Camiol, I am so sorry. Take care of yourself tonight -- treat yourself like you would treat your daughter if she'd had a big disappointment in her life. Can you do something special for yourself? You've made some huge strides since you joined this site, and I know that a lot of us really care about you. Give yourself a hug from all of us...
Good to hear from you, Hope. It sounds like you did pretty darned well, under the circumstances. Good job! And everyone else, too. It helps to read about everyone's experiments and difficulties and successes. I wonder what we're all learning from this?
I've been scrambling constantly to catch up on nearly every aspect of my life since I returned from my own trip three weeks ago. I am the poster child of "sandwich generation", taking care of my elderly failing mom from a distance while navigating the learning curve of raising two young children. Neither job can be handed over to anyone else, and in general I do find it fulfilling. Sometimes (like lately) it's overwhelming, though. I haven't been sleeping well, and my drinking is slowly ramping up again. I went through my diary and found several days where I've had between 3 and 4 drinks.
I'm trying to contemplate this trend in regard to the big picture -- the whole moderation thing. Is drinking moderately a realistic goal for me? What does it mean to ME to be moderate? When I joined this site, the drinking had absolutely become a negative thing. I regularly drank an entire bottle wine and woke up hungover and mad at myself almost every day. I would often buy the 4-litre box wines to save money (and to rationalize not keeping track). Joining this site has been an awesome tool, and I am drinking so much less now. Ninety-five percent of the time, I feel like alcohol is a positive part of my life, and not a negative part, which is my main goal. And yet, there's still that five percent. Will I ever be able to get rid of that five percent? Does it matter?
I know that I'm OCD enough that it helps me to have a specific definition, such as "no more than 3 drinks per day and no more than 9 drinks per week". It keeps my drinking in perspective. It also helps me to have specific tools in place, like no alcohol in the house. On Saturday after 3 beers, my attitude was "there's only one glass of wine left in the bottle, so I might as well finish it. Then I won't be tempted tomorrow." That's a pretty stupid rationalization, seeing as I would have enjoyed the wine far more if I HAD waited until tomorrow. I ended up dumping my last half-glass into the sink, and it was a nice bottle of wine. But hey (here's my OCD coming up again) since the definition of "binge" is 4 drinks, it wasn't a binge!!!! Does that mean it's moderate?
Anyway, thanks for listening to my rhetorical questions. Since I don't plan to become abstinent any time soon, it's hugely important for me to remind myself what it means for me to be moderate.....
