Thoughts On My Vacation...

 

We got home from our trip on Sunday night.  It was a rough day of traveling for me.  The flight was pretty bumpy for the first half but mostly smoothed out for the last three hours.  It didn't help that the entertainment systems in the back of the chair in front of us weren't working for some reason.  Being left up to my own thoughts on a plane flight when you are as afraid of flying as I am is not advisable. 😂 🤣

Thankfully there was wifi and phone chargers that worked.

First things first, I did NOT drink on this trip.  I will admit that the pull was there for the first couple of days.  As I said in my last blog, hotel rooms and drinking just go hand in hand for me and this was the first time being in one since I quit drinking.

Having just come off the 30 day alcohol experiment, it would have been very easy to say: "Welp, I'm done with that so I can drink if I want to, and this seems like a really good time to try moderating!" -- But I knew exactly how that would go and there would be zero moderating.  Not only because I know I'm not capable of moderating, but because I wouldn't want to.  The whole point of me wanting to drink because I was in a hotel room was to get obliterated, not to see if I could be okay with just one or two drinks.

I think I realized all of that the second day and having gotten through the first day alcohol free (though it was woefully short as we were exhausted and went to bed super early) made it that much easier to keep with booze-less theme.

By the third day it wasn't more than a passing thought here and there.  Easily dismissed, and for that I was very thankful.

The trip that I took would not have been possible had I been drinking.  I mean, we still would have traveled to my hometown and stayed as long as I did, but we would not have been able to get all the things done we needed to.

I would have needed to sleep in until at least ten or eleven every single day to keep the worst of the hangover at bay.  That would have given us a late start that would have pushed the nighttime drinking even later which would start pushing out the sleeping in even more -- Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

I would have been an emotional wreck that my mother wasn't there for us to visit and about the fact that we had to collect her ashes and ship them back to the west coast.  In fact, I would have been emotionally distraught about pretty much everything.

And the anxiety ... Oh my! I can just picture how horrible this whole trip would have been for me if my hanxiety was in full effect.  I know this because the last two trips I took to Vegas were like that.  And it would take me longer and longer into the drinking session to kill the hangover and finally start to feel better.  A vicious cycle that would eat up almost all the minutes in the day/night.

I'm happy to report that my anxiety was minimal this trip and was mostly related to the travel portion and getting my mom's ashes back home.  Other than that, I was flying pretty free.  I did most of the driving (driving outside of my normal to and from work routine usually gives me a lot of anxiety) and felt perfectly fine.

And I'm very proud to say that this was a vacation that my husband and I really enjoyed despite the subject matter.  We haven't really enjoyed a vacation together in years and I know that has a lot to do with my drinking (see examples of the easily emotional and anxiety above).  This time I could tell Hubs was able to relax and allow himself to have a good time instead of playing my nursemaid/babysitter the whole time.

All in all, I would have to say that my first sober vacation since I was a kid was a rousing success!  Did I want to drink?  Yes, initially.  Am I glad I didn't?  I can't even begin to tell you how glad I am that I didn't.

Ironically, I wanted to drink when we got home.  Not right when we got home because that was two in the morning and I was exhausted, but the next day when we had the day off and had to do the day after vacation chores.  It was fleeting and only lasted about an hour, but it surprised me.  I realize that it sounds super naïve for me to say that I thought I was over that already when I'm only clocking 41 days today, but I guess I really did think that.

If I'm honest about it, I guess it's because I really want to be over it.  I want the constant struggle to be over like magic because I have had a few good days, but I know that isn't the way this works.

Instead, I will be grateful for the good days and know that on the bad days, the cravings aren't lasting as long as they used to and my willpower feels like it's getting stronger.

On Vacation

 

Well, I am here in my hometown on the east coast for my vacation.  I have not had a drink, so there is that.

The actual traveling part of the trip went relatively smoothly (no hiccups or delays - a non bumpy flight and the bus rides were peaceful) and for that I am thankful, but it was a LONG 24 hours of a lot of "hurry up and wait".

After being awake for 33 hours, Hubs and I checked into our hotel around 3 in the afternoon and I was crashed out in bed by six.

Having said that, I will admit that there was a pull to drink.  Probably the strongest I've felt really since that first night when I quit a month ago.  As I stated in my last blog entry, I wasn't quite sure if I was going to remain sober on this trip because I hadn't had a vacation without drinking since I was a kid.  And I'm still not 100% sure, but I am proud to say that I have been able to resist so far.

However, the thought of and actual act of being in a hotel room was messing with my mind and still kinda does.

I mean, I used to deliberately stay in hotels in my town sometimes just so I could get rip-roaring drunk without any judgement.  I called them my "me-time weekends" and I would tell everyone that it was my time to just isolate and recharge my batteries by reading and watching movies and going swimming in the local hotel -- and while I did do all those things, they weren't the main event.  No, that was the vodka that I brought with me.  And sometimes I would drink just enough to get a pleasant buzz, but most times I would get blind drunk in the safety of the hotel room.

Other hotel times are usually Vegas related and well, in Vegas all bets are off.  I pretty much drank 24/7, but only got drunk at night once we were tucked into the safety of our hotel room for the night.

So you can see why it's a bit uneasy-making to not be drinking whilst in this hotel.

I'm not gonna lie, when we went to the grocery store while waiting to check into the hotel I was so tempted.  I even contemplated just getting a bottle of wine. Vodka Villain™ was telling me that wouldn't be as bad as my normal large bottle of vodka, but VV™ wasn't really fooling me.  I knew that if I had that wine it wouldn't even scratch the surface and then I would feel really shitty for having broken my streak of sober days, so I would have sent my husband out for vodka.  Better to just not have anything around.  Plus I knew that I was sooooo overtired that first night that it would have been a waste of a good drunk.  I would have been ready to pass out after the first two shots, but I would have kept drinking anyway until I was drunk and miserable.

So I didn't get any.  But I got lots of food, in keeping with the whole "Xay isn't going to lose any weight after ditching thousands of daily vodka calories because she is replacing them with sugar" theme, but I'm okay with that right now.

What was fantastic was the visit I had yesterday with my cousin.  She is one of my favorite humans on the planet and helped raise me when my parents couldn't keep their hands off of each others throats.  She's just a few years shy of 100 years old and still sharp as a tack, funny as all get out has a much busier social life than I do (which TBH, isn't saying that much).

I loved that we stayed at her place for hours chatting and reminiscing with her.  I was 100% present and didn't feel the need to rush things so I could get back to the hotel and get drunk like I normally would have.  It was so nice and as she is up there in years, I'm going to be very glad that I have those memories instead of regrets that I had stayed longer.

Tonight we are having dinner with a friend from high school.  She gave us a few options for places to eat and the one one we picked because it had most intriguing options for food, just happens to be a brewery.

Now this is weird, because I am having these visions of her getting a beer and asking if I want one and this shouldn't make me feel tempted or uncomfortable but it does.  The reason it shouldn't is because I wasn't a beer drinker so there is no temptation to want to drink one other than to possibly make her feel more comfortable to not be having one by herself.

The other reason that this is bizarre is that if I was actively drinking, I would have no problem refusing a drink at dinner.  I've almost always done that anyway.  That's the thing about being a closeted drinker.  I was always very careful to not drink much in public if at all.

So why am I all of a sudden weirded out at the thought that I might have to say no to a drink tonight?  It's odd to me.

Anyway, it's almost eleven and I'm going to hop in the shower to head out for lunch with another old school chum.  Just thought I'd check in to say I'm still fighting the good fight so far.

Sober Vacation?

I’m very close to completing the Live Alcohol Experiment.  It began on September 1st and it is no co-incidence that I started before my upcoming vacation.  In fact, the last day of the experiment is the day before we fly out.  That was by design as well.

You see, I am not a good flier.  I didn’t used to be so bad about it but over the years, like everything else in my life, the anxiety has gripped me tightly when it comes to plane travel (or any travel really) and I was hoping that if I put some distance between me and the booze, I would cool out a bit about it.

It’s true that my anxiety has diminished so very much since quitting drinking (and now thanks to Annie and the program, I know the science behind why it has!), but we will have to wait and see how I react when it’s time to fly.

I bring this up because with the end of the program and the start of my vacation comes decision time.  I guess I had always kind of thought I would go back to at least having some drinks once we get to our destination.  It’s my vacation after all and as I’m going to collect my mothers ashes, it’s not like it’s going to be a barrel of laughs the whole time.

I honestly don’t think I have had a vacation without drinking since I was a kid.  Even on a mostly sober trip when we traveled to Asia and stayed with relatives for two weeks, we took a couple of days off at a hotel where I had a few drinks.  All my other vacations have involved me drinking heavily at least 80% of the vacation (usually when we got back to the hotel for the night).  And of course there is Vegas, where I pretty much just stay drunk for a week.

However, the more I’ve stayed sober and done the work in the experiment, I just am not sure I want to drink anymore period.  And yet, there is that part of me that is yelling: “But It’s A Vacation!!!!”

So I guess I’m at a crossroads.

A couple of nights ago I mentioned to my husband that I still didn’t know what I was going to do about drinking on the vacation but I was leaning towards not drinking.

He responded saying that he just figured I wasn’t going to drink on the vacation.  He said that he didn’t see point.  Although he was quick to add that of course, if I wanted to, it wouldn’t be an issue.

But all my brain heard at that point was my husband stating that he didn’t think I was going to drink on vacation.

At which point my defensive Vodka Villain (VV™) jumped directly into my frontal lobe and started screaming: “WE NEVER SAID WE WEREN’T GOING TO DRINK WHILE WE ARE THERE!  WHERE IS HE GETTING HIS INFORMATION??”  and  “He’s going to ruin this vacation for us!  Hotel rooms mean drinking!  It’s just the way it is and he’s just silly if he thinks that is ever going to change!”  and  “Look at him, making that decision for us!  I mean, that whole experiment was cute and all, but does he really think that we are going to NEVER DRINK AGAIN??  That’s just STUPID!”

I quickly blocked out VV™ and chewed it over.  If I was honest (and isn’t there more and more of that happening lately?), then I had to admit that my vacations have been lackluster lately.  Well, first of all they have been very few and far between due to COVID, but they have all been alcohol soaked and anxiety ridden for the last few years.  Never making many plans because in my eyes, my vacation was for doing as much day drinking as possible.

Hubs and I have repeatedly said that the Asia trip was by far the best vacation we have ever had together and it’s true.  And the reason for that?  Honestly (there is that word again!) it’s because of the lack of booze.  Because there was very little drinking involved, I was not hungover.  Because I was not hungover, I had very little anxiety.  Because I was not hungover and had very little anxiety, we were able to get up early in the morning and seize the day.  And because of that, we had full days worth of doing all the touristy things as well as local hidden gems that our relatives took us to.  Then we would come home in the evenings and prepare food or order take out for dinner and go to bed feeling accomplished, having a wonderful sleep because our days had been so full of activity.

We remember that trip so very fondly.  I can’t think of a trip we have had in the last few years that we think of as warmly as that — and that includes the one where we renewed our vows for our 20 year anniversary!

Now I have no illusions that the small state that I grew up in will rival a culturally rich country that we had never been to before, but I think you can see where I am going here.

I have to say the draw of waking up in my hometown and going to visit the few relatives that I actually want to see without being hungover sounds very appealing.  As does the idea of spending quality time with them and not rushing through it so that I can get back to the hotel and drink.

I know that I’ve pretty much made my decision and that decision is not to drink.  As I told my husband after mulling all of it over: “If I were to drink, I wouldn’t want to to want have more than a couple of drinks and I know damn well that two or three drinks will do nothing for me (other than make me mad at myself for giving in).  I’ve never been a light drinker.  I drink to get drunk and if I’m not doing that, what is the point?  If I’m going to “drink lightly”, I’d be better off having a mocktail or two.  They would do the same for me (nothing) without the guilt.

We don’t have a whole lot planned this trip.  Not hanging out with my mom will free up a lot of time (Though I’d gladly give up that free time to hang out with my mom once more).  Honestly most of our plans involve visiting my favorite local restaurants that I grew up frequenting and going to see my bestie in the hospital.  This would normally make me very happy because that would mean lots of space for drinking at the hotel, but now it’s making me a little nervous. 

I’m not used to being sober in a hotel.  I don’t think I have been in decades.  I worry it’s going to make me itchy to drink.  However, I thought the same thing about my own house a month ago and I’m doing pretty well on that front currently. 

I think I’m overthinking it at this point.  There are going to be a LOT of new firsts for me in this sobriety journey if I’m going to stick with it and I just have to realize and accept that.  Look at it as a challenge.  I’m discovering a lot of things about myself that I didn’t think I could do before and that is kind of thrilling actually.

I need to change my mindset to think of it as exciting instead of scary.

What I am looking forward to for sure?  Sober packing!  I cannot tell you how many times I have had to open my suitcase whist hungover the next morning and repack because I couldn’t for the life of me remember what I had packed the night before.  I can’t wait to not wait until the last minute and actually KNOW what I packed and what I didn’t!  😜😜😜

Sleep

 

In case anyone is wondering, I’m feeling better since my last post.  Not much about the circumstances have changed but I seem to be in a better place emotionally about it.  I also started working out that night, so that is probably helping.

At any rate, that isn’t what I want to talk about today.  Today, as I’m sure you have gathered from the title of this post, I want to talk about sleep.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with sleep most of my life.

I had forgotten this about myself.  I had relied on the bottle to help me fall asleep for so long that I couldn’t really remember a time before simply just passing out.

However, since I have been actually been enjoying the decent sleep I have been getting this last week, I sat down and searched my memory for how I slept as a child/young adult.

I don’t remember a whole lot about my childhood before the age of 9 or 10.  I don’t know why, I just don’t.  But that would coincide with the first time my father left my mother.  He came back shortly after and left for good when I was 12 or so, but his first time leaving was when I was 10.

Anyhoo, I don’t remember my sleeping habits prior to that other than I didn’t like to go to bed.  What normal kid does right?  Mine was more about the fact that I knew my mind would hitch into overdrive and I would have the hardest time getting to sleep.  Heh, I was an over-thinker, even at a young age. 

My brother and I had bedrooms across the hall from each other for the year or two before my dad left (prior to that we shared a bedroom and I don’t remember having too many problems getting to sleep at that point).  We would each get time with my mother (that we called “minutes”) at bedtime.  She would come in and lay down in our little twin beds and set a timer for five or ten minutes and when that was done she would go to the other one and do the same.

After my dad left I took to coming downstairs and sleeping in my moms bed with her.  She technically never say I couldn’t and I think she enjoyed the company as she was newly separated.  Eventually she didn’t even bother trying to get me to go to my room for bed.  I don’t remember having problems getting to sleep when I was in her room.

I think I stayed sleeping in her bed probably almost up to my freshman year in high school I think.  Not quite sure of the timeline but that seems right.

Going back up to my own room, I began having problems getting to sleep again but I suffered through because I was a teenager for goodness sake and I couldn’t have my friends thinking I still slept with my mommy!

What this tells me is that I seem to have always had a problem getting to sleep when by myself in a room.  This entry isn’t about trying to psychoanalyze why I couldn’t easily get to sleep when I was younger, but that is interesting to note.

That lasted quite a while.  As I reached adulthood I seem to remember getting to sleep got a bit easier.  It might be because I got a TV in my room and could leave it on to block out my brain chatter while I tried to get to sleep.  Or it could just be that I had gotten a job and was more tired at night due to not sleeping in and being bored all day long.

Then I found booze.

Man, that sure did the trick!  20 plus years later, I found myself in a pickle when I couldn’t get to sleep without it. 

Since the 1st I have been doing pretty well.  The first day or two really sucked because my body had to adjust, but after that it has been pretty smooth sailing. In the beginning, I also took some holistic calmatives to help me sleep most nights. 

CBD oil and Orchex pretty well did the trick for me.  Lately I haven’t had to take anything.  I tuck myself into bed about an hour before I want to sleep and play on my phone and then read until bedtime and I’ve been pretty good at falling off within fifteen minutes of closing my eyes to sleep — usually sooner. *knocks wood*

Now that I’m sleeping relatively easily, I have to say that I absolutely love sleep!! The thought of going to sleep at night is no longer a scary thing for me.

I love snuggling up in the blankets and pulling up the kindle on my phone to read a bit (quit lit of course!).  I look soooooo forward to it, sometimes I watch the clock and wonder how soon is too soon to call it a night?  I’m usually tucked in bed by seven thirty.

Waking up when my alarm went off after drinking the night before, I would feel like I hadn’t slept a wink.  Even if I had been “sleeping” (passed out) for 12 hours I would wake up and feel like I had maybe gotten one or two hours of sleep.  Always groggy and cranky and desperate to hit the snooze button a million more times.

Now I wake up when my alarm goes off with relative ease.  Instead of smashing that last snooze button, I will pick up my phone and check a few social media accounts while snuggling with my doggos for a few minutes before getting up and hitting the shower.

My husband keeps commenting how he doesn’t have to pry me out of bed with a crowbar anymore.

I often think that all the snuggly time at night and the fantastic way that good sleep makes me feel is worth staying sober for all on its own.  I know that this will eventually become old hat and I won’t think too much about the whole sleep thing, but I will gladly revel in it for as long as I can.

The pink is fading…

Welp, so much for those pink f*cking clouds.

So I’ve been in a bad mood pretty much all the time for the last few days.  I’m not sure if it’s the not drinking thing or the fact that I’m going to be flying home in less than two weeks to pick up my mom’s ashes.

It’s probably a combination of each, if I’m honest.

I’m crying all the time, and if I’m not leaking from my eyes I’m internally FUMING about something that probably isn’t that big of a deal but it’s infuriating to me (nothing specific, just whatever pisses me off at that moment).

I’m not a good flier on a good day, but I haven’t flown in a few years and I’m really not looking forward to it.

Planning this trip has not been fun.  This will be the first time in EVER that I’ve gone home and not stayed with my mom.  Every time I had to do any sort of booking for this trip has resulted in me dissolving into tears when I realize I’m not going to see her.  Ever again.

To make matters worse, the one bright spot of the trip was seeing my best friend and she is now in the hospital.  She is parallelized from the chest down (with use of her arms) due to a botched back surgery a few years back and has a slew of health problems as a result.

She was recently sent to a hospital over an hour away from where she lives because it is the only one that had staff and beds to take her due to COVID and all the nurses quitting or getting fired for refusing the vaccine mandate (not trying to get political — also, covid should have never been politicized in the first place — but when I heard that, I was very sad.  I thought ppl in my home state were smarter than that — especially people whose main job is to make sure that people are safe and healthy) and it sounds like that particular hospital has their head up their ass as a whole and they are making life hell for her.

Example: She was admitted for many things but one was edema – lots of fluid filling up her body.  Her blood pressure was low (it has always run low) so they immediately started pumping her full of additional fluid.  To the point where she couldn’t breathe and literally thought she was going to die.

Are you f*cking kidding me????

I was pretty sure for a little while that she wasn’t even going to be alive for me to visit when I get there.

I digress.  The short of it is that now in order to visit her I will have to travel an hour and a half each way and put myself and my compromised husband at risk by visiting a hospital where there are lots of covid patients.

Re-booking this trip is not an option (though I really wish it was).  It’s been re-booked more than once and I need to get this done.

So yeah, there is a lot going on right now and I’m sure that the whole not drinking thing is just amplifying my bad thoughts and emotions.

If I were to step away and analyze it honestly, I know I would see that I would probably be so much worse if I were actively drinking through this.  In addition to everything else, I would be dealing with poor sleep and hangovers.  And I know my drunk self well enough to know that I would be absolutely inconsolable after a nights worth of drinking and would be screaming and crying at my husband every single night.

But who wants to be rational about that??  Not me.  I want to sit and whine that it’s not fair that I can’t have my “go to” for the last 20 years when I’m going through this.

So yeah.  That’s what’s going on with me.  But it’s been 21 days since my last drink.  Three weeks.  If I make it through today and tomorrow without a drink that will be the longest stretch of consecutive days I’ve had in the last 20 plus years.

So there is that.

2 weeks yesterday

So I hit two weeks alcohol free yesterday.

14 days without a drink.

I haven’t had a stretch this long without booze since 2018.  That was my longest stretch since I started my drinking career and it lasted three weeks.  Before that, I don’t even know, but I think I can safely say that it was before 1999.

I’m pretty stoked about this because I am still experiencing the pink clouds right now so it hasn’t really been too much of a struggle.

The first couple of days were pretty rough but once I started sleeping solidly through the night, I have been really digging this whole not drinking thing.  I mean, not the act of not drinking, I still miss the act of drinking … what I am really enjoying is the lack of anxiety, the change for the better in my attitude (a few mini meltdowns for no reason aside), and being present, among other things.

The best thing out of everything though is waking up feeling rested.  Waking up and not wanting to cry because I still feel so freaking tired.  Waking up and immediately cracking a joke to my husband, who is so floored by the fact that I’m even coherent that quickly after waking.  Normally, I am still in the monosyllabic phase of talking even after I’ve had my shower in the morning — putting together full sentences, let alone a joke, that soon after opening my eyes from slumber has just been unheard of for the last two decades!

So yeah, waking up in the mornings is no longer a horrific chore.  I mean, would still prefer to sleep in, but I no longer need to bury my face under the covers and hope that somehow I miscalculated and that it is actually Saturday instead of Tuesday.

And dropping off to sleep lately has been a cake walk (I am not issuing a challenge universe!  *cue me knocking wood*) and I couldn’t be more pleased.  I’m working on a future entry based solely on sleep and my love/hate relationship with it over the years, so I will leave it at that for now.

I have had my emotional moments of course but they seem to be more fewer and far between than I remember them being back in 2018.  They are present though and I do find myself flying off the handle into a fit of undeserved rage at the stupidest thing and dissolving into tears for no apparent reason, but as of right now the good things are outweighing the bad.

I know that these pink clouds are eventually going to wear thin.  I know that there is so much more ahead than just sunshine and roses.  I am unfortunately well aware of P.A.W.S. (Post-Acute Withdrawal Syndrome) as I’ve only recently come off of that from ditching my anti-depressant after 20+ years.

While I tapered off that med (celexa/citalopram) for over a year, I was still hit with P.A.W.S for an additional year to various degrees.  It’s not fun and I’m not looking forward to it.

So for now, I’m going to enjoy every little bit of these cotton candy clouds and keep going.

Over a week

I can’t believe it.  It’s been over a week since I have had a drink.

I haven’t had a stretch this long since August or September of 2018 when I managed to eek out three whole weeks in a row.  Before that, I’m not sure I’ve had a streak this long since …. wow, I want to say 1999.

I feel great for the most part.  Finally getting some decent sleep and my anxiety has dropped to insanely low levels.

I’d love to tell you that my house is spotless and organized, but I’m still not very motivated to do much.  That’s might not be much of a newly sober thing though as I’ve never been highly motivated even before I started drinking. 😂

I took my blood pressure for the first time in like two or three years and it is pretty normal.  No where near as high as it had been when I was in the major throws of drinking (so, most every day for the last 20 years).  That is a definite bonus!

My eating has been out of control though.  And I’ve allowed it.  I knew that there would still be a calorie deficit given how much vodka I used to drink, but I think it’s time to rein it in because I am sick of feeling full all the time.

So starting Monday I’m back on myfitnesspal and counting calories.  I’m not going to be super duper strict, but I have to stop shoveling food in my face every five minutes.

I’m also planning on starting back on the treadmill as that will help as well.  Hopefully the weather will start cooling off soon out here so it will be a lot more bearable to hop on after work.  Currently we have been having heat wave after heat wave and we don’t have air conditioning in our house.  That is an excuse of course, while it is hot, I’m just really f*cking lazy.  More so than ever right now.

I wonder if I’m taking the whole “be gentle with yourself” a bit too seriously.  I mean, I know for the first couple of days there was nothing I wanted to do other than eat and lay in bed if I couldn’t drink.  I kind of feel like I’m over that hump, but I’m still milking it because it’s comfortable.  Hmmm…that’s something I will have to contemplate this weekend.  It might be time to start doing some things that aren’t as in my comfort zone.  I mean, I’m not looking to go skydiving anytime soon, but maybe help my poor husband around the house a bit more.

I did cook dinner last night.  It was only spaghetti, but for some reason cooking is always a trigger for me.  I guess it is because I have almost always been drinking when I cooked for the last two decades.  It usually makes me feel anxious to think about cooking or baking without drinks.

Last night I didn’t even think about it.  I just knew that Hubs had been taking on the task of dinner for over a week now and that it was my turn.  I also knew that there was ground turkey in the fridge about to go bad, so I just pulled out all of the ingredients and started in without giving drinking a thought.

In fact I didn’t think about the fact that I didn’t think about drinking until a couple hours after the dinner had already been prepared.  I guess that is a good sign.