Saturday, September 4, 2021

Day 4 of LAE and lots of realizations

Day 4 of the Live Alcohol Experiment and the first weekend day.

So far so good is where I’m going to start.  I got a mostly solid 8 hours of sleep last night, broken up only by having to get up to pee 3 times (goodbye toxins!) and Hubs taking the dog out around two.  On all those occasions I was able to get back to sleep with relative ease so Imma call that a win.😀

According to the scale this morning, I am down almost 4 pounds since Wednesday (that would be 3 full days) and trust me when I tell you that I have not been counting my calories in any way shape or form.  In fact, I’m pretty much allowing myself to eat whatever the heck I want (there has to be some sort of reward for taking away my beloved booze right?  I mean other than better sleep, better health, a better relationship with my husband…hmmm, I digress).  Also, I am about 3 days out from starting my period so I should be in the gaining water weight part of that and I’m still down almost 4 pounds!

The day 3 lesson of LAE was a pretty short one but it made a lot of sense.  It was all about how our sleep cycles suffer when we drink booze and why it takes a few days to regulate again when we try to sleep without it.  I mean, I knew that when I drank I would wake up in the middle of the night without fail and not be able to get back to sleep for quite a while (usually not until right before the alarm was set to go off), but to actually understand the science of why this happens was quite fascinating to me.  

I’m not going to lie, when I realized that the first weekend of this experiment was to fall on a three day weekend, I almost backed out.  I literally said to myself: “Welp, can’t do that!  Three whole days of day drinking?  I’d be stupid to miss out on that!”

The reality is of course, that the three day long hangover would be miserable and by tomorrow, I wouldn’t even be enjoying the day drinking part.  Merely doing it because somewhere in the far away past, I used to enjoy long boozy weekends.  However, if I’m honest … I haven’t enjoyed day drinking in quite some time.  I mean the first few drinks? Yes, absolutely!  But after a couple of hours it just gets tedious.  I feel gross and warm and uncomfortable.  I get bloated, my stomach hurts and I inevitably get emotional for no reason and pick a fight with my husband.  I eat A TON of food right before going to bed (hello empty calories!) and wake up with not only no memory of eating dinner and going to bed, but also none of the last couple hours of the night.  Then I have to get up feeling super anxious, trying to be casual around my husband and see how he reacts to find out he is mad at me or not (that is an award winning performance right there, let me tell you).  Creep onto Facebook and see if I posted anything offensive or messaged anyone and possibly started a fight for no reason whatsoever.  And the stupidest part yet?  I would do it all over again that day because I could!  Ridiculous.  And yet this has gone on for decades.

Wow.  Typing out that last paragraph really admitted a lot about me and my drinking.  To you guys, and to myself.

Anyhoo … Today has been good.  A lot better than I thought.  Hubs just left for practice and he won’t be back for a few hours.  This is when I would normally dig in for my real heavy drinking to start.  Instead, I’m going to take a shower and then lay down on the bed and play some games on my phone.  Not the most productive, but I don’t have to be today.  The only thing I have to do today is not drink.

Tomorrow we will be heading to my father in laws house to spend the night.  As I think I’ve written before, that is a safe non drinking spot for me.  I know that I can’t so I don’t even really think about it.  Hubs suggested this when I first told him about the experiment and how I was worried about the long weekend.  I think at this stage, I will be okay if we didn’t but I certainly don’t mind going.  We usually get some yummy take out and all watch TV together.  It’s the closest thing I’ve had to family since the last time I got to spend time with my mom before she passed and it’s quite enjoyable.

So that’s it for now.  I probably won’t update until after we get back from my FIL’s house.  Thanks for the words of encouragement in my last entry.

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