You got the graph up for the New Year! Hooray! You chart looks like my 401k from 2009. Looks like you are progressing well.

St Vincent, funny and not funny at the same time.

St Jude, that' s a nice graph. Looks like all those forced AF days may have helped. Your consumption did not jump up to pre-surgery levels. Really good progress.

A definite theme of TSM is "expect the unexpected". Monday night was my first evening back in my apartment since early December (I stayed at my boyfriend's after my surgery and then we were in Calif). Slipped right back into old habits and over the course of the evening (from 7 pm-4am) managed to polish off 3 bottles of wine. When I started drinking I remember thinking I wasn't really going to drink that much because it didn't taste super great, but once I parked myself in front of my computer and started watching a 30 Rock marathon on hulu I just stayed up and kept on drinking. I was a mess all day Tuesday, tired nauseous hungover headache and the day was lost for me. I was also feeling bummed because I feel like I slipped right back into the old drinking habits simply because of being in my "old" environment. I'm going out of town again tomorrow to see family so I'm hoping more AF days will keep my units down for the week.
This is the lesson I carry away from Monday night: I need to do something the address the fact that being alone in my apartment in the evenings is a major drinking trigger, it's where 90% of my drinking has occurred. I knew that before, but noting the positive effects on my drinking that recent changes in environment and schedule have had means I need to be more proactive about addressing major triggers . The logical thing to do would be to go to my gym in the evenings so I'm not sitting around my place for hours with nothing to do, and that will also address my body image issues (which make me feel depressed and turn to alcohol). Still feel like I'm seeing progress, but it's more the "2 steps forward, one step back" type.

Ugh, so sorry to hear about Monday night StJude. I know that feeling all too well. It is depressing when you feel you are doing well, only to fall back into that hole. And the hangover sucks too!

On the plus side, I have found that every single time I had a night like that on TSM, that led to much lower units in the next few weeks. Almost like you have to beat the crap out of yourself every now and then, just to remind yourself how much it hurts.

And I agree with you, getting to the gym or anywhere besides a location that is a trigger would be helpful. Did you get the "This Year I Will ... " book yet? If so, what did you think? I have found it really helpful so far. I am sticking to an exercise program as much as I can, tracking my results, and instead of beating myself up about times I fail, I am analyzing why and making adjustments. Much better than just giving up!

Take good care of yourself, my friend. The overall numbers are still moving in the right direction!

Hugs -YG

Hi St Jude,

Sorry to hear your having a rough week but well done for having perspective on what's happened and not letting it knock your determination off track. I feel for you as I reckon it must be a lot harder when most of your drinking was done at home (about 70% of mine was social or.... alone in bars- classy eh?). Home is an environment that can't be avoided unlike a bar. You really got me thinking. I actually moved house early into the method and it coincided with a drop in my units. Thinking back there's lots of things I haven't done in the new house such as drinking before my hubby gets in from work and hiding the bottles. I hadn't made the connection between my progress and the complete change of environment but I'm thinking there is probably a link. Its sounds like you are on the right track in thinking of other things to avoid too much time home alone in the evenings. I initially tried the gym but as I hate it I found I was actually using going home to drink to avoid the gym . Still searching for the magic hobby to fill this time I now have on my hands- my house is gradually filling up with hobby related junk and all manner of 'teach yourself' books. Hopefully we'll both manage to find some healthy hobbies in the new year.

Keep your chin up, you are doing great despite difficult circumstances recently. All the best for the New Year.

You guys are great-thanks for the encouragement. YG, I have the book (thnx for the rec) and am bringing it to Florida with me tomorrow. I just finished reading the Law of Attraction and am creating positivity in my life by embracing a much more positive outlook. I wasn't able to manifest the winning MegaMillions ticket I was visualizing yesterday, but there's always the next jackpot You put it so well--the beating up is a definite reminder of how not fun it is afterwards. I'm still feeling logey and as I was dumping an open bottle of red down the sink this morning the smell turned my stomach.
Your post got me thinking Susie , I can't move to a new apartment, but I'm going to try rearranging some furniture so I'm not always sitting in the same chair looking out the same window, which is what I typically do. I didn't get much out of AA, but "people places things" sticks with me.
We've got a lot of good things happening here and I hope lurkers are inspired to come forward and join our community. Even with the challenges and struggles, it is by far the most hopeful forum for dealing with alcohol addiction than any other site/place I've been to.

St. Jude looks like you had a classic extinction burst and it sounds like you have already started to dust yourself off and get back on the horse. As YG mentioned don't be surprised to see a drop in units after a spike. It's happened to me multiple times now. It lends interest to otherwise boring looking graphs with perfect downslopes.

Forget People Places Things. I've been all over the place. After my surgery, then 2 wks in California, I was home for a week which was relatively uneventful and then headed down to Florida for a week to visit family. In prior visits (as with any place I've been in the past 5 years) this trip has always had a typical strong association with daily all day heavy alcohol consumption. I did drink on this trip, and once or twice to excess, but far less than I had in the past. I' not going to dwell on the one day in particular where I was hung over because I'm sitting here now telling myself it was one day instead of seven.
I have an interesting challenge coming up next week/in the coming months. I'll be starting a physician's guided diet plan where alcohol is absolutely prohibited. I'm spending a lot of money on it and I really feel like I can do it, but it's a scary thought to be going AF cold turkey again for a while for reasons other than desired abstinence (did 20 AF days in Nov/Dec while for my surgery). The even scarier shocker to me is that I know that I can do it. I flash back to October 2nd, 2010 when I had absolutely zero control over my daily binge drinking and had pretty much accepted that I was drinking myself into a very early grave. Started TSM Oct 3rd and it flipped my life on end, in all the right ways.
Challenge for this and next week is to not fall into squirrel mentality of drinking as much as possible to store up for the upcoming weeks I can't. That's a sure recipe for disaster.
For now just taking it day by day, with a spring in my step and a song in my heart...

Hi St Jude

You have made great progress in a short amount of time. That's inspirational. I expect most of us have thought at times that we would drink ourselves into an early grave.
All the best with your diet & try not to be too hard on yourself. We alcoholics are often our own worst enemies, beating ourselves up for our failures.

Cheers
Sticky

So, I've definitely been engaging in squirrel-like behavior the past couple of weeks, trying to "store up" alcohol for the weeks ahead.

Today I started the hcg diet (see Dr. Simeon, Pounds and Inches manuscript). In many ways to me it is similar to TSM. It's a treatment for obesity that has been around for a long time but not a lot of people know about it. There is a ton of misinformation about it (especially on the internet, scam city ), and it's largely dismissed by the mainstream medical community. Seriously, do they have something against treatments that actually work? I'm not going to turn this into an advertisement for the diet, but since this goes hand in hand with my alcoholism and TSM I'll be posting about my experiences. I have 2 days of loading (eating & drinking anything I want) and then on Monday I start a low calorie protein/veggie plan . The diet itself is simple but very specific, but there is absolutely no alcohol on it for 40 day cycles. You know how those of us who have struggled with alcohol get sick of others telling us how to "cure" our disease? Well, those of us who have struggled with weight for years feel the same way . Yes, just eat right & exercise & you'll lose weight. Well, that doesn't work for everyone. Before I tried everything out there to deal with drinking too much, I'd tried everything out there for being overweight and was disappointed each time. Cardio, weights, and every combination of a healthy diet did nothing for me. Over the years there were periods where I'd cut out AL for weeks/months at a time in conjunction with a healthy diet & exercise regimen and wouldn't lose an ounce. Very depressing . I found out about it over the holidays from my sister, who is a board certified doctor and was on the diet herself.
This is going to be interesting so I'll keep posting my progress. I'm not trying to promote any version of the hcg diet so pm me if you're interested in more details & I'll tell you what I'm doing.