Sleeping Sleeping Sleeping

Am sleeping so much better since I stopped drinking. I have been going to bed at 8pm and sleeping through to 6am! It's like I am recovering from all those lost hours of sleep when I was up walking around the house with s full glass of red wine dripping all over the carpet!

And on a personal note, my bowel motions are becoming more regular and less off a tar-like science experiment. If you needed to know...

So I am building this bank of sober days so that I am even more determined not to have a single drink again. It is so positive to be clear headed, alert and almost chirpy without feeling that "angry blood" feeling of being slightly hung over all the time.

Ok so I made it sort of

Well I've been sober for nearly 48 hours and it couldn't come too soon. Now I feel as if I have a weight lifted off of me and I am able to concentrate on giving my life a red hot go.

After drinking whenever I could basically, since I was a teenager, I have retired and made the decision that drinking is not for me. Not even having a "few drinks with friends" is for me. It has never been that, I would have a bottle of wine or a sixpack of beer before I met up with friends for a few drinks, and then come home afterwards and drink another bottle of wine or as many beers until I passed out asleep.

It was a curious combination of pure greed, of feeling I might be missing out, of making alcohol an integral part of life as though celebrating and having fun was nothing without it. And it was always chasing a hangover - the dumb sting from the night before would linger through the morning until early afternoon and I would finally get the chance to gulp down some more beer or wine or whatever was available.

To my eternal shame, I can say in the past week I have even drunk Japanese rice wine one morning when I was running away from a hangover. It is 18% alcohol but tastes like, um rice? Didn't matter, a few long gulps and I had downed half a bottle and I felt OK to go out and face the bright sunny Sunday morning.

But life wasn't that bad after all, I was just accepting this second rate, exhausted, poor diet, always feeling lazy and disinterested and trying to cut corners with work so I could get home early to get on with drinking in the early afternoon.

And that anxious feeling of knowing that you have drunk 12 bottles of wine in five days without wanting to or enjoying it. Just that I had a few gulps in the morning, a few gulps istead of lunch, and then drank solidly for the evening.

And crashed out at 9pm on the lounge, only to wake at 2am with a bell-ringing hangover and a bursting bladder. To gush out clear urine with a sandy partched mouth and be simultaneously gulping water by the bottle, and popping painkillers, and then lying back in bed to lay there watching the infomercials or re-reading a true crime book for the 11th time.

Night after night. Week in week out for months and years and just feeling fat and sloppy and ashamed of myself.