timeto180onthedrinking

Day 21 I'm just home from a really really lovely dinner with a very old friend. Usually at a posh restaurant I'd have a cocktail to start, a large glass of white wine with the starter, a bottle of red with the main and  an amaretto/brandy with dessert. This evening I had a mocktail and copious amounts of sparkling water and you know what, I feel great. I'm slowly learning that the fun of an evening isn't the array of alcohol, it's the company (DERRRRR!). I haven't seen this person for a couple of years and it was really lovely to have an actual long slow conversation. I have a tendency to interrupt people. I try not to but I get a bit sort of over excited and jump in, with more volume and obscenities as the wine flows on. The people who like me forgive it, I think, because they know it's not driven by indifference for them or their stories. I'm sure there are plenty of people who dislike me because of it but that's a musing for another time. My

Day 20 My cleverness has gone. The day has been flat as hell. Tomorrow marks three weeks of sober me. I'm reasonably sure I've made it to 21 days once before, but never like this. In the past I've done what, as it turns out, lots of people do. I've sort of held my breath waiting for the sober spell (typically a thousand days shorter than my aim) to pass. I've come to realise that that's not really stopping drinking at all, it's just waiting to drink again and what I really REALLY want is to stop wanting to drink all the fucking time.  I don't know what spurred me to try and bin off the booze this time. I guess the tired, worn-out, shakes her head in dismay 'Me' finally shouted the loudest (I really hope she's not the only one left, after all the mayhem is gone, she's fucking depressing!!). There was no catastrophic event but there was an early morning wake up, dry mouth, rumbly guts and a terrible sense of regret as I pieced t

Day 19 Irritatingly I didn't find time to blog over Christmas which I'm sad about because I had about four epiphanies and have come out of the festive period (period, ha!) feeling very clever and pleased with my self-awareness (what a twat). The reality is, of course, that I'm only at the very beginning of understanding who the hell I am without the booze. 

I'm starting this blog because like, as it turns out, thousands of people around the globe, I'm desperately unhappy with my relationship with alcohol and am trying to do something about it. Disclaimer: I swear a lot, and saying farewell to my best enemy 'Wine' is making me very swear-y. If that's an issue for you, you should probably stop reading.  So, today is day 13 and I'm not loving it. I was looking for clarity and smugness and skipping but what I've got is a banging headache, grumpiness and irritability. It's not all bad and I know it will be worth it  but I'm finding it tough. That's why I'm here, to see if spilling my experiences and musings onto this page will help me find a pink cloud or two (God I've learned a lot of new lingo over the past 13 days). So who am I? I'm a typical, high-functioning pisshead from England with a 1.5 bottle a day wine habit and a realisation that if I don't change that I'm going to