3 months gently passes
03/04/12 • 19 Comments

Have slid gently over the 3-month dateline halfway through my six month HSM. On the last day of March I went to a sit down dinner for about 60 people – where I knew only a handful of people -  the sort of event which I would never have imagined I would survive or could survive without too many drinks.  And truthfully not only did I feel no tension or self consciousness about not-drinking but I felt free and relaxed and sober felt normal. That sort of event is never going to be my fave thing but, guess what, it’s easier and better without a drink.  Who’d have thought it!  I now get why HSM is 3 months – for me it has taken that length of time not just to stop but to develop new habits. I even begin to try on for size the idea that alcohol might [...]

Secondary drinking!?
24/03/12 • 4 Comments

This week I sent to supper with friends who ordinarily drink wine with meals but who because I wasn’t drinking  didn’t drink either.  Bizarrely I didn’t really like that at all, at least to begin with.  Guess I’ve prided myself on feeling comfortable when other people drink alcohol – don’t mean hog-wimperingly so, but just ordinary amounts.  Made me realise how I use other people’s drinking-induced relaxation to feed off and let myself go.  Does that sound really wierd and wrong?!?  Once I had that thought, I reckoned that I can let myself be silly and lighthearted without becoming a passive drinker!  Lol.  Feeling pretty good all round – after a couple of low weeks – I think the mindfulness weekend unlocked things for me and here, of course, spring is here.  Have a good weekend y’all. 

So am I really learning to dance?
18/03/12 • 3 Comments

More than 2.5 months in [of 6], and most of the time, it now feels more or less normal-for-me not to drink.  Underneath that I have had to come to terms with the decades in which I used alcohol to switch off, or to cope with a range of uncomfortable feelings, and there’s a kind of sadness-for-the-younger-me there but it is what it is.  Funny isn’t it, that I’m thinking of that rather than all the fun times. Guess I still know how to do fun times without alcohol but it’s alcohol as the thing-that-you-give-yourself instead of giving yourself what you really need that I’m remembering now.  Hey-ho, at least it makes me feel hugely supportive of the young people on HSM who are trying to learn greater freedom around alcohol.   Anyway, I went last weekend for an intensive mindfulness urban retreat.  It’s all about a range of meditation techniques [...]

Boring or bored…..that is the question.
12/02/12 • 7 Comments

This is now my 7th week, I think; and after the energy and sheer delight of sleeping so well, I am now feeling more ordinary.  This week has been all snow, ice and so freezing cold that it hurts hands and face.  So I have cancelled a couple of evening outings and apart from working haven’t really done very much; and, yes, I am bored. Pre HSM, I would have quite consciously decided to relieve that feeling with a bottle of good quality wine.  Now,  I have not been tempted to drink – I really value the HSM-commitment and the whole community thing here for that to have been much of a possibility.  But I am left with the boredom.  I realise that it’s absolutely not about not-drinking=boring.  Instead not-drinking means no mask for it, no easy ‘cure’; and I have read some interesting posts here on that whole subject [...]

Learning II
23/01/12 • 3 Comments

So far I have learned above all else: 1.  That friends have all been and are supportive, albeit sometimes slightly quizzical! 2.  That being quizzical doesn\’t mean more than that – pre HSM I might have described that as peer pressure to drink. 3.  That bottom line no-one apart from me cares that much about whether I drink or not. Acquaintances are not that interested but friends do care about my happiness and want me to achieve the weight loss I have set as a goal.  Whether or not I achieve those things depends on me, not anyone else. At the same time, friendship is one of the stories of this experience – just how much I enjoy myself without drinking a drop of alcohol, just how much I love my close friends. 4. That my fear about whether their support for six months depends on me starting drinking loads [...]