Tag: sober

90 Reasons for not Drinking for 90 Days: #7

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#7 Reason for not drinking for 90 days: drinking fatigue

When you come to depend on drinking to relax you, to calm you, and to help you wind down every day but you also happen to have to drink it in large quantities in order to get that benefit, you can experience drinking fatigue.  You don’t actually feel like drinking but you know that if you don’t you’ll remain the tightly wound non-sleeping and anxious person you are when you don’t drink.  So you drink, even though part of you would really like to take a break and perhaps just drink some tea for an evening.  A person who has a good relationship with alcohol doesn’t ever experience this.  So one reason not to drink for 90 days is to recover from (and cease to experience) the peculiar ennui of being obligated by habit, rather than desire, to drink a lot of beer.

I’m glad that I have forcefully removed the obligation to drink tonight.  It annoys me that I feel so much less angsty about not drinking today than I did three days ago.  Like, accepting that I’m not drinking, not just for tonight but for 3 months, is giving in to something I was determined not to be okay with.  Except that I am okay with it.  But I sure as hell won’t admit yet that it might actually feel GOOD to not drink.  Don’t worry, soon I will experience irritation fatigue, in which I begin to get really tired of being irritated all the time and forcefully remove my obligation to be annoyed.

90 Reasons not to Drink for 90 days: #5 and #6

garden hat 1

Reason #5 for not drinking for 90 days: less recycling

Our recycling bin seems to have a bottomless pit when it’s empty.  It’s difficult to imagine having enough stuff to fill it up.  Yet we frequently filled it to capacity with 50% of it comprised of beer bottles.  It’s a relief to create less bottle waste.

Reason #6 for not drinking for 90 days: for the love of hats

I am a hat wearer.  I love them and I used to look great in them until my head got fat.  That’s right.  When you get really fat your head circumference grows right along with the rest of you – even before you can see it in your face.  I can no longer wear my favorite hat (the dirty 12 year old paper hat you see above) and it really bothers me.  It is very hard for me to find hats that work for me now aside from my berets.  There was only one hat left that I could wear on my fat head and still look good in, and my dog ate it 4 years ago.  Not drinking today means getting one step closer to being able to wear hats again.

90 Reasons not to Drink for 90 Days: #3

beer in Asian market

Reason #3 for not Drinking for 90 Days: Guiltless Mornings

I have never felt guilty about being a lush.  If I do not pose a danger to others with the way I enjoy life I don’t see why anyone should make a moral judgement against me.  Yet there are a lot of Americans who view even drinking 2 alcoholic beverages a night as a sign that you’re an alcoholic.  I reject this 100%.  However, once you have gone over the line, you know it.  No one else can tell you when you’ve crossed it better than you can.  Everyone is different so what is crossing the line from healthy drinking to unhealthy drinking is different for different people.  Once you know that you’ve crossed the line into dangerous territory you will begin to feel guilt.

Mornings are the worst.  Since I rarely get drunk and therefore rarely have hangovers, it isn’t about single evenings I’ve had too much to drink.  The problem is habitually drinking a lot more than is healthy for you, knowing that you’re doing it and every morning you wake up and you haven’t listened to yourself and stopped drinking after a reasonable number of drinks.  It’s been a while now that I have woken up most mornings with a dreadful feeling of disappointment in myself.  And guilt.  Just big-ass guilt.  Guilt that I absolutely don’t let anyone besides Philip know how much I drink which makes it my dirty little secret.  Guilt is ugly.

When you make mostly healthy choices for yourself and your body it isn’t that big of a deal when you go wild occasionally but there’s a balance sheet and when you spend most of your time on the negative side of it, it will begin to wear you down.  Guilt builds.  So one reason for not drinking today is that when I wake up tomorrow morning I will wake up without that gnawing guilt that I have done something bad and secretly been a disappointment to everyone, especially myself.  I will wake up guiltless.

Provided I didn’t misbehave in any other more nefarious way the night before.

*****

Day three of being sick – it’s worse now.  Chest cold taking hold!  Misery.  Sleepless nights, constant tickle in my chest and esophagus that I can’t clear.  Eating riccolas like they’re beer-flavored.  I’m tired.  But I’m just letting this cold do what it needs to do.  I’m taking care of myself – drinking elderberry syrup, lots of water, and hot lemon juice with honey and cayenne and turmeric.  I’m off to rewatch the first couple of Fringe before attempting to get some sleep.  Have a great night!

90 Reasons not to Drink for 90 Days: #1

yellow feetReason #1 for not drinking for 90 days: MY FEET

It is no secret that when you get fat, really fat, your feet get fatter too.  It’s also no secret that the heavy you are the more weight your feet have to bear, the harder they hit the pavement to carry your mass around all day.  I have always had obnoxious feet (very wide, super high arch, a bad temperament) but it wasn’t until I gained the first 50lbs above my normal weight that I had really bad foot pains (most likely plantar fasciitis) and my feet ache a lot when I have to be on them.

Since not drinking for 90 days will help me lose weight, it will help my feet too.  Every pound I lose is a pound my feet don’t have to feel bearing down on them.

I want happier more comfortable and functional feet.

*****

So this is day one of my challenge and I have spent most of the day in bed because I have come down with either a cold or the flu.  I’m not quite sure yet but it’s feeling flu-ish at the moment.  But instead of running a fever I’m running kind of cold at 94.8 degree body temp.  Yet I was sweating profusely and feeling very hot under my covers.  I have a terrible sore throat that is easing up now, a stuffed head (also easing up a bit) and the beginnings of a chest infection.  YAY.  So it’s beer-0-clock now and do I want a beer?

I do not.  I do usually drink some alcohol even when I’m feeling sick – it kind of numbs soar throats – but I do not want any alcohol right now.  I’m drinking  sage tea with lemon, raw honey, a dash of cayenne, and a dash of turmeric in it.  It tastes much better than it should.

I’m thinking of this as a backwards kind of gift from the universe.  Its way of easing me into this period of rest for my liver and all my other organs that don’t love beer as much as I do.  I truly hope it’s a cold, though, and not the flu.  I really don’t want Philip or Max to get this.  I really wish we had a better extra-bed situation.  Oh well.

Incidentally, I really dislike the word “sober”.  I was just going to say it sounds so dry and heavy and wondered if that’s why being sober is also referred to as being dry?

Well, that’s all the being up I can stand.  It’s time to get horizontal with a book and hope hope hope this is just a little cold.

 

Windows Looking In

neighbor house in mini

This is my favorite week of the year.  It’s officially winter, Christmas madness is over, and I look inward instead of outward.  I visualize how I want my new year to unfold.  It doesn’t matter how many people around me are cynical about resolutions and new beginnings, they are powerless to spoil my favorite time of year.

In truth, the new year doesn’t really begin for me until after my birthday on January 6th.  Known to some of you as Epiphany.  This year I will be 44 years old.

I’m breaking into this stream of thought to announce that I have accidentally discovered what Sriracha and cinnamon taste like together and I can tell you it’s nasty.

Setting resolutions isn’t, for me, about success or failure.  A million things can happen to take us on a different path than we imagined, making our resolutions obsolete or less important.  Maybe they’re really important but it wasn’t time to smack down on those particular issues we thought we were ready to deal with.  Resolutions are one way to get square with ourselves, to acknowledge things we don’t like about ourselves or ways in which we are letting ourselves down.  It’s a chance to recognize where improvements could be beneficial and to declare an intention to address weaknesses.  Even using those words make it sound negative.  It doesn’t need to be.

Get square with yourself.  Be honest with yourself.  Be raw with yourself.

Bottom line – even if you don’t share your inner conversation with anyone else – being honest with yourself is the best way to start any new year, new chapter, new venture, or new project.  No one else needs to be in on your inner dialog, but have it.  Start the year with total honesty.

If you’re being mean to yourself then you aren’t tapping into the truth yet.  The truth might be hard but its voice isn’t the one you use to flog yourself with.  It’s straight, but allows all kinds of angles to flourish.  What you do with truth is up to you.  Abusing yourself is punishment that you perceive as a deserved consequence of something you see as negative in yourself and isn’t about the truth itself.  Being honest is neutral.  It’s only scary because of how you might use it against yourself or against others.

I am tackling only one major thing this year.  All else follows behind it.

  • Going temporarily sober.  I believe (and will find out if I’m right) that getting my drinking situation under control (sober first, then we’ll see) will solve a number of other problems.
  • Lose weight.  But not as I generally set it out as a goal.  The sobering up will enable this and if I can succeed at losing enough weight then it will support healthier drinking and eating habits and will feed on itself going forward.  It’s really the same as the sobering up.  They are obnoxiously interconnected goals.
  • Developing a strict daily writing schedule.  I want to wake up at 5:30am and write until 7am when I have to wake the kid for school and get him ready.  Then social media while eating breakfast.  Then a minimum of 3 more hours writing.  Every single day.  Even weekends if possible.

Apparently when I say “one” I really mean three.

There are at least a hundred little things I could list as goals and things I want to do or accomplish this year.  I still have a few days left to consider making a list of minor intentions for the new year.  So for today I’ll leave it at the three important ones.

I wonder if anyone has ever put “Become a porn star” on their new year resolutions list?