Prepare For The Holidays

Happy Holidays Everyone! I’m sorry I haven’t posted this earlier because I know first hand how hard it is to get or stay sober during the holidays. I’m going to give you want has worked for me and now I know I am the relapse queen but I do have experience in staying sober during major life events such as the holidays. For some reason I actually follow ‘the rules’ when it comes to this time of the year maybe because I made such a fool of myself over the years around this time and when I say fool, I mean stupid drunken fool. It’s like it’s a fabulous time to just say fuck it and drink everything in sight. So this year I would like to give you all for the holidays what has worked for me and what has helped keep me sane and sober.

I first want to talk about the party aspect of this time of the year whether it’s a party that’s going to be for Christmas or New Years, for the alcoholic any party can be intimidating especially the newly sober alcoholic. For myself I must have a plan and a list before I even consider going, my list would include all the good times sober and all the bad times drunk and I carry it with me, if need be go into the bathroom and read it, take a short break to get the alcoholic fuzz out of my head and get back to what reality really is and for the active alcoholic, it’s pain, depression, hangovers, hospital trips, my family not wanting me to be around, my family scared of me, ect… It’s okay if you take a break during the party, nobody will miss you for five minutes. Take a drink with you to the party or have a nonalcoholic drink in mind because you know when you arrive someone’s going to ask you what you want to drink, most likely they’ll ask “The usual?” Your response could be something like “No not right now, my stomach has been bothering me.” or “My doctor has me on this medication for heartburn and she said not to drink alcohol while I am taking it so I’ll go ahead and have a Coke, do you have lime I can have with that?” Now I’m pretty honest and just say, “I can’t drink, my doctor has me on this psychedelic medication for my brain and alcohol doesn’t mix well with it.” I myself am lucky to have a husband that backs me when it comes to these parties and he knows if I say I want to leave then well it’s time to go, communication in this respect is one thing that we actually have down pat. I also always make sure I leave an hour before the drunkest lady at the party can be drunk enough to get naked and dance on the table and while going home I get to smile inward and remind myself that could’ve been me but it’s not so in the morning I don’t have to hate myself or try to figure out what happened during the blackout. If all else fails, why go? You do not have to attend any party, just don’t go. It’s one year, one holiday season you can always go next year.

This time of the year can bring about feelings in any person that they never knew existed. For the alcoholic this can be damaging to our sober time if we don’t deal with the emotions in the proper way. Every year I get overwhelmed, frustrated, angry, sad, exhausted and then of course have periods of extreme happiness, joy, or mania. The extreme happiness can be just as damaging to our sobriety as the anger or exhaustion. It’s important to remember that just because everything is going great and it seems all the world is right that you still can not drink, that one you think won’t hurt you in reality will hurt you. Keep in mind, one is too many and a thousand are never enough, NEVER enough. You can not drink no matter what, you have a life threatening disease and don’t let it own you…you need to own it and you can. One drink will bring you right back where you were before you quit. One drink will bring the embarrassing moments right back, the hell will be reality again in a split second. You are an alcoholic, you can not drink normally.

It’s not new that I am going to mention an AA or WFS meeting. Like I have said repeated, there is no better or easier place to stay sober for an hour or hour and a half than a meeting. If you can’t get to a meeting you can call the AA hotline, they have people standing by answering phones to help alcoholics through this time of the year. Plenty of meetings around this time of the year, plenty of them. A woman from WFS told me long ago what worked for her and it’s probably the best advice I have ever been given. “Do not drink even if your ass falls off. Sit on your hands if you have to.” I’ve had to sit on my hands plenty of times. Remember the urge to drink will pass, as long as you let it pass.

Lastly I will remind all of you to eat, stay hydrated, exercise, don’t get overwhelmed, take breaks when needed, and don’t forget to smile. Smiling is very contagious, if you have kids I’m sure you already knew that. Have fun and please stay sober, you will thank me when all is said and done because a sober holiday is so much more comforting than a hell of a holiday made putrid with alcohol.

The most important thing I can tell you is not to drink and drive.  Every 15 minutes someone dies from an alcoholism related accident and that statistic does not take the holidays off.  Be Safe!

And I bet you all thought I was going to forget links. Nope just wanted to make a list of them down here.

Alcoholics Anonymous
Women for Sobriety
DryBlogA great way to waste time and get through the horrible moments where you think you may explode. Lots of resources also.
Alcohol Self Help News
Wellsphere’s Alcoholism Community
I Want Ice WaterMy favorite blog

I Felt My Daughter’s Heart Today

I walked to the post office today to place what is the final try at keeping our house in the mail to a PO Box address in Ohio, the hardship letter with a letter from my husbands employer begging for more time, help to keep what belongs to our family in our family.  They should receive it tomorrow by noon.  All the power is now in their hands and so now we have to wait, wait for someone to decide if we can stay here (like we deserve) or if a sheriff needs to come and deliver foreclosure papers to us.  I received the paperwork the other day stating that if the mortgage company doesn’t receive the $5800 by January 10th, then the next step of foreclosure shall begin.

While I was placing everything in the envelope and getting ready to go, my husband and I were talking about how we could possibly come up with the money and we well have no options, more importantly though we had no clue our daughter was listening and she chimed in when I said to him that we need to sit down and discuss whether we want to stay here in this town or move closer to his homebase office.  “We have to move from our house?  I don’t want to move, I want to stay in my school with my friends.”  Tears streamed down her face and it was like all her happiness and comfortness in the world escaped with those tears, you could see my child go from happy, to sad and then finally panicked all in the course of those two sentences.  My husband then got up and walked from the room and you could tell by the slump of his back and the sadness in his steps that he was indeed crying.  I went to my daughter and sat on the floor with her and with tears on the verge of escaping my own eyes and heart, I let her know that we don’t want to move and we are trying our hardest to stay here because I know how much her life here means to her because my life with her here means the same thing to me.

This is getting so incredibly hard.

I Made It Through The Black Hole

As you can see I am still here and I am still here SOBER and I guess that’s what really matters.  Yesterday was awful for me.  I felt like my life was closing in on me and closing in really fast.  I felt like I had to do something, anything to stop it but had no clue what that something, anything should be.  By afternoon I swore I was going to have to live in that black hole for the rest of my life, the panic was huge and scary.  I haven’t had a day like that in a long time.  I think the last time I felt that kind of panic was about 4 years ago and I woke up one morning and couldn’t find my daughter.  At the time she was only 4 and we have an above ground pool out back.  I ran around holding my son whom was a newborn at the time, clutching on to him because I felt if I let him go he would disappear also.  The good news is she wasn’t in that pool, the bad news was she was at a neighbor’s house getting her hair done.  Ummmmmmmm I know…why the hell that mother didn’t bring her home is beyond me but I tell you I felt such relief just to see her when that neighbor’s door opened from my vigorous rapping, well more like banging.  Yesterday, was like I was running around trying to make sense of everything and trying to find that something but I had no clue what it was I needed to find.  The panic took over every inch of my body and brain, my chest I was sure was going to explode right along with my head.

But I survived it and I survived it without the numbness of alcohol.  Somehow I knew the alcohol would only make the black hole bigger, wider, and more demanding.  I sware I was losing my mind or had lost it somewhere along the way.

I Want A Fucking Drink…NOW!

I’m going to lose my mind. I just don’t how much I can take. I feel like my head is going to explode along with my heart. I just don’t know what else to say. Today is a very bad day for me and I just want to drink in an incredibly huge way.

The Quiet Truth

Saturday I went down to help my Dad out with a horrible chore.  He’s not able to drive right now, who knows when he’ll be able to or if he’ll be able to but anyway…his dog that he had for 19 & 1/2 years died last month right before Thanksgiving.  The vet sent her to a company to have her cremated and that company was suppose to mail the remains to my Dad.  Well they mailed it to the wrong address but just admitted it to him last week so my hubby drove him out to the house which is also the house he had but was foreclosed on.  We were hoping someone was home and could tell us what happened to the package or better yet had the package and this whole thing could be solved.  While he was getting ready to leave I saw the amount of medications he is taking and asked him, “Do you take all of those everyday?”  He explained to me what was for morning, afternoon and night.  I then asked him, “Is medicare taking care of that huge cost each month?”  No they aren’t, my Dad has to pay out of pocket for the medications, which by the way are medications that are keeping him alive.  My Dad, a Vietnam Veteran, a man whom has worked so hard in life to just have what he has, is now paying money out of his own pocket so he can stay alive, so he can see his grandchildren turn another year older.  There is no help through the government because he’s 62 and supposedly that’s too old to save his life.  Well it’s not too old to me, I’d like to see him turn 70 or 72 before they give up on him.  Hell I’d like them not give up on him!  Anyway, when they got back from going out to the house, I went out to find out what happened so I could prepare for the coming tornado of my mom’s emotions if this didn’t go the way she wanted.  He was drinking a beer.  Ummmmmm Dad?!  His response to me was, “I’m dying sweetie.”  An awkward silence made the whole world stop for a second, I didn’t hear one noise right after he said that.  I didn’t breathe for that second, I’m not even sure my own heart was beating during that time.  I have never heard such a quiet silence in my life, never.  “Well that was an awkward silence,”  I said but then corrected myself and said, “No, an awkward conversation.”  This is true alcoholism…he believes he’s dying so there it is…the rock bottom, death.

I need to ready myself for this truth, this quiet truth.