Tag Archives: drinking
Quitting Drinking For Good
(Courtesy of The Chive’s Facebook post.)
I Quit
If you’ve followed this blog for a little while you’ll have an understanding of my battle with alcohol… and what I’ve been up to.
For a little while, I have been experimenting with alcohol thinking that maybe I could re-introduce it into my life on a controlled basis. It has been a dangerous experiment and probably one that I thought I could do successfully. I may have talked myself into thinking I could do it because of my condition.
I’m realizing that I can’t. I’d like to be able to still have that beer at a barbecue or a sporting event but I can’t. It’s just too much of a slippery slope that I inevitably fall down on and crash all the way to the bottom. Right now, I’m laying in bed and feeling like mental, emotional and physical hammered shit because I was drinking yesterday. I hate myself for doing what I did. My state of mind is one of futility and worthlessness and hopelessness. And I don’t want to feel this way.
I was telling myself, as I lay here, that I have to quit doing this. To just stop. And then I realized my own trap… I’m saying that I have to quit this. That I haven’t made a decision or a change by recognizing this. I’m putting it off… delaying the decision. Instead… I am saying to myself… I choose to quit drinking. Right now. I quit.
Dangerous Experiment
Geez, it’s been three weeks since I updated this site. I’m not exactly sure why, I guess it’s because I’ve been busy and making a point of trying to keep busy. I’ve been doing all kinds of yard work on the weekends now that it’s nice outside and also been tackling some indoor problems as well. Little by little, making improvements large and small.
I guess my lack of updates could also come from me not wanting to write about admitting that I had a relapse, something that’s been on my radar to write about but hadn’t got around to doing.
It was an intentional relapse; I wanted to see if I could have a casual drink and just slowly reintroduce alcohol as a possibility in my life. Booze is everywhere and I do enjoy the taste of a cold beer on a hot day with friends… that kind of thing. Just social events. I have this mental block that good times and beer are mutually exclusive, something I need to get past.
Anyway, without getting into a ton of detail, I put myself to the test with some booze while everyone in my family was either away or out for the evening on a Sunday night.
I found that I still have an issue with portion control. Stopping at one drink had been an issue for a long time. And after that single drink, I would eventually drink to excess. It wasn’t so much that I drank every day (until I was at the end) but that I couldn’t have only one drink. This time, my intentional relapse, proved to me that it’s still an issue… that it’s a very slippery slope between one drink and complete intoxication.
So, I had effectively failed my test… which is kind of a no-brainer given the setting in which I conducted the test in the first place. (At home, alone etc.)
But the true measure of success for any experiment is the learnings that one takes away from it. I’m a man of science and post-experiment analysis is something that is necessary to offer up any kind of intelligent truths.
I had to go to work the next day and, let me tell you, I was shocked by the fact that I used to go to work on a fairly regular basis feeling like that.
I felt like SHIT. I was dehydrated all to hell. I was exhausted; both sleepy AND physically drained. My entire body ached down into my bones… like ACHED. I had a ravenous hunger ALL DAY that couldn’t be sated. My bowels were voicing their disdain with me by forcing me into notching a ‘shat-trick‘, all before the work whistle blew and I rode down the tail of a dinosaur to my car and left work.
And the fucked up part is that I wasn’t even all that hungover by most standards. But after feeling straight and hangover free for months, I quickly got a wake up call about why I like sobriety so much.
I very much prefer to never feel that way… ever. LOL I don’t care how good of a time it is, ain’t nuthin worth doing that again. It pretty much solidified my higher order thinking into the understanding and acceptance that I don’t want and don’t need alcohol in my life. And if I have a craving at some point in the future, I know that I have a moment in time to look back on and say to myself, “do you want to feel like that again? No sir, you certainly do not.”
Basically, I am not completely sure whether or not I answered my own question from the start of my experiment, ‘Can I have a casual relationship with alcohol?’ I anticipated a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to the question. I discovered the real answer is that I don’t want to have any relationship with alcohol at all.
This Hit Me In The Feels
I’m having a particularly difficult time over the past couple of days maintaining my sobriety. The urge has been strong to drink and I’d almost given in a couple of times.
Anyway, I saw this video on Facebook from Day 001 and it has reduced me to tears. God, this sucks.
Here’s What Happens To Alcoholics’ Brains When They Quit Drinking
This is a very interesting article about the brain and alcohol by Ben Taub over at I Fucking Love Science with some scientific backing from a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) study.
http://www.iflscience.com/brain/what-happens-alcoholics-brains-when-they-quit-drinking
‘Liquid State’ by Muse
Take me for a ride
Break me up and steal what’s left inside
And hope and pray iniquity has died inside and left a scar
I’m on red alert
Bring me peace and wash away my dirt
Spin me round and help me to divert and walk into the light
Warm my heart tonight
Hold my head up high
Help me to survive
Kick me when I’m down
Feed me poison, fill me till I drown
Wake me up before I get pushed out and fall into the night
Warm my heart tonight
(Force me to lose control)
Hold my head up high
(Watch as I lose my soul)
Help me to survive
(Push me until I fall)
Drinking On The Beach
Day 75
It’s been 75 days since the last time I had a drink and, in that time, I’ve dropped 15 lbs of excess weight. I haven’t even been exercising; this is purely attributed to not drinking alcohol and eating better/at normal times during the day.
Pretty wild stuff. Who’d a thunk it.
D I S T I L L U S I O N S 