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Wine: an update and some realizations


bibliophile

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What a wonderfully honest thread! I can relate to many of the posts.

 

I'm on Day 13 of my 2nd Whole 30. I made two previous attempts (one in 2013 and one in 2014). I finally completed my first on 11/2/15. Well, what did I choose to re-intro first, I bet you can guess, RED WINE;) I started off slow...having only one glass and not even every night, but then I slipped right back into old habits. I chose to dive right in this January as a way to get a handle on the "why" I choose to do what I do, not to mention the amazing NSV's that I experienced. I've been asking myself am I reaching for that bottle because I'm bored, lonely, stressed or has it just become routine? Much like making dinner at night, so goes the wine. I find that if I get through the witching hours of 4-6, I'm good. By that time dinner is done and the kitchen is being put back to rights, it's time to prod my 7 year old to start winding down and I shortly follow......I feel like I'm rambling, but I don't know that I will bring back wine at all. I absolutely love the way I feel when I'm not indulging and I would love to get rid of the spare tire that I've been carrying around. I can honestly say that won't happen if I go back to my old ways.

 

I look forward to following this thread and gaining all the insight I can!

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I would respectfully like to request that we all refrain from drawing conclusions, making interpretations, or offering unsolicited advice to anyone's post.

A forum is a forum, not a blog, so back-and-forth is the way of things.
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Hi,

I wanted to reply to Bibliphile and affirm that Drink by Ann Dowsett Johnson is such a great book, one that I've loaned to my best friends. I stumbled across her writing on The Guardian website while I was having alcohol induced insomnia!

I think identifying triggers is so important. Everyone knows you'll feel better with less alcohol, but you feel like drinking because women are asked to do everything-- just everything. Work outside of the home, be the angel fixing everything in the home, the person dealing with crisis for friends and family. And this is true even if you don't have children, by the way.

I am on day 18 today, and yesterday evening I returned home from a pretty heavy conference on caring for the dying, to find my house in total disarray (shredded cardboard, lost tv remote, dishes), dog and cat unfed, my kid having only eaten cheese pizza or cheese fries all weekend.... I wanted, in order, spaghetti marinara, chocolate mousse cake, and then a lot of champagne. A bathtub of champagne. My husband was off all weekend, but seemed to feel that keeping the child alive was his whole contribution. Does he suck? Likely. Is he rare? Not at all. When I want to drink too much it's because I'm not getting the support I need to make modern life work. I want a break.  Please don't think I'm implying that men don't feel this pressure. I'm speaking from my experience.

Creating a break without alcohol takes concise planning before you are in the situation of the dog and cat and kid circling your ankles at 6pm. I still have a beautiful glass, grapefruit juice and soda, and something lovely like shrimp cocktail or chicken liver pate on a china plate. It's hard for me to eat a whole meal when I feel stressed. I walk the dog to my favorite music and sing. I make everyone go to bed at 8:30 (people need more sleep than they realize) and get into the tub with epsom salts. One weird thing I discovered is that having more energy from good practices like real food-- at first I would spend it working more or in different ways. Umm..... that's not exactly good, and was kind of a turn off after my first Whole30. Use this energy to fill your well. Cultivate it so you can radiate healing and goodness out to the larger world. Because the larger issue is-- we're all struggling with modern life. It's a bit rough. Movements like this one, to bring people back to the deep cycles of real life, we're doing it to make sense of what we're given.

Alcohol just can't do that. That isn't its purpose or nature.

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Hi,

I wanted to reply to Bibliphile and affirm that Drink by Ann Dowsett Johnson is such a great book, one that I've loaned to my best friends. I stumbled across her writing on The Guardian website while I was having alcohol induced insomnia!

I think identifying triggers is so important. Everyone knows you'll feel better with less alcohol, but you feel like drinking because women are asked to do everything-- just everything. Work outside of the home, be the angel fixing everything in the home, the person dealing with crisis for friends and family. And this is true even if you don't have children, by the way.

I am on day 18 today, and yesterday evening I returned home from a pretty heavy conference on caring for the dying, to find my house in total disarray (shredded cardboard, lost tv remote, dishes), dog and cat unfed, my kid having only eaten cheese pizza or cheese fries all weekend.... I wanted, in order, spaghetti marinara, chocolate mousse cake, and then a lot of champagne. A bathtub of champagne. My husband was off all weekend, but seemed to feel that keeping the child alive was his whole contribution. Does he suck? Likely. Is he rare? Not at all. When I want to drink too much it's because I'm not getting the support I need to make modern life work. I want a break.  Please don't think I'm implying that men don't feel this pressure. I'm speaking from my experience.

Creating a break without alcohol takes concise planning before you are in the situation of the dog and cat and kid circling your ankles at 6pm. I still have a beautiful glass, grapefruit juice and soda, and something lovely like shrimp cocktail or chicken liver pate on a china plate. It's hard for me to eat a whole meal when I feel stressed. I walk the dog to my favorite music and sing. I make everyone go to bed at 8:30 (people need more sleep than they realize) and get into the tub with epsom salts. One weird thing I discovered is that having more energy from good practices like real food-- at first I would spend it working more or in different ways. Umm..... that's not exactly good, and was kind of a turn off after my first Whole30. Use this energy to fill your well. Cultivate it so you can radiate healing and goodness out to the larger world. Because the larger issue is-- we're all struggling with modern life. It's a bit rough. Movements like this one, to bring people back to the deep cycles of real life, we're doing it to make sense of what we're given.

Alcohol just can't do that. That isn't its purpose or nature.

Bravo, Shakti, you nailed it on so many levels!

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Very sorry to have caused offense.  I will refrain from further lessons learned.  Please accept my apologies.

It's OK. It was a misconception about what I was sharing which in part could have been because I did not explain myself well. I know you were trying to be helpful so thank you for that.

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  • 1 month later...

Hey everyone! I'm still here. Still sober for almost 2 years now and I can say, as of right now, alcohol is now a non-issue in my life. I no longer struggle with it at all. I feel very blessed to be where I am now. I am still battling sugar, however! 

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  • 4 weeks later...
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My abstinence last year ended in the summer, and I'm not mad about it. Consciously choosing sobriety for six months or so taught me a lot about my behavior, helped untangle me from a budding relationship with an alcoholic, and allowed me to form a very loving relationship with a sober guy. It also slowed my roll with drinking for the long haul, it seems. It just doesn't interest me much, so I drink less. Only when I really want to, not because it's what people are doing. I've even attended several fancy work dinners and passed on wine even though everyone else was drinking and someone else was paying for it. 

 

I shared a very nice bottle of champagne on my birthday, had a cocktail at Thanksgiving, enjoyed a little wine on Christmas, and had a sober New Year's celebration. So far this year I've shared a glass of wine with a friend and had a manhattan with my stepmom. I savored each sip.

 

Thanks to W30 and this thoughtful thread, I have a totally different relationship with alcohol, one that's deliberate and conscious. Following my lead last year, my dad has given up drinking this year and come to the realization that he might be an alcoholic. My stepmom has stopped her nightly wine habit and now enjoys a glass of wine socially once a week or less. 

 

The upshot for me is there's such power in conducting serious self study and sharing the outcomes (and shifts and changes and struggles) with others. Thanks to all of you for doing so and for helping catalyze positive change for me and those I love. 

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  • 1 year later...
On 7/26/2014 at 9:12 AM, Gramma Susie said:

No, related to intensity, I'm searching for strategies to help with that. And, I search for those strategies with a lot of intensity. Doctors and others have recommended yoga and meditation, but I find myself making mental lists of what I'm going to do when I'm done with those activities. Then I'm not even sure I actually do all of those things in my list, but at least Im out of the gym and done with yoga and I can check that off my list. It's a crazy thing. My intensity doesn't help at all with cortisol and if I don't properly contain my enthusiasm about all those very important things in life (pollution, GMO, pesticides, faith-building for our grand babies, spending time with our parents who are getting very old, etc.), I completely drive my husband crazy. He says sometimes I am joyless. As I said before, life is serious business to me. I don't know how people can see it otherwise. Sometimes it is a curse to be me.

If you or anyone reading knows of some other ways to curb my enthusiasm, I'd love to know what they are. I would like to ratchet it down a bit without throwing the baby out with the bath water.

@Gramma Susie, I haven't read to the end of this post yet but wanted to ask if anyone has ever suggested you do intense things to help with your intensity, rather than quiet things like yoga and meditation. My chiropractor recommends things like kickboxing or other more intense forms of exercise. We can't always meditate away the stress--sometimes we have to get it out of us! I haven't actually done any kickboxing, but I did go on a weeklong personal retreat at the Hoffman Institute in California 3 years ago, where we got to do a lot of intense expression of anger and other emotions over the course of the week, and it was an incredible, life changing process for me. We also did visualizations/meditations and lots of fun stuff that week, but I'm convinced I could not do that quiet and fun stuff so well if I hadn't had the chance to literally yell and bash a cushion with a baseball bat first. It sounds totally weird, and you don't have to do it that way, but are there forms of exercise and/or verbal expression that could make use of your intensity and that would interest you and be possible for your body?

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm not sure how active this thread is but I am so glad it exists.

Alcohol is my biggest obstacle and my biggest trigger/derailer for eating foods that make me feel bad. I'm doing another W30 (almost a year to the day after the first one) to try and re-set my relationship with alcohol and food for good. I'm on day 4 now and while it hasn't been easy, it's been made much less painful by the knowledge that there are supportive people out there who know what this feels like!

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