what I was doing. Do you have any insight as to why it is so prevelant in Britian?

BTW, I love your coping skills and hope to one day be able to control myself like that. I think a person CAN get to that point, I'm just not there yet and think I'll do better just staying away from it altogether for now.

[r2mnot]

I think a person CAN get to that point

I think so too. I'm not one of those people though. It's something to be very, very careful about. Sometimes the drinking experiments turn out to be fatal.

[celestia]

Great thread! When I realized the sheer profundity of "one day at a time" I was dumbfounded. Then all the cliches and slogans started making sense in a way they just hadn't until I was sober long enough to understand wtf the simple messages were really saying to me.

Like some of you have posted, I stay sober today because I can't bear the thought of the physical/emotional pain that getting fucked up brings with it. Yeah ok maybe I'll be oblivious for a few lovely hours but then the trainwreck inevitably occurs and I'm fucked all over again--starting at square 1. It gets very, very discouraging to say the least. When I think about all that kind of shit when I might be entertaining a bender I get over it pretty quickly. "Think the drink through". Duh, okay, I get it now! I'm only almost 50, it's about time!

[Velvet Elvis]

Pinned. I hope this topic lasts a long time

[Rabbit37]

Needed this topic, like, right now. Technically, I quit drinking over 2.5 years ago, but can't seem to make it through 6 months without a slip, albeit minor ones. Dec 6 was my last 6 month anniversary, and wouldn't you know it, my husband is leaving town for a few days, and therefore opportunity rears its ugly, stinkin' head again once more. I'm trying to think through the ramifications of what it'll do to me, how I'd be too afraid to mix my current meds with alcohol, how I don't need the 1-2 days off of meds, and the potential for crash big-time. I can't mention all of this to my tdoc, b/c he'd just expect me to go to meetings, and I'm sick and fucking tired of those. Am I the only one who leaves an AA meeting wanting a drink more than when I got there?

For me, it's not tea, it's endless cups of coffee, lol.

Thanks for pinning this, VE, and thank you inspaces for creating it. I'll be coming back here over the next few days... or more.

[Shannie]

- although when you're a young person in Britain, it's questionable whether the social norm is actually healthy or desirable, given our nationwide problems with binge drinking. But that's a separate issue

Interesting you say that, Shannie, I recently saw a British made documentary on the problems Britian has with binge drinking, especially the young people. It was part of what made me wake up and realize what I was doing. Do you have any insight as to why it is so prevelant in Britian?

BTW, I love your coping skills and hope to one day be able to control myself like that. I think a person CAN get to that point, I'm just not there yet and think I'll do better just staying away from it altogether for now.

Thanks As for the British binge-drinking issue...IMHO, a large part of the reason for it is that British people are quite socially uptight and somewhat emotionally repressed (the whole "stiff upper lip" thing). Most Brits I know don't talk about their feelings too openly and certainly not negative feelings or serious personal/family problems. Better to drink away a problem or inhibition than admit it and work on it, maybe? While the American-style openness and "therapy culture" (sorry if that's not a good way to put it, but that's how I hear it referred to here) are getting more acceptable, I think it's still sort of frowned upon a lot of the time in the UK. So I think this leads to Brits drinking a hell of a lot because the only time we feel able to truly relax, open up and become less inhibited is while under the influence (obviously this is a huge generalisation). I don't really know anyone who, for example, would be happy to dance in a nightclub sober - they'd be far too worried about how they looked and whether they were making a fool of themselves. Which is odd, because obviously you make much more of a fool of yourself while blind drunk than you ever would sober, but somehow the "Oh well, I was pissed [drunk]" excuse makes it ok...it's as if anything you do while drunk on a night out somehow doesn't count towards the general "keeping up appearances". Also, the general social acceptabilty among young Brits of getting absolutely blind drunk while out with friends...well, I'm not really sure where that comes from, but I've definitely lived it. A few years back my friends and I used to go out with the express aim of getting wasted - it wasn't accidentally having too much to drink, we all used to deliberately drink as much as we could. Not remembering what we did (or maybe even where we went towards the end of the night) was a common part of the morning-after discussions. At the time I didn't even think about how dangerous that was because it just seemed as though it was the done thing and nothing unusual. I still see that going on around me now, but I just don't participate.

I think a person CAN get to that point

I think so too. I'm not one of those people though. It's something to be very, very careful about. Sometimes the drinking experiments turn out to be fatal.

Hell yes, it can be dangerous. It took me a while to get it right and on several occasions I drank too much and messed up before I re-learned to recognise the feeling of having had enough... It can be difficult to tell where the point of "pleasantly tipsy but still compus-mentus" is when you've spent a long time drinking yourself stupid as quickly as possible. I also had to learn to recognise the danger signs that signalled a potential alcohol binge - and then, through no small amount of trial and error, develop the discipline and strength of mind to stop those happening. In some ways it would have been easier to stay tee-total, but that wasn't what I wanted. Oh...and as an aside, I reject the charge that people who can re-learn to drink normally were never "true alcoholics" in the first place. I had an inpatient detox after getting full-on physically addicted to the stuff, but I have still managed to retrain myself. I do accept that that isn't always possible and/or desirable though - sometimes, for some people, it's best not to risk trying. I have seen plenty of people go down in a full-on relapse during my time in rehab/the rooms of AA.