Day 65 - All Around us is Calm

Yesterday afternoon and evening we enjoyed a peaceful barbeque with friends at a nearby campsite.

We were joined by their son and daughter in law, and their two grandsons. It was a fun family gathering.

Of course wine was offered, but no one much cared who was drinking or not - it wasn't the point of the afternoon.

I reflected on how drama free my life has become. Particularly because one topic of conversation was the previous drama -filled camping trip our friends had endured.

This annual camping trip for our friends used to involve three or four couples on a peaceful retreat for a week or so on one of the Gulf Islands.

In recent years they have been joined by family members and grandchildren, so the event has grown into a family affair.

This year was no exception. One young mother joined them, with her two year old daughter and new boyfriend.

A few days into the camping trip, it became obvious that all was not well in this new relationship, and the quiet campsite was filled with sounds of screaming and arguing.

All came to a head one night, the arguments got increasingly violent, and the new boyfriend was ejected from the campsite.

All this of course was fueled by alcohol.

This morning I read Sober Mummy's great post about the lies that alcohol tells you (read it here), and this ruined camping trip highlights one of them......

alcohol is a great stress reliever

I used that one all the time. "I had a stressful day, so I stopped and got wine"

I did truly believe that wine would wash my stress away......

And yet, here I am, over two months without wine, all other aspects of my life has stayed the same, yet my life is so much less stressful....

Could it be that alcohol CAUSES the stress and drama?

Lets go back to our arguing couple in the campsite......

• They didn't scream at each other all day long - only in the evening after a quantity of alcohol had been consumed.
• Despite the supposed calming and stress-relieving qualities of alcohol, no one rushed over to give them a large bottle of wine to immediately consume, and therefore calm down the situation....

We're all intelligent people here. Alcohol can't have it both ways............

I'm with Sober Mummy on this one.

Have a great Monday.

xx.

If Hollywood has taught us anything......

.......it is to expect a Happy Ending.

The guy will get the girl. The World will be saved. The flawed hero will resolve his issues.

And alcoholics are glamorous tragic figures that will eventually be reformed.

Hmm.

Real life is quite a bit more ugly and messy than Hollywood would have us believe. (No Shit, I hear you say).

This weekend I caught a glimpse of what full blown addiction looks like. Not the Hollywood version. The bottom floor of the elevator.

The ex-wife of one of our close friends was admitted to hospital. She had been living in a squat with no running water, no sanitation, no food, just cheap alcohol. She was delirious.

This lady has been dependent on alcohol her whole adult life. She drank until she passed out. Her husband tried in vain to help. He paid for her to go to a private rehab clinic.

"I might as well piled up the cash on the front lawn and set fire to it. At least it would have provided some warmth"

He took a job in Northern BC, in a dry community (yes, they do exist) and took her with him, in the hope that lack of access to alcohol would break her dependency.

He came home from work one day to find her high from drinking bottles of mouth wash.

"At least her breath was minty fresh"  he said, a grim attempt at humour.

After years of trying, he took his kids and divorced her. Yet, over the following years, he still tried to help, bailed her out of jail, took her to hospital, paid her bills.

Ironically, the years of abuse on her body have left her brain fried, a form of dementia which means that she has somehow "forgotten" that she is dependent on alcohol. Her brain and body has made one final attempt to 'cure" itself......by turning this lady into nothing more than hollow vessel with the lowest possible level of functionality.

Our friend, despite all the drama over the years is heartbroken.

"I asked her one day, why she needed to drink" he said, "She told me....'imagine you are really hungry. At first you can ignore it, but eventually you have to eat. That's what alcohol does to me"

I completely understand the analogy of the elevator. With one exception. While we are riding the elevator down, we have the option to get off at different floors, and maybe in some cases, ride the elevator up.
But eventually, if you stay on, passing floor after floor; when you ride the elevator down so far -

 there are no "stop" buttons, no options to get off. No buttons at all. 

You just ride the elevator all the way to the bottom.

There is no Hollywood Happy Ending.

Day 61

After a few "down" days, the fog seems to have lifted - from my spirits, anyway! We are still in a smoky fog from wild fires that are alight in BC. Very thankful for the firefighters who are working 24/7, mostly dealing with the results of stupid actions by humans that have sparked the worst of the blazes.

This week,my hubby and I celebrated our wedding anniversary, and I also made 60 days AF! Yay!

After my brief brush with PAWS, I thought I would remind myself, and any reader who may be on the start of their journey, or going through PAWS themselves, some stuff I have discovered.

1. There is no right or wrong way to do this.

I read Jason Vales' book at the beginning, and for a while I was getting my knickers in a bunch about not following his advice to the letter. For example, he tells us not to count days. I completely understand why - we are supposed to be embracing a whole new wonderful lifestyle, not counting the days of denial - yet I still count, because it gives me a sense of accomplishment. It makes me feel good, and it also keep me on this path .....'how could you drink wine when you've come so far? I tell myself.
It may be different for other people, I may feel differently when I get to 100 days, or 200, but until then, I will continue to count.

2. I drink AF beer and wine.

Again, may people advise against this, in case it is a trigger to drink the 'real" stuff. But firstly, I like it, and secondly, it is a tool to use in situations when I don't want to talk about not drinking.  I may give this up also, but for now, AF beer especially works for me.

3. I've stopped worrying about my weight and my sugar intake.

Sugar is bad. I get it. One vice at a time. As for my weight, I lost quite a bit to start with, I started juicing, and I even attempted to run a bit. It didn't last. Again, one lifestyle change at a time. I just stopped putting poison in my body. That's a good thing. These extra 30 pounds I carry? That  happened over a decade. I don't need to deal with it all at once, it can wait for another month.

4. I am much more productive. I can take a day off occasionally.

To start with, I was paranoid about catching up all that lost time in the wine years. I can't make up for that. Day to day, my work is so much better than it was, I've got my passion back; my house is cleaner; I take care of admin stuff on time......if I have a couple of down days, (like my recent PAWS days) I don't need to beat myself up.

5. I am not consumed with Guilt for my bad wine behaviour on a constant basis.

Did I behave badly? Yes. Do I regret every incident? No. Some incidents would have occurred anyway, the same words would have been said (less slurry), the same results would have occurred.


I am not the same person I was 60 days ago. Maybe I am more like the person I was 20 years ago. It doesn't really matter.....to quote something I saw on social media ...

"I love the smell of possibility in the morning"

WB xx

Baby Step

I have had a couple of "woe is me" days. Feeling a bit grumpy.
The first reason, which is ridiculous, is the sweltering weather. Everyone else is as hot as I am, yet I seem to be the most irritable.
We went to the river for a swim, and tried a different spot. We had to scramble over some rocks, and I whined the whole way.
The water was lovely when I got in and cooled off, and I tried really hard to be upbeat and pleasant, but it just wasn't happening.
On Vancouver Island, at the moment, there are two serious wildfires burning. So far, no lives or property has been lost, due to the hard work and dedication of our fire fighters. The fires and wind have meant that we have had this weird, orange hazy smog hanging over the Island, and blocking the sun.
It has given a strange spooky feel - people are not really venturing out, because of the poor air quality.

It has been a strange couple of days.

Even as I write today, I am not really having a coherent thought.

I listened to a podcast this morning about setting small goals, taking baby steps towards your big goal.

I think a lot of my "mood" is due to the fact that I am "bored" with this journey of sobriety. I feel like the kid in the back seat of the car crying "how much further?"

I wish that I could just transport myself to a place where I am a NON DRINKER. I don't worry about how many days, if there is AF beer or wine in the fridge, if I am losing weight, how I am going to navigate the next party and so on.......what was initially a 'novelty", a new shiny goal....has become a drudgery.

I know that it takes baby steps to get there. I know this is the wine witch circling. I really don't feel the urge to drink. Yet I feel as dark and orangy and weird as the smog today.

Day 56 - Don't it Make My Brown Eyes Blue

Finally! I know now why I am a drunk! Wait for it.......I have blue eyes! Yes!
A new piece of "research" is out, that "links" the colour of your eyes to the probability of whether or not you will become an alcoholic.
At least that's the news headline (article here).

The study looked at more than 10,000 people who were already diagnosed with a form of mental illness, filtered out all those who had a dependency on alcohol - and bingo! Most of them had blue eyes.

Now, of course we don't have the full published study, so I have no idea what hypothesis they actually started with, or the assumptions they made (what "clinical' definition of alcohol dependency did they use?), or indeed, who was paying for the research - just the headline and the message out there that if you have blue eyes, you are more likely to abuse alcohol.

How handy for the alcohol industry! One more piece of research that they can wave at us and say "Look! It's not our fault! It's not the targeted advertising, or the lack of regulation, or the low price or availability of alcohol, or the fact that the pubs and liquor stores are open 24/7......it's the colour of your eyes!!"

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not blaming the industry for the decades of my wine drinking....but they sure made it easy for me, and I certainly contributed to the shareholder's annual dividend cheque.

In the same way, the tobacco industry didn't force people to smoke - but they made it seem sexy and appealing, and NORMAL to consume a drug that is addictive, and would eventually kill them....and that is exactly what the alcohol industry is being allowed to do today.

And this type of research that correlates eye colour to alcohol abuse doesn't help. The scientists admit that they don't know or can't find a causal link - just a correlation in a tiny sample of people.

If it was harder to get hold of wine, or more expensive, or if there were more of a stigma around drinking wine alone, or at lunchtime, or during the week....would I have still abused alcohol? I can't answer that, I don't know.

But I can tell you with absolute certainty.....it has nothing to do with the colour of my eyes.

Have a great weekend, and Happy 4th July to my lovely neighbours to the south xx

Day 54 - It Takes a Drunk to know a Drunk Part 2.

Today, a friend showed my a text that she received a few nights ago from a friend of hers. I can't remember the exact words, but the text seemed quite angry and referred to an incident between my friend and the texter, that had caused offence and a misunderstanding.

"The thing is" said my friend "this happened three years ago, and we resolved it immediately, and have been friends ever since. I had no idea she was still so angry....."

She was upset, so I took another look...maybe the texter was joking?

I can't be absolutely sure....but to my practiced eye....this looked like a "drunk text".

I know, because I have been know to "drunk text". And "drunk e-mail", "drunk facebook" and "drunk tweet". 
And, my "communications" would range from the totally incoherent, to just plain embarrassing. And often, after staying up late and getting myself into a drunken state about a perceived slight, or imagined argument, my (published) comments could cause at best confusion, and at worst, offence and lost friends.

The worse thing about it was that I never remembered. My morning ritual at the end of my slippery slope was first trying to ascertain how bad my hangover actually was and then feverishly checking my "sent" emails and texts and my social media feeds for the latest of my rants.

Of course, I did try to control this - I often would lock my smart phone in the car......( and no, I never thought to control it by not drinking!!)

I said to my friend ....'Why don't you call her....there maybe some underlying stress that you don't know about........."

Day 53

Day 53 and it's sweltering.

It's also Canada Day. My adopted country's birthday. Canada is 148 years old today.

People are crammed onto beaches, and also down at our local swimming hole. Parades are happening in cities and town across the country - although I can't imagine how uncomfortable it must be in this heat.

I am swigging alcohol free beer, and am thankful that I am hangover free.

Later, when it's nearly dusk, and people have trooped off home to have barbeques, Hubby and I will sneak down to the river, and dunk ourselves into the cool water, and feel our core body temperature drop to a comfortable state.

Then, we'll eat a simple meal of leftovers, cold meat and salad, and if I'm feeling really indulgent, I may have another AF beer.

Life is good. We live in a democratic country, we have our health and our happiness and our freedom.

Happy Birthday Canada.