Day 4 - Where are the cravings?

Hello friends, especially the many awesome folks in the LDB group who have started this Alcohol Free mission with me this week! The group admin lady posted a list earlier of all the people starting the 100 day challenge and it's inspiring to see how many of us are partaking in this journey together! So here's a cheers to all of us that we stick to the plan and reach that 100 days together through supporting each other, inspiring each other and holding each other up when times get tough so we remain on that sober bus to a better, happier, healthier life with more cash in our wallets.

This was added after the rest of this entry was posted:

I did a little spontaneous experiment this evening. I popped in to my local supermarket to get some stuff to cook for dinner after my hill training run. It was hot, I was thirsty and wanted something alcohol and sugar free that was not water or milk or diet soda to drink on the way out the store. You know what I found? NOTHING!!!! Everything to drink was one of the above, the vast majority being drinks containing added sugar! Fruit juice is laden with sugar too. I was actually angry, ended up with a cold Energade. This is the dilemma we face going alcohol free and opting for healthier choices. So it seems I have to stick to water for quick cold drinks on the go. Or take my own home made drinks when I go out!

So my journey into day 4 so far has been a bizarre one. The first time I did this AF thing for 54 days, I remember the first few days and weeks being ridiculously difficult with cravings for alcohol, it was driving me crazy at times. This time I'm not experiencing that. I do notice feeling this stranger hunger of sorts in my gut for much of the day, and it's not manifesting into that mentally brainwashed desire and crave for booze, it feels more like a hunger for food, which I feed every now and then and it doesn't quite go away, but it's not strong, it's just there and mildly noticeable. I'm not craving alcohol, at no point do I feel like going to the liquor store or the pub!

Having given this some thought I'm realising the probable reason is that I'm on holiday and relaxed. The usual stresses and triggers of daily life in a normal working week are not there at the moment. Examples being my job which I hate, it's boring and mind-numbingly repetitive and quite uninteresting, and frustrating because it's a dead end in the company with no scope to go anywhere ever, as long as I'm there I'll be doing the same thing forever, frustrated further by my dickyleak asshole obnoxious bully of a boss who treats people like shit and pushes my blood to boiling point regularly which constantly stresses my anger to the point of "needing" a strong drink. The traffic to work and (especially) back is equally as stressful, the sheer volume of dimwitted idiots driving vehicles on our roads gets my hackles raised every day, which on the way home gets the foul mood fired up which gets me aching to get home fast and my head into a bottle of whiskey! Of course my wife's bad moods in the evenings and the yelling and loud squabbling between the 3 females in my house seals the deal to get drunk after a shit day at work!

These are the main triggers which normally get me drinking, none of which are a factor right now, I only return to work next Thursday. For the moment is peace and relaxation, recharging the soul.

I did have one mild trigger today, my shitty old laptop keeps crashing. Since a Windows 10 update earlier in the week it keeps bombing out randomly and Windows won't allow me to revert back to a previous restore point, nothing works despite wasting much of this day trying to fix it. At one point I lost my cool and punched the damn thing hard, fleetingly feeling the need for a drink, but that was over fast enough. I am in control of the desire to drink at the moment!

You can imagine my last AF period, quitting the booze yet all the triggers remained in full force from day 1, compounded by an even more irritable attitude because I couldn't escape to my old solace of the dark fog of being drunk, it was a difficult time despite all effort and intention to be positive. I'm generally quite short tempered, it was easy to get into the mood to drink!

This time I reckon the timing is perfect for starting this thing - after the drunken chaos of Christmas and New Years, with enough of a head start to get into the sober vibe before the hell of my regular daily routine gets back into full swing again, it should be enough time to get comfortable not drinking before then without.

Maybe, just maybe, if I'm not drinking, and relaxed about not drinking, the desire to smash some people's faces in won't be fueled by an overpowering desire to self-destruct with alcohol, which will make dealing with said people's bullshit a lot easier!

Saying all this now, I'm realising that this is the year I need to find another job. I'm dreading going back to the misery of my job, dreading it, but work is scarce, particularly as a white male in a racist, politically and economically corrupt country dominated by affirmative action, BEE, etc. My boss knows this, and plays this card regularly. It will be near impossible to find a decent job which is why I continue to hang onto my crap employment and the psychological bullying of my boss who is a big driver of my alcohol problem.

Anyway, I don't mean to be negative. I WILL REMAIN POSITIVE THROUGH THIS EXPERIENCE!!! (LOL)

Finding new employment is just one of my goals for 2018. Other big goals are to register for and embark on studying for a degree through Unisa, a distance learning university, and I have some huge goals in my running, as mentioned before.

Back to the drinking, up to now I don't feel any desire to drink alcohol. There's been one minor test so far, after a run with my club mates on Tuesday evening, another sweltering hot summers evening running on the beachfront, my buddy pulled out a box of cold beer. It was tempting, but I found it oddly easy to say no without regretting doing so and enjoyed the ice cold water I had in my car instead.

Yesterday I took the family to the beach, opposite one of my favourite old drinking holes, the Blue Peter, we usually end up there after a trip to the beach. Yesterday all I could think of was how ridiculously expensive the place has become and that thought was a complete turn off from any desire to go there. I did not miss the place as we walked past to get back to the car, knowing the likelihood of some of my good friends being there was strong.

Tomorrow will be a big temptation. Wife and I have tickets to go and watch the first day of a 5 day cricket test match between South Africa and India at Newlands Cricket Stadium. It's a long day in the sun, the tradition is guys go spend a day drinking copious amounts of cold beer enjoying a festive vibe watching cricket and partying from 9am to 6pm. I've done it before, it's great fun but a solid pissup. I will find alternatives to the booze, of course, but again it's the dilemma of what to drink instead! I'll figure it out, we may only go for half the day and leave when it gets too rowdy.

Right now I'm going for a run, hill repeat training with my training group, then I come home and format my laptop with a full re-install of Windows, I'm going back to Windows 7 because W10 fucks up my equipment!

Have a nice evening!

1 down, 99 to go...

Morning!

2nd January and my second day sober!

I actually had a corny idea this morning to go with the 100 days Alcohol Free challenge, to line up 100 empty booze bottle on the wall, and every day sober to shoot a bottle off the wall with my catty (slingshot). I use little iron ball bearings with which I'm very accurate, Goliath wouldn't stand a chance if I were David. There's a neighbourhood cat that sneaks into mt property and terrorizes my budgies, I zapped it on it's arse with an iron ball at high speed that made it jump strait up over a meter with a surprised yeooowl and bolted off out the yard with no doubt a painful butt-welt to remember the experience. That was 2 weeks ago, the bastard hasn't been back since!

But I won't do that bottles on the wall thing, I'm guessing the wife won't appreciate shattered glass all over the back yard!

So here's a brief story about my journey into the new year from being a raging drunk to my first day of my 100 days plus of life without alcohol... As mentioned in my previous diary, the day that first post was written I did not drink because I got the family up at 4am the next day to head into the city for a sunrise rave type dance on an open field. It was an awesome experience, only an hour long from 6am to 7am, where all participants are given a set of headphones and dance to the direction and music of the DJ. Fantastic workout to dance hard early in the morning, I met a lot of interesting people, though some sections of the morning were quite awkward, it was kind of a small hippie love fest, lots of touching and group hugs encouraged at certain times of the event. In all it was an unusual experience, we will certainly do it again. No alcohol involved (though clearly some folks were tripping on goodness knows what). Have a look here at the photo's I took.

Thereafter we drove through to Somerset West to join my mom and brother and co for lunch at an incredibly fancy upmarket restaurant on a wine estate called Idiom. My mom's boyfriend is rather wealthy, thus the choice of venue. The food was fantastic, beautiful venue on a hot summers day in the Cape, and the wine was flowing. However I did not drink any alcohol! I had a non-alcoholic beer and lots of soda water, the reason being I had a long drive to our next venue after lunch, was not prepared to risk it with the holiday season roadblocks all over, the local traffic cops are on a mission to make final year end quota's.

The highlight of the lunch, however, was the rather dramatic arrival of supermodel Naomi Campbell with her entourage rocking up in a helicopter! After she had eaten her lunch my sister-in-law took my daughter to meet her and get a photo. My kid of course didn't know who this person is but she has been raving ever since about meeting somebody so famous!

My princess Tammy with supermodel Naomi Campbell.

After lunch I loaded up the family and we headed off up the West Coast to meet up with some friends for our New Years celebration. We met them at a beach bar in Saldanha, I had two wonderfully refreshing cold beers after a long day, much enjoyed, I must be honest. Thereafter we headed to my friends house in the next town of Vredenburg where we would be staying. As we settled in for the evening I had a few stiff whiskeys while we were talking and dealing with some family drama my best mate was going through at the time. It was by no means a pissup, just a few social drinks, deliberately holding back because two of us were running the next morning.

New Years eve:
The morning of New Years Eve my running friend Carmen from that side of the world and I went to join a group of her running crew for a 15km run from Vredenburg to Paternoster on a tough hilly route in wet & misty weather. Perfect running conditions, the run was awesome, the company made the run feel much shorter. We ended off with coffee and breakfast pizza's in the quint fishing village of Paternoster. Last run of the year was well worth getting up for!

NYE morning run group, I'm in the orange top at the back right.

The rest of the day wasn't too eventful. My mate and I made a braai (BBQ) for lunch over a few beers. I had a nap in the afternoon to recharge and let the alcohol from the beers wear off, I was the designated driver to get to the venue two towns away in Langebaan.

At around 6pm we started at another beach bar on the Atlantic for the opening round of my last night of drinking, then headed off to a house party near by where all hell broke loose in terms of drinking! First time I met those people, who were awesome, some great new friends made. Jagger bombs, tequila, other shooters, whiskey, beer, brandy, etc was flowing copiously. Just before new years we headed back into town to a massive nightclub at Club Mykonos for a fun and festive send off into the new year with a lot of drunk and jolly folks.

Happy New Year! My wife Liezel on the left, running friend Carmen on the right.

When the bar closed at 1am, frustratingly, we left the club and walked up to another house in the Mykonos complex... more beer, tequila and a few spliffs going around, before we headed back up to the house where we started the night to finish our booze before we headed back to Vredenburg to bed at 4am after my final alcoholic drink and the reset time of my Sober Time phone app.

And no, I did not drive back. That was never the plan, the plan was that Carmen's dad and uncle who live in Langebaan would drive us back. Instead my mate decided he would do the driving, and the rest of the group thought he should drive. He had as much to drink as I did but he "seemed" less pissed. I was too drunk to contest the decision coherently so my seemingly less drunk friend drove the 30km or so through rural back roads to the town we were staying. I do recall saying quite clearly that if there was a police road block and we got stopped I would not be taking responsibility for the decision of my friend driving. My wife knows how furious I was about this yesterday morning, my friends do not.

This is just one of the many reasons I am choosing to go full alcohol free! That situation of the least drunk of the drunks being "voted" to drive MY vehicle full of people, including my sleeping daughter (she stayed at the house with other kids and a babysitter when we went out in Langebaan) will not happen again! I will rather be the designated driver and remain responsibly sober to do so, and honestly that idea is quite exciting, to get into a vehicle after a night out with friends and drive home sober and clear minded without fear of traffic road blocks and subsequent jail time, I'm quite happy to play taxi in that scenario.

I realise it's only the second day on this AF adventure, but already I feel like I'm in a different head space about this compared to the last serious attempt which was really difficult and dramatic with all the cravings and desire to drink. Now I don't want to drink, I don't want to be drunk anymore or behave like an idiot, waste money, damage my health, endanger my family and others; I need to get my life and my health and my confidence back and learn to enjoy life clear headed and sober and alive!

I think it's going to be the same as when I quit smoking. The first time I wasn't ready, I craved cigarettes and missed the taste and smell of the smoke, envied my friends smoking until I would sneak a puff here and there and steal cigarettes to smoke on the sly behind the house, etc, before long I was openly a full blown smoker again. The second time I quit (2 years ago) I was ready, I wanted to quit that shit, I had had enough and the day I killed that last cigarette my mind was in the right place. I have never smoked again, I didn't crave smokes or envied my smoker friends. Now the smell of cigarettes is actually revolting, I have no desire to inhale that deadly dirt into my lungs, even when I'm drunk. I'm hoping the same attitude towards drinking alcohol develops with my current mission and that I will simply not have the uncontrollable desire to drink without reason as before, that the cravings will be manageable and I will not miss drinking alcohol in social situations where others are drinking and feel uncomfortable not participating in the boozing, hopefully my friends accept the "new me" too without feeling awkward around me or giving me a hard time for not drinking.

My new challenge now is to find alternatives to alcoholic or sugary drinks at pubs, bars, restaurants and social events. Soda water gets boring after a while and I'm not going to order milk, tea, hot chocolate, milkshakes or other children's drinks at adult socials, unless it's for my 10 year old. But this problem is trivial compared to the bigger picture.

For now, I have a restless daughter and god-daughter running around, I'm going to take them to the beach to expend some of their overflowing energy!