" I'm either sober or getting sh*tfaced, and I'm having all sorts of trouble moderating."
Yep, me too. I don't know what it's about, except I figure we're not dealing with something we need to deal with...if that makes sense? I feel like you and I are in somewhat similar situations, being on the young side of things and still having some heavy drinking friends, despite also trying to get our **** under control. I wish you the best of luck but I must admit that right now, I'm out of suggestions...

Yeah, like lighting a preemptive "back fire" in a forest fire situation...makes perfect sense to me. ADE is still a big factor for me, as I try to rack up more AF days, which seem to really PO Evil Lizard Brain. Look out, LB...we (Rational Humans) will PREVAIL! You will be...SO EXTINCT!!!

Thanks for the info about Levon Helm - looking at that will be my lunch time surfing.

EL - It's true that I think being under 30 has its pros and cons for us. On one hand, we don't have a multi-decade history of heavy drinking, so logically, our extinction process should be shorter. However, our lifestyles are making it tricky to keep focused on recovery when we're surrounded by so many enabling friends. These people aren't forcing drinks down my throat, but they are always providing opportunities to drink. I think these two factors (having a short extinction process, but an enabling social life) probably makes transitioning from a daily drinker to a binge drinker easy (which is exactly what happened to me), but it's that final transition from a binge drinker to a "normal" drinker that is going to give us trouble.


I don't know about you, but I know what my issue is. I need a change of scenery badly, and I'm starting to make this a priority now that I am finishing up school.

As always, I've been following along with your thread and I know you're in a tough spot with both saucing and work-related stress. We'll got a great support network (both physical and virtual), and we'll get through it, bud.

Chrissie - you are an endless source of support, so thank you for that! I hope you find some good tunes while you're surfing for Levon.

Hey Hess -- Loved the riff on Levon. He was a fine actor too, especially in Coal Miner's Daughter. I always think of him when I see a pack of Beeman's gum.

Don't let Dude-on-Couch take you too far over the edge...

Hey, Hess! I think you are on to something about a mid week. Pre TSM, when I didn't drink enough, when I finally began drinking I would over consume. By a lot. It's usually how I ended up with legal trouble: I would try to be "good" and when I fell off, I binged.

I hope you get over this hump in the road soon.

Tiller - somehow I had a feeling you would be the one to reference Levon's film work. Very nice.

Here's my latest dispatch from the rollercoaster, and it was objectively my worst week since I started TSM: 53.33 units and ZERO AF days. I had vowed not to creep above 50 units at any point during treatment, and had hoped to keep my streak of having at least one weekly AF day alive, but alas...it was not to be.

There was something to do every night between multiple people visiting from out of state, dude-on-the-couch back in the fold, attending the 100-year anniversary of Fenway Park, and some generally stupid decisions. A buddy from NYC was in town over the weekend, and he tends to be a particularly bad influence on me. Don't get me wrong - he's a good dude - but he's also a bit of an enabler when it comes to a certain illicit substance, which led to a Saturday night that rivaled the final scene of "Scarface" (read into that what you will). I was relieved when he moved out of the area.

I didn't get entirely sh*tfaced at any point during the week (no grey outs), and I can point to a few moments where I actually had to help out friends that were way more drunk than I was. But I'm really reaching for positives here, so I'd prefer to just move on and focus on this week.

I'm heading up to Boston to hear some live music tonight, so that should suffice as my "moderate" midweek drinking session. I'm going to pay particularly close attention to how much/little ADE is affecting me this weekend with this new approach.

Anyway, not much else from me this week. Time to regroup and get this thing moving in the right direction again.

Mon - 10
Tues - 8.83
Wed - 4.5
Thurs - 5
Fri - 13.5
Sat - 8
Sun - 3.5

Total - 53.33

Hope everyone else is hanging in there.

-H

Hi Hesster, it's so funny to me how we've had similar weeks...although not great in terms of TSM, it's true I hope you get back on the rollercoaster and avoid teh illicit substances...that's my goal anyways!
EL

Hi Hess

Well done finding some positives in your worst week yet. I hope this week is going better!

Cheers
Sticky

Hi all,

I followed up my worst week of TSM with one of my best weeks: 16.33 units and 5 days AF. The only real issue I had this week was during my midweek "moderate" night, which turned into a bit of a binge. I went up to Boston to see some live music* and once I got home, I read Ketch's cured list entry, which got me excited, so I made myself a night cap and read some old posts. One night cap turned into three, and I was in zombie mode on Thursday morning.

*At the show, some poor girl standing behind me was WASTED, and ended up puking all over the venue. The staff had to break out the saw dust and broom routine to clean up after her (much like when a child vomits on the cafeteria floor in elementary school). The first time I saw this particular band, I was 17 and got completely annihalated on Bacardi Limon...I ended up staggering through the lawn of the Tweeter Center bumping into people and almost burning them with a cigarette lit backwards. I also vomitted out a car window, tried to cheat on my girlfriend at the time, and pissed in a trash can that night. Fond memories.

I played catch for about 2 hours with my dad yesterday, and as father and son are known to do when having a catch, we just started talking and talking. He hasn't had a drink since December 16th of last year, which I didn't think much of (I thought he was trying to lose weight), but he told me the real reason yesterday. It wasn't anything too bad, but I can understand why he's decided to take a break from the sauce. At this point, he's trying to see how long he can go - almost "like a game" as he puts it.

I ended up telling him about my experience with TSM, which he was pretty surprised about, but he mentioned that he noticed that I've been drinking far less when I stay with him and my mom. "Usually you'll have at least four drinks with dinner, and then in the morning we'll notice another four empty beer cans laid out by the sink...I haven't seen that since we moved into the new house." I was hoping I had been making a bit more of an impression than that, but obviously I still have work to do. I also felt like I did a poor job of explaining exactly how Naltrexone works, so this may require a follow-up convo. Regardless, it was nice to share that with a family member other than my sister after almost 8 months of working on my boozing.

Mon - AF
Tues - AF
Wed - 9.33
Thurs - AF
Fri - AF
Sat - 7.00
Sun - AF

Total - 16.33/5 AF

I'd like to wish Heavy Fuel and NipIt a hearty congratulations on reaching "cured" status this week. This is a particularly big development, as HF and NipIt started at about the same time as me, and in many ways I consider them a part of my active "class" of TSM'ers (along with Tiller and Chrissie). It's great to see you two make it through! Lots of good stuff happening in the community.

That's it from me this week. Thanks for reading.

-H

Great stuff Hess! Sometimes right after a bad patch we have a breakthrough....