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11 years ago 0 409 logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo 0
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The research is interesting. As I learn more about alcoholism, I'm realizing that moderation vs. abstinence is a very sticky subject. Of course, moderation in ANYTHING seems to be difficult for humans. People have lots of opinions about alcoholism, mostly following the AA "the only way to resolve your drinking problem is to become abstinent." And yet, research shows that for the great majority of people who are uncomfortable about their drinking levels, abstinence has a worse long-term success track record than moderation. That's one of the reasons that I love this forum and this site; it's okay to explore both options without any kind of judgment.

A related thing that I'm finding is that "the buzz" is one of those things that people are REALLY uncomfortable talking about. Since it's blatant self-gratification, most people are super squeamish about it. If you admit you love that buzz and seek it out, then you must be an alcoholic. I would be willing to bet that "the buzz" is a major reason a lot of people become alcoholics, and also the major reason that they're not willing to become abstinent. Yet since they aren't encouraged (or - heaven forbid! - taught) how to master "the buzz", they never learn moderation unless they figure it out for themselves. You can only maintain the perfect euphoria when you're within healthy BAC limits, but I don't think most alcoholics know that. I certainly didn't know it. If you drink too much, you lose your buzz and can't get it back for at least 24 hours or maybe more. You just get drunk, and that's where the problems really start.

So here's a question for the Health Educators on this site: Do you know of any studies using biofeedback based on maintaining that euphoria through a healthy BAC? I would be very interested in learning more about this.
11 years ago 0 409 logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo 0
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Camiol, you sound good. Everything still within comfortable limits? How did your work week end up?

I had a stressful morning/afternoon, but a really nice evening. Full honesty, ladies.... I ended up having one 20 oz pint of strong beer (which I just looked up and was probably the alcohol equivalent of three standard drinks -- properly earned, no less) over the course of an hour and a half. I monitored myself from beginning to end. I was out with my husband and my cousin, and we actually all had fun measuring our BACs as we progressed through beer and a pizza. Here are the details, for anyone who is interested.

Halfway through my pint (and before any pizza) I stopped drinking for about ten minutes, then measured myself at .05. At this point I was feeling pretty darn nice. When I finished my beer in just under an hour and a half, still feeling good and before any pizza, I measured myself again at .07. No surprises here. I stopped drinking and ate some pizza and started feeling more back to normal. Starting to sober up and ready for another beer? I decided I was going to share one more beer with my cousin, but decided to measure my BAC one more time. Shock -  it came out at .08 even though the buzz had mostly worn off! That really surprised me, and stopped me in my tracks. I had agreed to be the designated driver, and .08 is just over the legal limit here. So I decided to drink water instead. By the time we left, I was back down to .05, and still feeling pretty nice. I just measured my BAC two minutes ago, 2 hours after finishing my last sip of beer, and it measured .027. 

Overall a successful experiment, I would say. It is one that I will happily repeat the next time we go out. I hope that sooner rather than later I will be able to monitor myself without the breathalyzer, but for now it seems like an essential tool for me. I plan to go without drinking at all for several days now, before I experiment again. I definitely don't want the daily blind habit to come back. Oh -- and I decided that I really do like red wine better than beer, even if the beer is Old Foghorn. Why waste my calories and alcohol on beer, when I can have a gorgeous glass of cabernet instead? My next experiment will be on red wine.

And now I'm very sleepy. Bonne nuit, and I hope you all have a great Saturday.
11 years ago 0 409 logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo 0
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Camiol, at least you are checking in! I'm so glad you didn't decide NOT to come and talk to us. We haven't heard from Hope and BP in a couple of days, and I want to let them know that it doesn't matter if they've been doing well or having a hard time -- we are here. I hope they stop in to say hi.

One day at a time is the ONLY way to handle this. I had one glass of wine last night (and kept my BAC at .03) and didn't drink at all today. However, if there had been wine in the house, I know I would have had a glass or two today. I really wanted one. Not having it available is a huge thing for me. It's much easier to control myself when I go out to dinner, because the evening is planned. Hanging around the house all weekend is always when 1 drink become 3 becomes 8....

One of the things that I have seen about moderation is to 'Start with 30'. The idea is to start with 30 days sober, because 1) 30 days is easier to envision than the rest of your life; and 2) that breaks your usual habits of drinking every evening all evening. At the end of the '30' you can try do do "moderation", which for women is generally 2 drinks or less in a day, and nine drinks or less - I think - in a week.... Drinking more than that is no longer moderation.

Anyway, I have a whiny 6-year-old demanding my attention, so I gotta go. Hang in there!
11 years ago 0 409 logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo 0
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Camiol, just remember that you have already given your body a wonderful break over the past several weeks, and it hasn't been a whole month of each night drinking more than you wanted!!!! You are doing great, even with an occasional lapse. Focus on all the good things and strong days you have had since we met. Every time you lapse, you are coming back from a point of greater wisdom. Not that it's any easier the next time, but you are defining and refiningyour personal limits and triggers, which only you can do. It will eventually make the difference. Hope & Marylizy, you also know that's true. A lapse doesn't mean you are starting over. It means you have reached the next jump-off point.

I am finding that two huge, HUGE things for me are not to have alcohol in the house, and to carry a breathalyzer. After many years of regular hangovers, I finally figured that out. It has been four weeks now without a binge or a hangover, which may be a record for me. I know I wouldn't be able to keep my drinking in moderation without those two tools.

A supposed key to getting over some of the symptoms of not-drinking include replacing sugars with high-quality protein, vegetables and complex carbohydrates. Not like this is blinding news for any of us (or that I'm particularly good at it!), but this is all good sense, IMO. And some everyday non-exotic supplements that are also supposed to help (after you check in with your doctorblablabla, and in order of importance) are antioxidants, B-complex vitamins, Vitamin C, calcium, Vitamin E, zinc, manganese and selenium, and Vitamin D3.

As for foods, these are the healthy ones that are supposed to help in particular (I don't know how or why) with alcohol cravings: Sunflower seeds, raw almonds & cashews, dates, bananas, carrots, apples, blueberries. It probably has to do with antioxidants and replacing vitamins & minerals. And to wrap it up before I get ready for work, here's the lowdown on detox foods that are supposed to "cleanse" the liver:

The less chemical additives, preservatives, and processing the food goes through, the better the food is for you and your liver. Pick the apple over apple juice, or the natural apple juice over, say, an apple-flavored product. The same is true of other foods.

Try to eat something crunchy with every meal. This does not mean a food that has been artificially crunchified, like potato chips, but foods with a natural crunch to them, including fruits, vegetables, and greens that haven't been cooked.

The importance of fiber to the liver cleanse process cannot be overstated. When your liver wants to get rid of a toxin, it dumps it into the digestive tract. If there is enough fiber around, this toxin is taken out of your body with your next bowel movement; if not, these toxins can be reabsorbed into the blood stream and the liver has to deal with them again. Whole grains are a great source of fiber, as are many fruits and vegetables. If eating enough fiber is not possible, use a natural fiber supplement. High fiber is one of the most important changes you can make to your diet!

Make sure you are also getting some protein. The liver needs to have enough proteins in order to function well. Good sources of proteins include beans, nuts, and fish, and small portions of beef, chicken and other animal proteins.<

11 years ago 0 409 logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo 0
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Yikes, the thread cut me off -- I guess I'm way too wordy this morning!!! The last part of my post was supposed to be:

The liver thrives on good fats such as omega 3 fish oils and healthy omega 6 oils (olive or grape-seed oils), and is bogged down by bad fats such as trans fatty acids, any hydrogenated fats such as margarine, and many of the omega 6 oils such as corn, safflower, and Canola oil. Make sure you are getting enough good omega 3 oils such as those found in fish or fish oils. When cooking, use extra virgin olive oil. Olive oil is a very stable fat, handles cooking well, and has multiple research studies supporting its health benefits. 

Okay ladies, see how OCD I am? I guess it's better to be compulsive about finding out everything in the world about NOT drinking, than figuring out - once again - how to make today's hangover feel better. I promise I'll keep it much shorter from now one! Now I need to get ready for work and wake up the rest of the family. 
11 years ago 0 409 logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo 0
New to this site

I need to take my own advice and start eating healthier again. For the most part I no longer snack on junk food during the day, but I eat a lot of nuts. I still drink too much diet soda as a replacement for the alcohol, and I especially need to work on the fiber. I would love to lose exactly twelve pounds before my 50th birthday, which is in three months. (Where's that magic pill?) Even so, just think -- if we ever do meet each other, we will all be so healthy and together! I have got to clean up my home office this morning before the kids wake up, so I'll talk to you later. Have a great day today.
11 years ago 0 409 logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo 0
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BP and Monicaholiday, are you around? It would be nice to hear from you, even if you aren't having the perfect time of it. I'm a little worried.

Have any of you been keeping track of your drinking (and not drinking) in the online "My Diary" on this site? It looks like a very useful tool. Why don't we make a promise that we each will keep track of our own drinking, every single day, on the Diary. The especially cool thing is that it shows you a chart of what you've been up to. I just went back and recorded all my drinking since I started on this site -- based on all my past notes to all of you on this site.
11 years ago 0 409 logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo 0
New to this site

Oh gosh - now I want sushi. Thanks a lot, Camiol! Gotta admit though, it's almost as good as a glass of wine, and since Japanese food isn't renowned for its accompanying wine, I don't associate the two like I do with awesome Italian or French food. I have been working my butt off today (wouldn't that be nice?) and need to feed the kids. Hopefully I can muster up a salad -- or maybe talk my husband into bringing home sushi on his way home... :-)
11 years ago 0 409 logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo 0
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Hope, we've all been there, too many times to count. Can you think of a specific moment last night when your brain said "what the hell, I might as well just go for it!" Was it when you said "OK" to your friend? Was it after the first beer? After the third? Do you remember? As Vicenza says, it's good to track your progress in the online diary, not only to see how you are doing, but also to find the exact triggers that set you off. Since you know that you HAVE had evenings where you only had a couple of drinks and felt good about it afterward, it would be really valuable to try and pinpoint the exact moment when this night became different. If this happens again, and you record it again, you'll begin to know better what really triggers the binge. If moderation really is your long-term goal, you need to know how to make it happen, and how to avoid the triggers. If moderation isn't possible, you'll realize it sooner if you really know why. Turn last night into a valuable learning experience. 

I'm finding that I can only drink when I plan it well ahead of time. I can't have alcohol in the house at all, because if it's available, I will drink it. I would love to have a glass of wine at home with dinner every night, like I did for decades. But that doesn't work for me any more, because I like the wine more than the dinner....

To be honest, the rigid planning takes a lot of the joy and fun out of it. Like sex, now that I have kids. And food, now that I don't weigh thirty pounds more than I want to. If I let myself think about it too much, all of it is really depressing. I'm a hedonist, and I love feeling high on good food or alcohol. I really hate saying no. But I can have dessert occasionally, as long as I don't regularly keep junk food in the house. And I do have sex occasionally, as long as I plan for it. And I THINK I can drink occasionally, as long as.... That doesn't mean I don't want to consume the entire batch of cookies or drink the entire bottle of wine. Damn it, I DO want to, every single time. But if I plan ahead of time (particularly making sure I'm in a place without an endless supply), the chances of turning it into a binge are a lot less. So far, anyway. Time will tell....

Anyway, hang in there, Hope. Get through today. Eat healthy and keep checking in. I'm glad you posted this morning, despite your lapse. Never quit quitting.... 
11 years ago 0 409 logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo 0
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I love denial. The problem is, denial doesn't love me back. Honest self-observation is very painful, but it's a short-term pain, like yanking off the bandaid. Denial is a long-term ache, like a deep wound that never heals. This is what I've found helps me the most when I'm in a really painful situation: I pretend that I am talking about a character in a book. The most interesting characters are not the perfect ones; they are the ones with flaws, but you like them anyway.

So, I take a big step back, and look at this character called "Turquoise." For the moment, I'm going to think of her as a well-known character in a book I can't put down. Let me write the scene about her last binge four weeks ago (the Saturday before Father's Day). Turquoise starts out with a happy beer around noon during a weekend of camping. The second beer is also great. And the third. It's sometime around the third beer that the endorphin buzz turns into a simple warm fuzzy feeling, but she doesn't want to lose it. Chase that buzz (more like "chase that fuzz" at this point). Turquoise spends a great afternoon with her friends, drinking, BBQ-ing, drinking, hiking, drinking, eating junk food and playing with the kids, drinking, roasting marshmallows. Oh, and did I mention drinking? By evening she feels a little sick and isn't really hungry, but it's very easy to eat potato chips with a beer. And they are salty. Might as well have one last beer, even though she doesn't really even want it at this point. Sleeping in a tent (with two young kids) while drunk isn't very fun, though. Throwing up the next morning sucks. Taking apart the campsite and cleaning up while hungover is a long, icky drag. Finding out at the end of the weekend that she has completely forgotten about Father's Day is humiliating.

Oh yeah, that was me. It is painful to write about, but easier if I take a step back and look at it through the eyes of a writer creating a scene about a character in a book. Books are boring unless the characters have to struggle. And Turquoise has managed to meet some really interesting new friends that she never would have known without her struggle. It will be interesting to see where this story goes from here. And her kids just woke up, so Turquoise has to get ready for work and feed everyone breakfast. Have a great day, and I look forward to reading the next scene in the book we're all writing together.

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