PeterH100

OK, I’ve read the intro and the Cow – thats a start at least!

This is sooo difficult – I just can’t stop my legs from sinking – and have no way of correcting myself when it happens :/

I got some success with this on Sunday. The hardest part of doing freestyle (for me) is to stay on top of the water (ie keep my bottom up). So I swam with a pull boy – which helps do just that. It is a float that I put between my thighs.

The other thing that helped, which I have never done before, was to use hand paddles. These seemed to make the stroke a lot easier for me, and I managed 10 lengths non-stop.

It is still work in progress – as I haven’t got the kick right, and I struggle without the assistance of floats etc, but it felt good all the same. I’m starting to feel I can get there – and that is a nice feeling :)

I’ve been putting this off for so long. In recent months I have decided to reduce the scope of the article and make it smaller (and more deliverable).

I hope to finally finish it this weekend …...

Why, I have a horse and I haven’t ridden for nearly 2 years now. That seems crazy, but for one reason or another, I retired.

I still feel guilty that I don’t spend enough time with my GG though…

After adding this as a goal, I’ve been inpired set about trying to learn the stroke! My success criteria with regards the task is to swim 10 lengths.

One of my biggest issues is with the kick. To that end, I thought it would be good to get some fins to train with. Great, with the kick-board I’m up and down the pool in no time. Trouble is, when I take them off, I’m stationary with the kick board, and move very slowly without it.

Problems, problems – still I guess it wouldn’t be a challenge otherwise :)

I can do this a little – I practice in the gym studio when its pretty empty as there is a mirror there :)

It is easier if you ‘mince’ ie take short steps. I find I need to maintain a balance and to maintain the same height throughout for it to look good. The longer the stride, the harder to maintain balance.

Another important part of this is to keep the foot that I am dragging back parallel to the ground. Anything else, and it looks bad (well, worse).

I’m not sure why I’m bothering with this, but hey – why not?

I’ve now completed nearly six months sobriety, which is incredible for me. After 6 months I will mark the task as complete on this site, but in truth it will never be. I’m starting to understand the harsh reality that I am only one drink away from being back to where I was.

Sure people tell you this all the time, you hear it enough at AA meetings, but it is a different thing to realize it personally. I still get cravings at times, and have to work to avoid drink at times.

The times that I normally feel the pressue are times of anxiety and fear. When I push myself into the unknown, fear kicks in, and I think DRINK. I try not to punish myself for reacting in the way I have for 30+ years – but I have to push through fears all the same.

My biggest fear, at the end of the day, its that I swap the life of a lonely, resentful alcoholic, for one of a lonely, resentful sober alcoholic. Onwards and upwards :) !!

I have successfully achievied 3 months sobriety – the longest period in 30 years. I have had a lot of help from Josh, on this site, and from the AA movement in general. Many thanks to them all!

To summarize what I have learned: to give my self the best chance of stopping sucessfully I needed:

1 To understand why I drank in the first place
2 To know how to stop and be happy about it
3 To learn how to deal with life without resorting to drink

None of these are easy, but without them I would either abstain reluctantly or, more likely, find an excuse to start drinking again in time.

AA gave me the tools and understanding to get to this stage. I recommend AA strongly.

Good luck to everyone out threre trying to get out of this trap, I love you all.

I left my job 2 weeks ago, that was my first step.

I now have to find ‘self employed’ work. So far I have concentrated on the ‘advertised’ stuff. This is a tough market at the moment, as there are so many people look for work.

Its not really ‘consulancy’ anyway – consultancy is about (among other things) – selling, mainly myself. So this week, I’m out looking for clues and leads!

Deep breath…...

Thanks for your help Josh, I’ve made an effort to do more
AA work. I’m attending more meetings and am looking for
someone that may sponsor me.

As I get further away from the drinking life, I can see that
a lot of my justifications to this point have been based on
somewhat jaundiced thinking – but I’m equally sure that I’m
only at the start of discovering the full extent of this. A
sponsor could help me to uncover the (hugely uncomfortable)
truth.

My thinking at the moment leads me to believe that its only
through full uinderstanding that a life of happy sobriety
can be achieved.

That being said, my thinking and understanding is changing
constantly, I hope for the better.

Thanks for all the support I receieved after my last note, particularly from Josh, who supports us all so well.

Now I’m past one month, the issue for me isn’t getting through the day without a drink, its just getting through the day. Let me explain. Drinking supported my reclusive nature. I was happy to retreat into my shell and drink and not really have to make friends and such. The trouble is, the lonely place its taken me to is an unhappy one, so here I am changing it.

So without drink I have the challenge of coping with life, and that is tough. Sorry for the winge, I’m just stating the situation!

I’m trying to learn new things by studying a mass of self help books, effective communications books and work related books. I also need to think of new hobbies and interests that will take me into contact with people hopefully.

These are the challenges for me now, I don’t want to drink and see only bad in that. But ‘don’t’ is a negative, I now need to find positives.

I continue to wish you all well in your persuit of this goal, and pray that you also manage to fight your way out of your own dark, lonely places,

Peter

I haven’t written an entry on this topic for some time. The reason is, I suppose, that I started drinking again. I stopped for a month and a half then thought it was OK to have the odd drink, as I thought I was in control of it. As life’s pressures increaced over the next month or so, the occasions that I drank increaced until I was drinking every day again. Basically, I was back at square one.

After XMas I decided to have another go at this. Its clear (for me) that its easier for me to not drink at all than to try and control my intake. So I took the plunge and started going to AA meetings.

I’m now on day 12. Pleasingly, my first attempt to stop, though it would be seen by some as a failure, did serve to help in many ways.

Firstly I know that I can do it, I can live without drink for 6 weeks+

Secondly, I know what to expect when I stop – troubled sleep patterns in my case.

Thirdly, I know that the ‘odd drink’ doesn’t work for me – I need to stop completely.

Lastly, life is better without drink.

I’ll write more later, I hope.

I have now managed 1 month+ without alcohol. That is the longest time for 3 decades, so I guess its significant.

Do I feel better? – Yes, probably. I definitely get less tired and have more stamina to tackle the long 12hour working days.

It hasn’t fixed everything though – not that I expected it would. I can at least see where issues are, however, and I know I can now address them rather than hiding behind boozy escapism.

What I would like to get out of this process is to develop new confidences/skills. Others on here have reported this – so I’m doing loads of reading/ training. If the economy was a bit more certain, things would be easier – I would set up my own company and go for it. I’m just a bit nervous of doing that right now.

Stopping drinking is worth doing, and I encourage everyone here that are trying.

Thanks for all the support I received after my last post on this subject, it really helps. Reading your stories I notice a common theme where we attempt hide our drinking from others as far as we can. Unfortunately, this leaves us stranded when we stop drinking, because no one was supposed to know we drank in the first place! So we drink alone, and we stop alone, which is where the support of the people on this site is so valuable, thank you all.

I have to say, however, that I’m not finding this too easy. I’m not pining for a drink so much as finding it hard to cope with my day to day moods and sleep patterns. This week, I’ve not really felt very well and have been irritable in the extreme. I’ve also had very little undistrurbed sleep and a lot of bad dreams. I’m not sure if this is all alcohol related, or just general stress and pressure, if anyone else has experiemnced any of this it would help me to hear.

My goal in this task is to reach the point where I can get through days and weeks without thinking about drinking. I have a long way to go, but it happened years ago when I stopped the cigarettes, so I know it can happen. I mean to say, non-alcolholics don’t spend their time thinking about drink – that is surely the natural way to be? I would still appreciate some advice on how long I would need to last out to see some of these results though!

Once again, thanks for all the kind words and support :)

Well, this is something I started in December 2007. Prior to that I had managed to avoid dentists for a decade, but I had some pain, and decided to brave it.

I smoked heavily when I was younger and got one of the front one chipped (when drunk), so they were quite yellow and messy.

What the experience (so far) has taught me is that there is a huge gulf of expertise within the dental profession, from totally useless to sublimely expert. I didn’t expect to see the ‘useless’ side in such a highly qualified profession but I found them all the same.

The first dentists attempted to put 2 veneers on my front teeth and cut so much of my original teeth away that the veneer couldn’t hold and so kept dropping off. Other things went wrong such as the bleeching not working too well and a filling being put over a sore nerve causing me a load of pain.

Anyway, after making a load of fuss and seeing 2 other dentists, I finally ended up at a top notch referral practise in Newbury (UK). I am slowly getting things right (though my front teeth had to be crowned due to the mess the first dentist had made.

I hope I’ll be able to report success on this one soon, but its a long process!

Its taken a while, but I have finally managed to embark on a meaningful attempt to tackle my drinking. I came in from work late one Monday, and was so tired that I went to be early without drinking. This was a start at least, and though not deliberatly planned, was the catalyst I needed. I am now on my 9th day.

I read a book which helped somewhat, ‘Fat, 40 and Fired’ by a guy called Nigel Marsh who went through similar issues to me. I have done lots more reading over the last week or so as I have had a lot of time to fill which was previously dedicated to ‘spacing out’ with alcohol.

I have always reserved a ‘slot’ for drinking. My slot was 21:30 – 00:00 – though given my dependance, this slot would usually extend to 00:45 with as much drink being consumed after midnight than was consumed before.

Though I have seen people with worse problems than myself, I still score 8/20 on the ‘are you an alcoholic?’ test: http://www.alcoholicarmy.com/the_test.php and I desparetly want to be able to cope in the world without drink.

I’ll keep posting my progress….

I had a pretty lousy upbringing and I wish Childline was around then. Anyway, I’ve actually done something to support them now, maybe I’ll think of something else I can do in the future.

Drinking is my prop – I want to stop relying on it.