Things just keep getting better
20/05/12 • 5 Comments

This time last year I was towards the end of the first month of my HSM and having a fabulous holiday in Europe.  From memory, I was probably on the Amalfi coast at this time, eating beautiful fresh local produce, doing amazing walks every day and soaking up incredible views of coastline and sun.  This year, I’m cheating winter by being up north and loving it! For the last few months up here there wasn’t much difference in the weather stakes, but now it’s starting to get really miserable down south, while the weather up here is incredible. Sunshine every day does wonders for my mood.  All I can say is…things have just been getting better. It’s early days, but identifying as a non-drinker is working really well for me. It feels like the right fit for me. Also, recently, I’ve finally been able to get out of bad habits [...]

the way forward
05/05/12 • 4 Comments

During the course of last week, I read Allan Carr’s “Easy Way to Control Alcohol”, out of interest, because another HSM blogger, Shine, had read it recently. It cohesively and cogently summed up a lot of things I had been thinking about during my year-long HSM but hadn’t been totally ready to confront until now. The penny has dropped and I believe that being a non-drinker is the way forward for me. I can live each day knowing that I never have to drink again and that I’ve escaped. It is actually quite an amazing feeling. I’m going to keep doing the six month HSM anyway and checking in here from time to time, but wow, it has been amazing to change my thinking with the book’s guidance. Everything seems to have fallen into place now, but will see how it goes over the next few months, as I did [...]

Reflections
27/04/12 • 8 Comments

Now that my 12 month HSM is over, I wanted to share some reflections. I only started drinking around the time I turned 18. This coincided with getting my driver’s licence…and as I had to drive nearly everywhere, I only drank occasionally when I went out (ie only if one of my friends was a designated driver or we’d made other arrangements for getting home). This meant that I went to a lot of parties and gatherings where I wasn’t drinking. I’ve realised during this HSM that a lot of my closest adult friendships were made during this time and drinking wasn’t really a central activity to the formation of those friendships. Sure, once I moved out of home at 24 and was closer to the city, meaning that I could drink more when I went out, I certainly had some fun drinking times with those friends. But the original [...]

1 year
25/04/12 • 6 Comments

I reached the 1 year mark of my HSM on Monday 23 April. For some reason, I thought the 1 year mark was going to be on Tuesday, so I passed through Monday without even realising. I started a new HSM on 24 April, which is a six month HSM lasting until 24 October. The last year has been wonderful, but I’m not quite ready to go it alone (so to speak) as a non-drinker without the HSM safety net. I feel like it would be easy to get sucked into drinking again, even though I really don’t want to, so I think sticking to another HSM is best for now.  I’m really happy to have made it through this HSM though. It’s been an amazing journey, particularly when I think back to how things were a year ago. It was the Easter/ANZAC Day long long weekend and I was [...]

good news, bad news
19/04/12 • 3 Comments

This morning I found out that a bone fracture in my back is taking longer to heal than I’d hoped. But hey, it’s healing, I just have to be patient and wait a bit longer (4 months…). I’m so grateful that I can still do lots of walking and upper body weight training. It could have been so much worse. I wasn’t overjoyed to find out the news about my back…but then I checked (for the umpteenth time) to see if some uni results had come through…and found out that I got 87% for my 10,000 word Masters research paper that I worked on all through the Christmas break and on many weekends outside of work hours. The result was far better than I’d hoped for. It’s a massive confidence booster (because the paper was for a subject that’s a very important part of my professional practice) and I feel so happy [...]