What happened? Tomorrow happened.

Day 7

Not sure what happened but suddenly I have this craving, craving, craving, wanting to run, well, drink, and hide. And I don’t want to fight it. That is dangerous.

What happened? Tomorrow happened: tomorrow is Monday and I need to get going with my life. I’ve stayed indoor 7 days to get me past the first days. Hardly been in contact with anybody. Tomorrow I have to start dealing with the shit I left laying around. Paying bills, paying the tax office (already overdue). I still have money, but no income and pretty large costs. It’s only bills, the money is there but it feels like I need to fix me tomorrow. I don’t want to be broken.

I am so ashamed that I let myself go from successful and reasonable rich to unsuccessful and struggling to pay bills. Reading Nakken I realise that I there is so much work to do. As I ‘felt my way’ through Jason Vale’s book it helped me make internal decisions against alcohol. For every trap he explained I checked how it connected to me, cut the energetic bond and sealed the entry so I could finally not drink. I am glad I did that book first. If I would have started with Nakken when drinking it is my guess I would have doubled my intake. Heavy shit.

Reading Nakken’s ‘Addictive personality’ tears open this whole dark internal world of unprocessed pain, loneliness, self loathing, lack of trust, lack of guidance and mostly incompetence in connecting with people. The addictive patterns he shows have been going on from a very early age in my life. I identify them as my base position. Not sure if that’s the word, and he uses other words, but to me it is the position from which I interact with the world. That hurts. I do not want to be like that. I want to be true. And hope to become whole. I guess it hurts most because he says it’s going to take years to unravel, undo and build up again. But hey, I want it all and I want it now.

Shitload of crying.Time to go to bed.

Doing everything by the book, some stuff is just not in there…

When reading this and acting upon it immediately,

don’t forget that the chocolate is still laying about:

Scared to chuck out the empty booze bottles

 

Feel like a caddis, cleaning but scared to chuck away the empty booze bottles. 🙂 I still have half a glass of wine standing in the kitchen. It is the bottom half of my last glass of alcohol. I couldn’t finish it anymore because of the brainwashing I was giving myself when drinking the last night. It has these little flies in it now, and fungy. It’s a good reminder of things gone and natural process. Wonder when I will throw that out. And what I’ll do if somebody walks in. Gheghegheghe.

More like this now

 

Bored now…

Day 7

I used to have this exciting life and be filled with all kinds of emotions. Every evening I would drink till I ran out of booze, cry along side with it, go to bed, be afraid to or hope to never wake up, fall into this coma, dream stupid stuff, wake up feeling a bit off, eat my way through the day and be absolutely unsuccessful at anything I tried – and feel guilty about that.

In the last 5 months you can add fear, panic, loss of hope, darkness and suicide thoughts to this list. I would have daily, hourly, feelings of guilt about drinking, eating, not cleaning, not working, not taking care of myself and not living my life. I would lie to my friends and family about why I am not successful anymore and all in all it would take up about 98% of my life’s energy. All these emotions… and now I don’t have that anymore.

Bored now.

Soooo bored, that I had this awfully boring dream last night and then in order to share (?) with somebody how boring it was I complained about it. And ended up dreaming it a SECOND TIME!!!! Ieeeeeks! It is not fair.

Yesterday I learned a shitload, even got to doing stuff because living in the blog world is almost as addictive as drinking to me. Man, I should be rewarded.

This whole booze thing is so much behind me that I dreamed that I drank a beer and then somebody said ‘hey, hadn’t you stopped drinking?’ And I had forgotten ALL about it! If that doesn’t proof how far I’ve come?!

I’m doing so well. I should get a medal.

Found 3 traps, and counting…

Bewaren

Better get to livin’

Freed myself of the booze. Most likely there are steps ahead but I don’t have to worry because I am here and not ahead. And then I turned to the internet. Had all these plans where I would be cleaning my house and now I’ve stepped head first in the online sobriety blog world.

I just threw an I-tjing on this. I-tjing is an oracle. It gives answers to questions, or confirms hopes or fears. It’s tricky.

I-Tjing said in short: The sun is rising, this is the sign of progress, this is how the honourable man does himself credit. Yeah! That would be me, that would be me! 🙂

I-Tjing said next: ‘Stand vast, don’t exert influence in the outside world. Words will have no effect. Just be strong, don’t talk.’

And, that exactly confirms my doubts on blogging. Get away from The Machine. Read, walk, yoga, clean. Get the other parts of the addiction out of your system as well! It has done a great job already: I know that there are others out there. I am not the only one in the world quitting. I should get back to living. Let’s see if I can cut down to a few hours a day. That would be new. Add some social contacts back into my new life mix. Let’s see how it goes.

Walls

Day 6

Part of this post is a reply to a reader. Currently reading some more in my new book ‘The addictive personality’ from Craig Nakken. Jason Vale was about the alcohol part of an addiction. I know now alcohol is bad, which is why I don’t drink it. I can’t make more of it.

This book is about the addiction part of the addicted person. To some of you that have had addiction treatment this book may be yesterday’s news but I’m doing this sort of on my own and found every sentence from the first say 11 pages quote worthy.

I have bought the book because I have always thought, even from a very young age that I have this character structure that gets addicted to everything possible. There’s this German saying ‘Je länger, je lieber’. Which means something like: the more the better but with loads of yearning in it. I’ve had that all my life. My mother could read me the same book 10 – 20 times over while my brother never, ever reads a book twice. He once went nuts when I put a CD on repeat. Which surprises me because I had been listening to it for 2 months in a row already… I can eat the same dish 2 weeks in a row because I can’t get enough of it. Actually, before I quite I ate one dish 9 months everyday for breakfast and lunch, recipe will follow.

At age of 14 I went from not smoking to 15 per day in one week. I have drunk 3 litres of cola per day for at least a year, 1 to 2 litres in the years before that. I combined that with at least 2 litres of strong black tea per day if it were not five. And of course 3 litres of beer. Note to self: get kidneys checked. Same with everything. I can wear the same clothes for a month onwards because I like them (I do wash them if you care to know). I have bought the same black t-shirt for 20 years in a row now, adjusting sizes from XS to XL as I drank more and got fatter. And if I don’t get the things that I like, that specific cheese, rice crackers with cheese and marmite, a specific stock in my chicken soup I get irritated. Part of it has to do with being hypoglycaemic, blablablabla. And blaaaaablablablaaaaa.

Writing this down is ok, reading it back is quite overwhelming. Starting to become aware of the bullshit in me. Ooooh, the powers that are within. Did I really do all that? This is one of the parts where I think I am weird. I guess that’s a justified feeling then. And I think I cover it up with righteousness, decisiveness and projecting security outwardly in a rather aggressive way. ‘Don’t come near me, don’t touch me, don’t disturb the brittle safety that I hold within.’

Yesterday I wrote: ‘To me it feels like I have a tendency to structurally replace something for something. Not sure what the somethings in this equation are, apart from the drinking, of course :-D.’ Today I read that addicts replace intimacy with excitement and try to nurture themselves with an addiction that finally gives the sense of omnipotence, amongst others. Yes. That would be me. And the addiction also numbs the real feelings allowing the addict NOT to deal with the life issues that are. Then pain turns into despair and the shit hits the fan.

They say with detoxing from alcohol there may be some nausea. I’m only getting that now when reading this book. What have I done to myself? And I would really like to jump over the grief to the ‘I’m so glad I stopped’. And maybe, just to get me through the day, I will do that. Trap, trap. Ubuntu, girl, ubuntu. Have mercy, have mercy. Crying. This is me, and this is what happened. All the bullshit that I carry around, what a weight.

Realising something: I put up all these walls. I was thinking of using the same move to keep booze out. But booze is already out. No worries. Not going back.

Looking inside now. The rigidity does not help me cope with things, it makes it so that there is no movement, fluidity, suppleness, or how you call it in me. Makes it hard to breathe and when breathing it does not bring life. Focussing now on the energetic walls around me and the effort I put in to them. Letting go and focussing on the intention I have to bring them back up, very visible all now. Shit, coming of the booze gives me so much ability to learn! It’s almost as strong as a ayahuasca trip. Learning, learning, feeling my way back into life. 🙂

Despair, mourning. My gods, have I wasted so much energy, time, life, cut myself off so badly? So cut off. MAMAAAAAA!!! Why hast thou forsaken me? Why have I forsaken me?

This world, my world (?) seems to lack a spiritual mother. Not sure what that means.

Flashes, flashes of history coming by. Moving house at 8 years old, totally new environment, alienation, been beaten up by best friend day before. Lost, no place to go. Walls beginning to build. Powerless because it was all decided for me. Strange because I left, strange because I was new and did not speak nor understand the dialect which was found to be strange, dangerous. And I? ‘I will keep you out because you keep me out!’ Threat, fear, anger. Where is Yoda when you need him? Breathe, relax and drink water.

And…. back to normal again. Good book. 😀

Feeling my body come to life!

Day 5

Feeling my body come to life! Not sure how the correct frase is in English but the water that I was retaining (?) is getting out of my body. Wow, this feels so great! I can twist my neck and look behind me again. My fingers move easily and bending over is no problem anymore (apart for the belly). Yeah! It’s funny that I can be so high on an achievement that actually consists of NOT doing something.

I will certainly continue my 1,5 pint of morning vegetable drink juiced from cellery, apple, lemon, ginger, cucumber and carrots. And not drink alcohol of course. That works out to be a very good plan.

Starting a new book as well: ‘The addictive personality, understanding the addictive process and compulsive behavior.’

Jason Vale tought me how alcohol works. What I learned is that the process of getting hooked did NOT happen after we made the bad decision to start drinking more that our GP’s. It happens in our society that advertises alcohol in all of its communications. It happens by getting young people to like alcohol by feeding them sweet mix drinks. And third and most important of all: alcohol is so addictive that we step in the trap with the first drink we like. That’s when it closes on us and only very smart thinking and lack of possibility and lack of reason will keep people away from it.

As Jason Vale points out; people that say ‘I only eat bananas in the weekend and try not to eat them during the week. So I do not have a banana problem’ already have a banana problem. That is about 80% of the population.

Well, that was all about the booze. Good book. And it has got me preaching sobriety within 5 days! Yeah! Preaching = trap! It is not about the other. It is about me.

So now I will try to look into my side of the addiction and I hope to do that with a book that hopefully helps me to understand the how and why of having an addictive personality. Did anybody (of the 3 readers I currently have  who help me greatly by reading and commenting on this blog, read this book? 🙂 Addition: having people objectifies them, objectiving people is part of addiction behaviour. In the works of Willow to Spike: ‘There will be no having of any kind!’

Went out, felt great, lost keys

Day 5

I went out after contemplating for an hour why I was so scared to go out of the house for the first time This is what I came up with:

I’m afraid that people see that I’ve stopped drinking. If I have stopped it should mean that I was addicted and then They Will Know…. Actually that is like saying: if I don’t buy booze people will think that I am addicted while if I do buy beer they won’t. Funny think patterns that feel like they are totally fuelled by booze. This is where I feel it would be handy to be quitting with other people and people that have been there because they might point me to a way out of this.

I’m afraid to be found out as a drinker. Shame, guilt. As Jason Vale says; alcohol is the only drug that if you quit, you have to explain why you did it. So maybe it is not only me being weird about it. Maybe I am trapped in society’s trap of ‘Oooooh, if you don’t drink you must be an alcoholic, shame on you….’ Mostly coming from somebody with a drink in their hands.

And yes, sorry to the people, sorry to the world, I have said things along these lines as well.

Soooo, I went out, it was exactly my kind of weather and I felt fine, actually noticed that I automatically walk faster. Did not know that the booze has depressed me so much that I started have walked slowly for the past few years. I actually felt totally in control, was happy, proud, did my shoppings. Grinned at the overstocked shelf of my favourite beer and got home. 

And…. I had lost my house keys. So, control is there, just not everywhere 🙂

 

 

She can drink, but I don’t have to

Day 5

Dreamed again, loads of dreams, 4 seconds about booze. A friend and I walked into a grocery store to get dinner and she grabs a bottle of booze. Saying ‘I love this soooo much!’. All my drinking mechanisms start working immediately and I feel a craving coming up. Cut out the thought at the very first second, breathe, organise internally. And then it hits me, and don’t laugh, it is soo obvious, but totally NEW for me: She can drink, but I don’t have to.

I ran out of groceries, so I have to get into the world today. Which is good, practise in real life in stead of in my dreams.

And a little update on the physical side of getting sober. About weight; day 1 I gained 1,5 kilo, still there at day 2 and 3, and from then on I have been losing half a kilo per day. It’s all water weight I guess, having to do with not drinking. I’m a little less stiff today and the moist between the joints of my hands and feet is slowly, very slowly disappearing. Today is the first day I feel less fog in my head than I have done for years. I think, due to the diet that I kept with loads of omega fats and vitamin B’s I never actually had a lot of hangovers, only when I was young. Blame it on the diet, it could very well be that I’m so used to drinking that I did not get hangovers anymore.

Ooh, yeah! My eyesight has improved. This could be because I sleep better but I somehow feel that it has to do with my focus on ‘wanting to be clear’. Also my focus has improved a little, still getting tired easily but I guess that will fade with the cleaning of my liver and me getting more physically active.

The biggest change is in my mood though: gone is the despair, gone is the depression, gone is the, well, partially gone is the guilt and the shame, the feeling of banging my head against a wall, being in a deep dark pit with no, no way out. I am proud that I made this change, happy that I did it and all in all, if I have had 10 * 1 second of craving per day that would be much.

Don’t read if you don’t want to know: Toilet habits have changed as well which is a good thing because I fear I did get mall nourished due to years of diarrhea. My tongue has gone all scalloped at the edges which is one of the signs of mall nourishment. Nasty, nasty. My mom had that before she developed cancer so this scares me a lot. It’s one of the reasons that I wanted to quit.

Today, well, today, it is time to get back into the world and organise myself a little. Let’s see how to do that and keep sober.