Sleepless in Soberland

Last night was brutal. Not the actual not drinking part...that actually went relatively smoothly.
I ate my dinner early and was posted up in bed with my book by eight with no real cravings other than the initial ones I had upon arriving home from work. 

What was so terrible was the fact that I could Not Get To Sleep at all last night.

I read for a bit until I felt sleepy, turned out the lights and put on my eye mask...and laid there...awake.

I know from experience that the first sober night after a long stretch of drinking nightly is rough and I think I let my fear of the thought of not being able to get to sleep get the best of me.

I think worried it into reality, if that makes any sense.

I took CBD oil and all my herbal calmatives and my magnesium spray and nothing worked. I would relax enough to feel like I might sleep and then I would worry that I was going to start twitching (this is something that typically happens a lot on my first night of sober sleeping after a long drinking period and therefore I was anticipating it too much) and I would start to have anxiety over it and so on and so forth until I was wide awake again.

I finally tried to change my mindset. I told myself that I was worrying about it too much and that there was no reason why I had to fear it. Even if it happened, I just had to wait it out until I could relax enough to fall asleep.

Finally around two in the morning I started to doze and of course kept jerking myself awake with my twitching. I tried to keep calm and get back to sleep after each one because the only thing I can really do when that happens is wait out my body until it is exhausted enough to sleep through it. That happened about an hour later. I slept fitfully after that but managed to get a total of about three jerky/snoring myself awake kind of sleep. Better than nothing I guess.

I'm not going to lie, the thought of getting up and slamming a few shots occurred to me a few times during the night. Each time I would push it away with the tentative promise that if it got too bad and too late, I would relent. However by the time I was desperate, it was past the point of no return. There would not have been time to "sleep it off" in time for work, and I was nothing if not a pretty functional and responsible drunk when it came to not showing up stinking of booze to my job in the mornings.
I'm completely out of it today. Like, my brain is mush and I am so super irritable and emotional. It doesn't help that I am PMSing, but add that to very little sleep and alcohol withdrawal? Yeah, I'm a hot mess.

It's so funny, I KNOW how to navigate my work day with a hangover, it may not be the funnest thing but it's something I'm really used to. This whole no sleep thing/withdrawals is a whole other ball of wax.

Historically for me, sleep gets a bit better each night so I'm shooting for being tucked up in my bed super early tonight. Given how tired I am right now, it shouldn't be an issue, but we'll see.
No real cravings other than the initial pull to drink just because it's what I always do when I get home from work. I'm not sure I would want to put a shitty passed out sleep on top of the lack of sleep that I got last night anyway. 

Sorry if this entry sounds all over the place, see the above statement about my brain being mush. ;)
So fingers crossed for better sleep tonight!!!!