long term plan

[letgolaughing]

hi
so...as i taper my way down to AF I am thinking of what my long term plan is. I am fairly good at setting a limit and sticking to it. My weakness lies in drinking that limit every night...whether it be 1 or 3 drrinks.

So, what is safe? my initial plan was to only drink fri-sat-sun with the occassional drink during the week if i had something special, like book club.

if i limited my alcohol to 3 on each of those days, could i safely abstain the other days without worrying about withdrawals?

I have a friend who drinks like this and has for years. she's super healthy and has a good head on her shoulders.

so, if you drink like this every weekend, it's ok when monday comes around not to drink, right? or will you have withdrawals.

also, when i say 3 drinks, i mean us. standard drinks...

just curious. this may not be what i end up doing. i'd really just like to have a drink if i want one, and not have one if i don't without worrying about withdrawals. when can i get to that stage?
i feel like i'll worry about withdrawals on monday if i drink even that amount on the weekend.

ugh.

[spedteach]

long term plan

Good morning,
Read about your decision making dilemma yesterday. I seriously think you need to go to a doctor and talk to him/her about this, focusing on your OCD, not your drinking. As far as your drinking goes, just quit or drink as you have been drinking which as someone pointed out is moderating. You are not going to have a seizure because you stop drinking. I doubt that you will have any withdrawal symptoms at all. And your headache, if I spent as much time as you do worrying about drinking , withdrawals, tapering, I'd have a headache too.
Good luck, sweetie. Did anyone ever tell you you think too much?

[Cinders]

long term plan

LetGo,

It was great to meet you last night in chat. I know we are all a bunch of screwballs in there but we have known each other a long, long time. Please know that at any time, if you let us know you really need to be serious, you can. Everyone will shut up and listen.

Now, to your question:

A hangover is actually withdrawal. I know it seems strange to say that but that is what it is. It is just that us hardcore alcoholics, i.e. everyday drinkers and bingers, drink for such prolonged periods that our bodies become actually dependent on the alcohol.

So, if you drink three glasses of wine at one period and it gives you a hangover, you are suffering from minor withdrawals. Note the word, minor.

But to put things into perspective for you and your concerns. Sometime before I was addressing my alcoholism, my husband, my daughter and I were sitting around and we were having a fun evening at home. My husband drank 3 or 4 glasses of wine. My daughter noticed it and took me aside and said "Mom, dad is drinking a lot more than he ever does, he is going to get sick."

She was right. He was great fun that night, as we all an get when we imbibe too much, and we went to bed. The next day, he woke up and the first thing he said to me was, "My head is killing me. Don't ever let me drink like that again."

He never has. Not once in several years. He does drink a beer occasionally, although not around me, and enjoys it. But occasionally is only once every few weeks or so and he stops at one, and every blue moon I hear he goes wild and drinks two!!

The thing is, he doesn't even think about it. Drinking is not something that he worries about, thinks about, considers. A beer is drunk when he is out with friends, or at home watching football but even then, not always.

He is the kind of drinker we all would love to be.

I am not. I think about it. I worry about it. I crave it. It is the center of my life. It is an addiction.

In your case, I do not think you need to worry overmuch about withdrawals.

But I do think you need to consider why you worry so much about it, and how much, and when.

I am very glad you are worrying about it. When I was drinking at your levels, I thought I was normal. Three glasses of wine a night was just fine as far as I was concerned.

That was just the beginning of my nightmare. I wish I had stepped out of the ring with the Beast in those days. But, I didn't and I have had to pay some serious consequences because of it.

You might want to read Allen Carr's The Easy Way To Stop Drinking. Carefully think about what he says about the pitcher plant.

Now, I am not saying you can't continue drinking and learn to moderate. We have some successful moderators on this website. But, I am also trying to tell you that not all of us can. We don't know why, and it frustrates the hell out of us.

You need to listen to your heart and your body and determine if you can learn to moderate or are you just starting at the top of the slippery slope down.

Love,
Cindi

[letgolaughing]

long term plan

spedtech- yep. i think way too much. my hubby tells me that all the time. I have been in and out of therapy for years. i go thru good times and bad. right now, i've been kind of on the cusp of an anxiety/ocd episode. so, i decided that part of my anxiety is probably from having alcohol everyday. i know that it can exacerbate general anxiety. so, i decided to cut way back. that's why my ocd latched onto this(again). it really fucks with you(xcuse the language). so...
i'm thinking if i can just get this fear out of my system, then i'll move on. i am also going to see my therapist again, for a booster session
i'd like to spend less time thinking about this, which is exactly why i am stopping the every day habit.

cindi - thanks for the chat last night...it was nice to be among y'all

thanks for the detail explanation about withdrawals/hangovers. amongst my friends and my whole neighborhood, 3 glasses of wine a night IS normal. i have many many many friends who drink everynight. the difference between me and them is that if they don't want a drink, occassionally, they don't have one. They do not obsess over whether or not they will have a seizure. Me on the other hand, sometimes, i don't want a drink. Or maybe i have a medical test or something the next day and can't drink(like a colonoscopy). I don't find it hard to NOT drink, I just freak out because I'm scared I will have withdrawals because I have been drinking everyday for years. So, I feel like i HAVE to have a drink in order to keep the withdrawals away. That is why I want to do this. It's ridiculous. If I don't want to have a drink I shouldn't feel like i HAVE to.

Now, don't get me wrong. even if i got rid of that obsessive worry, I am done. I don't want to drink everyday. As I said, I'm fairly good at moderating when i do drink. but the fact that I did this back in october, and had myself 2 good weeks (mon-thur no drinks, friday, sat, sun no more than 3 a day for 2 weeks)then slowly got back to everyday again, is not lost on me. My daily intake didn't increase, but there it was again, daily. So, I hear you. I will really have to be determined if I don't want to get back to the daily habit and freaking go through the whole obsessive withdrawal thing AGAIN!!
so, if i find that I am on that slippery slope, then maybe moderation isn't my thing. I'm not there right now though. I really think if i can get past the initial pain in the ass that I am, then I can do it.

ok. thanks for listening to me rant.