That looks amazing!!!
Hey hey @SassyRocks! Thank you! Doing good… just working through this little thing called life 
How are you?
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- Wow! Where is the time going?! I guess I’m posting less because things have been way less stressful!
I’m on my third week into a new job. Loving working during normal hours again (and not living like a vampire).
Hosted a nice get together last weekend. And even though none of the adults drank any- me and the kids had some lovely lemonade with blackberries and mint 
Having the people over for the first time in a long time kicked up the spring cleaning bug- so a little house purging is always good.
And my husband says I need to drink more of my NA drinks because they have taken over the outdoor fridge. I don’t usually drink them unless we’re going somewhere or having people over- so I’ve started treating myself at dinner. 
I’ve also started seeing a lot more alcohol alternatives in my advertising on FB and Instagram… guess not drinking is getting a little more popular and small businesses are starting to make more healthy alternatives- i’m digging it!
Gained a little of my weight back (probably because I like dessert ) so need to figure out a way to get more exercise in the day with the new job hours. I’ll figure it out- it’s all good. Got my stepsons graduation in May and a cousins wedding in June as motivation.
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Man did I need this today. This popped up on my feed and reading where you are now and reading your original post for the first time today, it just gave me real hope that recovery and living a happy, content, sober life is possible. Thank you for sharing your experience strength and hope. You are greatly appreciated! Great work! I hope to be where you are some day! Keep on keepin on! 
Thank you! It has really helped to keep a “log” (of sorts). It helps me remember where I was.
I didn’t know this is where I was going the last time I tried to get control of the booze.
But I am in a much better place and don’t want to go back to that dark hamsterwheel I was stuck on.
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There are so many things I love about this screen shot-
1-I didn’t know it was day 500 when I logged in.
2- that is one of my favorite quotes I used in my bullet to-do journal the past couple years.
“The best way to predict your future is to create it”
Or my shortened version “create yourself”.
I’m really feeling like I’m way closer to the vision of myself that I’d never been able to obtain because booze sucked away all my time, energy, happy thoughts, money, and just made so many things more difficult then they needed to be.
I didn’t know this was where I was going the last time I tried to take control over the booze- especially since I had tried, (maybe succeeded for short times) but always failed so many times in the past.
I don’t want to go back to that hell hole.
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Awesome milestone! I appreciate your posts, Beachy!
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“I didn’t come this far to only go this far”
Some lyrics that stood out in random music morning
Can be applied in so many different ways
So happy to see this!! Congratulations on your 500!! 
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Alcohol awareness month got me reflecting…
Alcohol
Will
Always
Ruin
Everything
At least for me. It took a longtime for me to finally see all the heartache, chaos, emotional instability that alcohol brought into my life.
Growing up my father became addicted during my parents marriage, they fought a lot, eventually divorced, and then it got worse. He spent his last two holiday seasons in detox. He tried to drink away his pain and it eventually killed him one Christmas Eve. I was 17, a senior in high school. It wrecked me.
I ended up partying too much with my friends, you know it was the cool thing to do. One weekend, I blacked out and tried to drive home. I flipped my car, was found hanging out of the back passenger window with my car upside down. I woke up in the hospital. Apparently all my friends thought I spent the night at the party, they gave me a room and everything. It took a long time to afford to buy a car again, I had to move to the city and use the bus system for awhile. Parties at a condo I moved into with a couple friends got pretty crazy. Some nights I could remember ended in weird arguments, or people sleeping with people that they shouldn’t have. My “friends” ended up lying to me about paying their portion of the rent, and I found an eviction notice in their room one day. The would spend all their rent month on partying. After another year of things not quite working out with my party culture friendships. I eventually joined the military to try and get away.
Of course, military = work hard, party hard culture. Or at least that’s the crowd I ended up with. One night blacked out, someone took advantage of me- and slandered my name to the station. Not someone I would ever of had anything to do with but he completely made it out to be like I was some slut.
I worked real hard for a long time and was very successful, but my days off and eventually evenings were usually party time. When you move so many times, the way to meet people is to go out and get drinks. Somehow, my have “just one” switch never worked for very long. It would always slide into blackouts and painful mornings- either because of the pounding migraines, or some stupid argument that really never made any sense, or memories that flash and you hope aren’t real. I ended up blacked out with the wrong crowd one night in Miami and the memories still haunt me.
Somewhere along the way, I would have to switch up the booze I was drinking. Some would give me almost instant headaches, or way worse hangovers. Some alcohols I would break out in a hive like rash… So I played the rounds on almost all the boozes, cut wine, switched from rum, to vodka, to whiskey, ended up on those seltzer drinks- but had to go through those too, because certain ones had way worse headaches associated. My body was telling me to stop drinking, but my mind wasnt having it. I can’t tell you how many days I lost to migraines. It really is sad the amount of time I lost.
After moving to a great neighborhood, and of course finding lots of “social” boating people (who of course drank). Drinking became a major player in our daily lives again. I ended up getting salmonella, that attached itself to hardware in my knee and was put in the hospital with a septic infection for a week- had to have a PIC line in my arm with diaily IV antibiotics for a month to try and finally extinguish the infection. Now I know many people might not correlate the infection spreading to my drinking- But I’m sure poisoning myself regulary did not help my immune system very much in preventing it taking over my body.
You’d think I would see that pattern and make a change. And I tried over and over again to gain control from as early as my mid-20’s. But the allure of drinking is so ingrained in our culture and lifestyles it is really hard to break away. As much as I hate covid- I think it might have helped me finally break away.
I was managing a large part of our covid response posture for the region, I got a new boss that kept throwing things at me, I was super stressed out for months. Of course I was drinking to try and deal with it all… Would get in stupid arguments with my husband, tried to hide my drinking… Started to have really bad anxiety about going to work, couldn’t sleep, got depressed and ended up being pushed to counseling and meds to try and cope. I got so fed up I decided to quit my career. After one really bad night I decided I needed to try and stop drinking again to try and fix things with my husband, right before Thanksgiving.
Horrible timing really, white knuckled it through the holidays… trying to make it to 100 days. There really is no good time to try and quit. Now is the only time that matters. I was reading A New Earth yesterday and it touched on that - life is just a lot of “now’s”.
“Time is seen as the endless succession of moments, some “good”, some “bad”. Yet if you look more closely… you find that there are not many moments at all. You discover that there is only ever THIS MOMENT. Life if always now. Your entire life unfolds in this constant Now. Even past or future moments only exist when you remember or anticipate them and you do so by thinking about them in the only moment there is: this one.”
In one of the sober groups I joined, and listening to podcasts and reading some quit lit… I stumbled across naming my drinking demon, and only working on not drinking in this moment. With those major tools, I have been able to pull away from my drinking demon this last time. “Damon” is a small voice in my head, but he doesn’t have the control anymore. I’m AWARE that he lied to me, I’m AWARE that he created or contributed to many, many bad events in my life. I’m AWARE he is not looking out for my best interests, my sanity, my health, or ME at all.
I started to see positive changes in that first 100 days and have kept going… I recently passed 500 days away from the booze. I haven’t needed the depression, anxiety or sleeping meds for a long time and have not needed the counselor in a long time either. I am a lot more stable overall.
It was hard to break the habits, to be the different one in the group not drinking. Or the one to leave early because I am tired, or just want to have “me” time away from my drinking friends to watch a show, or read a book, or go to bed so I can wake up early and get groceries or workout (things that would never happen on days off drinking the night before). It is a lot easier now, it doesn’t bother me anymore to order the lemonade or have the dessert instead of the cocktails. There are actually lots of yummy virgin options (and they taste better without the bitter booze).
So long story short, (probably too much information), I finally feel free enough to put me first. I’m actually the priority in this moment, and all the other ones. I can put myself first, and my AWARENESS is that
Alcohol
Will
Always
Ruin
Everything
for me.
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Woo hoo! Congratulations on 500+ days! 
Thank you for your courage to share your story. 
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- Packed weekends get me irritated. Not that I really had any other plans- but I guess I like making the decisions on what to do with my time.
Last night had to cut my walk short to go to dinner with friends. So I’m short on my goal for the week- and wait staff don’t refill free drinks as often as they do for boozy drinks. That always irritates me.
Now today off to nephews birthday and tomorrow Easter at my in-laws. I’d have been fine with one day with his family, but two in a row is a little much for me. And they are both about 1.5 hrs drives away.
And I still have to worry about getting my steps for the challenge, groceries, meals preeped and clothes washed in the weekend. So I’m grumpy because I have no me time for decisions this weekend.
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I can relate, I find myself bogged down by just the little maintenance things in life everyone needs to do to survive, meal prep, food shop, laundry, clean, cook. I find myself having no time to pick up new things I want to do, like read more, exercise, especially with me working the 12 steps and going to meetings with a full time construction job, I’m exhausted mentally and physically most of the time. I was told I need to let it go more, don’t worry about getting everything done, it will get done so why add the worrying about getting it done. Just try to live life and enjoy the moments the best you can, I know easier said than done. Also I feel you on the extra family time this weekend. One visit with the family would he enough for me too hah best of luck to you, you got this! Enjoy your day! And try to enjoy your weekend. One day and moment at a time!
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Thank you! Yeah just feel bogged down sometimes. Good description. I hate all the “have-to’s” and want more “want-to’s”…
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Great post, thank you.
- Long day. Didn’t want to get in that run drill. But I’ll never reach goals if you keep making excuses. So drug my ass outside after work. Admittedly this job was really slow and laborious, but the view is nice and the honeysuckle smells nice. And the sky kind of reminds me of the transition of better times after the dark times. Just takes the effort to do the work.
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- My dog- he’s awesome. But he’s also starting to have a really hard time walking around. Not only do his hips have bad arthritis he’s got a mass that’s been growing on his front elbow and seems to really hurt and limit his time walking.
It really is tearing me apart. He wants to go on walks so bad, but can barely finish them he starts limping so bad. They keep getting shorter and shorter. He brings toys for fetch but only makes it 2-5 throws.
Last time I took him to the vet he said he was in amazing health, except for his legs. I’m scared of when I have to say when. I don’t think it’s yet- but I’m scared it’s coming sooner.
He tries so hard. It makes me cry a lot because I can’t help. I got him 16 years ago (almost to the day) he’s been with me longer then almost everyone in my life. I hate this.
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Yesterday made me think about photo’s and the dark memories behind them.
I took an awesome pic of my dog happy by the water, but afterwards ended up crying most of the night because of how bad he was limping and how sucky him getting old is.
It makes me reflect on all the photo’s I have while out drinking. They looked like fun times. We’re laughing, or making silly faces… do I remember what was going on? Lots of times no. and many times those “good times” (I don’t remember) turned into lost days in bed, wondering how to get back to my car, flashes of (sometimes horrible) memories, or yacking until noon with a migraine.
When I lived on the west coast, it was normal for my crew to go to “breakfast” and look through our phones trying to piece together the night before from the sketchy photos on our phones. With bloody mary’s and greasy food only to probably do it all over again…
I thought it was fun, but looking back- I missed out on so many other good things that area had to offer, wasting my time drinking, recovering, rinsing and repeating. Same with my time living in 4 other highly desirable locations of the country. And admittedly several of my vacations with those drinking friends. I remember when I went overseas with several girlfriends, we wasted a few nights in that cycle- then my one friend and I tried to split off to have less painful mornings and see more things in our day… Not sure how successful we were.
That friend eventually went to rehab. And I remember thinking “how horrible”, to have to be sober all the time (although I knew I was probably in the same arena). I ended up doing one of my birthdays with her a few years ago for a sober weekend. We used to be roommates but haven’t lived in the same state for a long time… At first it felt hard, but I remember the whole thing and we had lots of fun going to the beach and out to eat. It was great and one of the first whole weekends I’d had sober in a long, long time. And I remember all the photos, and know there were no debilitating painful times immediately after.
So it makes me wonder, are those smiling, laughing photos really good? looking back was it really a good time? Or is there a dark memory that always surfaces… knowing how much pain I was in shortly after, or something else that happened that I wish I could forget?
I do know, now, what happens in all my photos and I don’t have dark memories tagged up with them. It is better.
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It is a good idea to attend a few AA meetings and listen. I was not sure at first and discussions can be confusing hearing everyone’s opinions etc. opening the big book and start reading also what helped me. Early on I compared myself “out” and looked at the things I had not done “yet.”
After a few more tries at drinking and controlling it, I listened to my sponsor, it is a good thing to get one, call every day and work
the steps with that sponsor as I did. From then on I am happy to say I have stayed sober for over 25 years. I still attend meetings and talk on the phone and so forth. I was told we can get off the elevator at any time, we do not have to go down to the bottom before getting help. I ask God to keep me sober in the morning and thank Him at night for keeping me sober. (On my knees) I do not want to go to the places other’s have gone, death, jails or institutions.
Try it, life only gets better.
One day at a time.
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I understand your plight as so many of us do all over the world and I am sorry for your struggle. One thing I have done when K have really craved a drink is make a non-alcoholic version of a drink or even drink zero alcohol beer. Beer is not my favorite drink of all of them but sometimes it still works as a placebo and is relaxing. Heineken and Budweiser both have a great Tasting option. Another option could be club sodas with mint, lime and extra things to really dress it up. I definitely recommend finding something that interests you that is either new or something you used to do for fun. Walking, painting, poetry, photography, meditation…you get the point. But finding something that can be a new go to thing to do instead of drinking alcohol. I have found it helpful to tell my friends up front what I am doing and just be confident about it. A good friend won’t question you or try to get you to drink alcohol when you’ve said that you’re not.
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