Dry Ink

If you’ve noticed I don’t have a sober counter attached to this blog, I’m not counting days here like dominoes, only to knock them down and set them back up again in frustration. I will be counting days outside of here, I always do and I may mention number of days without drinking or number of days of consecutive daily drinking in the course of a journal entry but currently it’s not the purpose of this journal.

I did just come off of a 17 day sober streak on Sunday when I hosted a going away party at my house for a relative. I didn’t feel great those 17 days sober, I felt mostly crappy. Just like the hundreds of other times I’ve quit, I was exhausted every day. I was binging on sugar instead of alcohol to keep my energy up, which usually backfires and ends in a crash. By day 15 I decided I needed to cut back on the sugar and start getting in some exercise so I did. Then, with just one day feeling decent, I went and drank upwards of 10 beers. I’m not a big person—10 beers is a lot.

I woke up feeling OK Monday, a little sluggish and that sent me right back to the sugar, but here I am 3 days later and still not drinking.

The sugar comes in the form of a mocha for breakfast, some kind of starchy carb for lunch, and some chocolate for a snack, etc. Is this really better than drinking?

And so the loop in my head starts:

Is this sugar binging really better than drinking wine every night? I should just stop the sugar and drink the wine. No, I can’t drink the wine because sometimes that ends badly and it’s expensive. I end up not sleeping well and my husband and I end up in different rooms doing different things. I like us better when we don’t drink, but am I really never going to drink again? What else do I have going on?

Sunday my husband and I agreed we’ll drink on occasions and maybe weekends depending on what we’re doing. We’ve said this before. We’ll see.

I really have so much more to unpack. These pages are going to fill up quickly.