Mama Bear (without the sore head)

Just when I thought things were getting easier the past couple of days have been a real struggle. Overall I've been in a good mood - I feel more lighthearted than I have done in years - but the wine and whisky witch have been in full flow. To try to explain how it feels, imagine you are out for a run or a bike ride. You are at the top of the hill, taking in the view and feeling great, then you have the freewheel down the hill which is fun, easy and you feel free. Suddenly you're at the bottom of the valley and its ok but a bit dark and before you know it you've got a massive hill to climb and no energy left to do it. Just like that bike ride, it didn't feel like it was something inside me that changed, but the environment I was in. The evening stress of battling the kids to bed, rushing to get dinner ready, ever worsening hayfever symptoms and tension between me and my husband (kind of inevitable in the lockdown pressure pot) were just too much to cope with. I wanted wi...

If I remember rightly I said in a previous post that I would give a run down of my favourite alcohol free drinks......and there's another upside - I actually remember I said it!  After 2 pregnancies (during which I felt hugely deprived of my favourite tipples) and then 8 weeks of recent sobriety I have tried a few now. It still haunts me today that on finding out I was pregnant with our second child on 1st December my initial thoughts were "Well that's buggered up Christmas - how am I going to get through it without a drink". I cannot believe that alcohol overshadowed what should have been such a happy occasion. Even more so I cannot believe it's taken me another 3 and a half years to finally admit to myself how big a problem alcohol was for me and how it was affecting my life. Anyway, I digress - this is supposed to be a helpful article on the best alcohol free drinks. At this point I should say that there is a school of thought that having alcohol free substitut...

So, I made it through the bank holiday! Lots of sunshine and sitting in the garden, 2 BBQs and some challenging child tantrums.......but I stayed sober. I don't want to count my chickens, but it is getting easier day by day. The wine witch still pops up but I'm getting much better at giving her a firm NO and then moving on.  What's not going so well is my consumption of cake & hot chocolate. I'm taking lots of comfort in baking and eating choc chip banana bread (albeit a healthy-ish recipe) and my end of the evening hot chocolate is working well in place of the whisky nightcaps. Whilst I'm not beating myself up for it (I'm still patting myself on the back for being sober for almost 2 weeks now) I do want to see some shift in weight soon. At the moment the only way it is shifting is up! We've now heard that Spain is re-opening it's borders on 1st July and whilst I'm not getting my hopes too high I am starting to think of the slim chance of getting...

It's been very rare for me to make it past 10:30pm in recent years. I've lost count of how many movies I've missed the end of or the number of times I've had to re-watch Holby City or Casualty because I've fallen asleep half way through. Now, however it's the complete opposite. I've become so accustomed to alcohol sedating me, that it's really bloody hard to get to sleep! I've found that A/F G&T or sparkling wine gets me through the evening just fine. Having experimented with quite a few I've nw found some great ones (more on that in another post) but that end of evening nightcap is harder to replace. For the first week I just got more and more tired as my sleep was rubbish and it was taking me until well gone midnight to get to bed. Given my 2 year old has me up by 6:30am without fail every morning, I was beginning to wonder if this was sustainable. However the past few nights I've started to feel naturally sleepy at the end of the eveni...

Well I did it - I managed to get through my first Friday night! Wow the wine & whisky witch were in full swing last night. Finished work to an evening of glorious sunshine and I sooooo wanted to sit and watch the boys play in the garden whilst enjoying a cold glass of vino. I toyed with an A/F wine or G&T but it just wasn't going to cut it so I did some gardening instead. Now I see why people get more productive when they cut out the booze! Found myself getting really grumpy with the boys (who were playing up but not proportionately) and I just knew it was the alcohol cravings kicking in. Fortunately we ate early with the boys so at least I wasn't hangry too! I managed reasonably well throughout the evening until almost bedtime. I still feel hard-wired to have a nightcap before bed to help me relax. So the whisky witch comes knocking. I placate her with a hot chocolate however the sugar just wakes me up and then I can't get to sleep even more. Going to have a to fin...

Why oh why! It was only day 2 and I caved in already. Whisky whisky whisky last night - lots of it. I managed to get through the evening and batter down the wine witch but then the whisky got the better of me. "Just one nightcap" I thought to myself "better to wean yourself off it slowly than go cold turkey". Dear god when will I learn!  But just for me to remember, here's what happened......I poured a large whisky before I went up to watch tv in bed and had downed 1/2 of it before I even left the kitchen (and topped it back up of course). I then binge ate 4 packets of crisps, 2 cake bars and 2 slices of white bread & butter - together with a couple more whiskies. I nearly picked a fight with the village Facebook troll (fortunately my husband talked me out of it) and I woke up this morning with the same feelings of remorse as always. Sure it did help the PMT pain I had but quite frankly so would a couple of paracetamol & a hot chocolate.  So let's tr...

I can tell you exactly when I knew I needed to quit drinking. It was whilst reading The Sober Diaries by Clare Pooley (aka Sober Mummy /  http://mummywasasecretdrinker.blogspot.com/ ). I'd been suffering with increasing anxiety and depression for years and with that my alcohol consumption had escalated. A normal night would be a least a bottle of wine (usually white, sometimes rose, rarely red) and then often one or more extra large whiskies as a nightcap. And that was just an average night. There was so much that I was unhappy with about my life but here's a few: - I'm overweight (about 5-6 stone overweight despite constant dieting attempts) - I'm suffering with anxiety & depression (and was at the time signed off work with depression) - I always feel knackered with not much energy for exercise - My hair is frizzy - My skin keeps getting breakouts (especially at the wrong time of the month) and I look much older than other 40 year olds - I regularly lose my temper ...