Hi Sticky - So glad to hear your birthday party was a huge success. Nice birthday present for you to stay in control while drinking at a party! Thanks for your post.

Wow Nicky! What a birthday to remember eh? For all the right reasons and for such a big occassion birthday. Well done. I'm proud of you and I bet you're proud of yourself. Once again Happy Birthday, hope you have another rippa week, warrenjames

Hi fellow TSMers

Sorry about being slack in posting. The end of of my last week (ending Thurs) was another downer. Had a bottle of wine Wed nite. Hubby gave me a hard time about my going on a school trip on Thurs although I'd arranged it a few weeks ago. We had a long weekend away planned & he wanted help in the office. Anyway I reacted badly and kept drinking .... all day Thurs when our son whose trip I was going on said he felt sick. Stayed in bed and drank all day and didn't look after my son apart from give him breakfast. Hubby was mostly at home working too. He was extremely pissed off with me. I got myself together just on Friday morning as we were heading off to WOMAD, a big music festival in New Plymouth, 4 hours drive south. Was somewhat disorganised with my packing of food for camping given my sorry state.

At least the weekend wasn't a total disaster, altho' on the Sat nite I went off on my own after my girlfriend had taken the kids back to her motel and I had another argument with hubby. Didn't drink the Fri nite but did on Sat and he was worrried I wouldn't stop again. Fortunately I did.

Things are OK again now & we did enjoy a lot of the weekend, but it could have been better....

Oh well, I'll hang on in there. It's still only 15 weeks. Will try & spend more time on this site this week. Things have been so crazily busy I don't know where this year has gone so far!!

I hope everyone is doing well.

Cheers
Sticky

My progress so far: (NZ units)

Week 1: 1,8,AF,3,AF,AF,3.5 total 15.5,3AF
Week 2: AF,8,8,AF,AF,4,8 total 28, 3AF
Week 3: 4,8,AF,8,AF,5,AF total 25, 3AF
Week 4: 16,AF,8,7,AF,10,AF total 41, 3AF
Week 5: 7,12,8,AF,8,AF,8 total 43, 3AF
Week 6: AF,5,12,AF,AF,8,AF total 25, 4AF
Week 7: AF,14,AF,6,AF,5,AF total 25, 4AF
Week 8: 8, AF, 12, 12, AF, 1.5, 1.5 total 35, 2AF
Week 9: 12, AF, 10, 2,AF, 10, AF total 32, 3AF
Week 10: 9, AF, 10, AF,1.5, 6.5, AF total 27, 3AF
Week 11: 12, AF, 14, 3.5, 1, AF, 7.5 total 38, 2AF
Week 12: AF, 8 AF, 9, 2, AF, AF total 19, 4AF
Week 13: 8.5, AF, 9, AF, 12, AF, 14 total 43.5, 3AF
Week 14: 7.5, AF, 8, AF, AF, 9, 9 total 33.5, 3AF
Week 15: AF, 9, AF, 9, AF, 9, 10 total 37, 3AF

Hi Sticky - I missed your post when I was on earlier today. I'm not sure how I get anything done as much as I'm on this board, but I do. This board is so important to me and I know it is to you too, so I wanted to log in again today and tell you that I'm glad to hear from you. We are both at the end of week 16 now. Don't be too hard on yourself. Every little bit of progress should be celebrated. By the way, I drink a bottle of wine every night! I know you said you can't drink that much, which is good, but still you and I are posting about the same numbers. Just hang in there. It will get better. Anxious to see your post for week 16. Hope it was a better week for you.

Hi everyone

This has been a better week overall. On Mon & Tues I only had 5 & 4 drinks so was happy about that. Wed I had 9 and felt tired yesterday. Feel sooo much better today after an AF night. I'm still eagerly looking forward to drinking tonight though.
This sure is a roller coaster ride! Not sure how to get my graph showing here -the best I could do was insert a link to it.
Thanks for your post HG- it just popped up now. Will come back later today.

Cheers
Sticky


http://img717.imageshack.us/i/graphlg.jpg/



My progress so far: (NZ units)

Week 1: 1,8,AF,3,AF,AF,3.5 total 15.5,3AF
Week 2: AF,8,8,AF,AF,4,8 total 28, 3AF
Week 3: 4,8,AF,8,AF,5,AF total 25, 3AF
Week 4: 16,AF,8,7,AF,10,AF total 41, 3AF
Week 5: 7,12,8,AF,8,AF,8 total 43, 3AF
Week 6: AF,5,12,AF,AF,8,AF total 25, 4AF
Week 7: AF,14,AF,6,AF,5,AF total 25, 4AF
Week 8: 8, AF, 12, 12, AF, 1.5, 1.5 total 35, 2AF
Week 9: 12, AF, 10, 2,AF, 10, AF total 32, 3AF
Week 10: 9, AF, 10, AF,1.5, 6.5, AF total 27, 3AF
Week 11: 12, AF, 14, 3.5, 1, AF, 7.5 total 38, 2AF
Week 12: AF, 8 AF, 9, 2, AF, AF total 19, 4AF
Week 13: 8.5, AF, 9, AF, 12, AF, 14 total 43.5, 3AF
Week 14: 7.5, AF, 8, AF, AF, 9, 9 total 33.5, 3AF
Week 15: AF, 9, AF, 9, AF, 9, 10 total 37, 3AF
Week 16: total 34, 2AF

Hi Sticky - That graph tells it all. You have been through the roller coaster ride, haven't you! Your numbers are stabilizing which shows progress.

Nutella taught me how to post my graph. I will paste her instructions here. Pay particular attention to her section that starts with E.g.

1. Once you made the graph in whatever program or online server, hopefully it allows you to save the graph as picture file. JPG and PNG formats are probably most useful for this purpose, with PNG giving much better quality for simple graphs. If you cannot save directly, use screen capture (an option available in many graphics programs used for pictures, photos, etc).

2. Once you have the file saved, upload it to ImageShack at http://imageshack.us/. Mostly self-explanatory there. Chose "resize" to 800x600 (a little too small) or 1024x768 (a little too big). It will prompt you to register but you don't need to do it. In a left upper corner below message "Upload Successful", click on the image thumbnail. It will take you to the page with full sized image. To the right of it, click on "Embed this image" and copy "Forum" entry.

Then paste it here. Delete everything except the URL and bracketed "IMG","/IMG" statements. E.g. keep this: [img]image_URL[/img]

That's it. The image in the URL will be shown in your message.
Have a good week. HG

Hi Sticky, hope your not getting too sick on the roller coaster ride that TSM is! Don't get too despondent. You are about to enter the phase where TSM will really start to kick in (judging by most of the figures from cured TSMers). But, it may take a little effort too. It sounds like you're still allowing alcohol to be your "go to man" when you have an argument/get angry. Could you be subconsciously be allowing yourself to be drawn into arguments/get angry to give you an excuse to hammer a few drinks down? If the answer is yes you need to be conscious of it and try to address it. Hope I don't sound too condescending. I reckon your progress in the next 4-8 weeks will be good and I look forward to seeing it. Just one other thing are you still taking Nal 1 hour (at least) before drinking or are you popping it as you have your first drink? I found I was doing the latter some of the time and made a conscious decision to be more vigilant taking it at least an hour before my first drink (no matter what) and found this helped. Hope you have a good week Sticky!

Hi Sticky - I'm looking at your graph again. Try having it start at your pre TSM levels and that will show a more downward trend. However, I do know that your drinking before TSM was modified by AA so maybe you can't do that like I have in my graph. Still, your graph does show an leveling out of your drinking which is a good sign.

My progress so far: (NZ units)

Hi all

This week my units were down slightly. When I have drunk this week it has been a bottle of wine or more each time. I'd like to have some more days when I can stop after 3 or 4. I think alcohol is losing its appeal but I'm still knocking it back. Last weekend was 3 days in a row. Planned to go AF on Sun but then we got invited to a friend's place for dinner and took some bubbly. I couldn't say no!
Also Wed was my actual 50th birthday. Hubby and I went to a great restaurant for dinner and had more drinks back at home.
Last night hubby went out and I drank a bottle of wine secretly. The secret drinking I need to address - it comes from years of drinking occasionally when hubby was out and mostly being in AA.
HG - will have another go at the graph tomorrow. Putting in my TSM units wouldn't work as I stayed sober for weeks or months on end in AA. My goal isn't abstinence though - I would like to be able to drink socially.
I hope everyone is doing well.

Cheers
Sticky

Week 1: 1,8,AF,3,AF,AF,3.5 total 15.5,3AF
Week 2: AF,8,8,AF,AF,4,8 total 28, 3AF
Week 3: 4,8,AF,8,AF,5,AF total 25, 3AF
Week 4: 16,AF,8,7,AF,10,AF total 41, 3AF
Week 5: 7,12,8,AF,8,AF,8 total 43, 3AF
Week 6: AF,5,12,AF,AF,8,AF total 25, 4AF
Week 7: AF,14,AF,6,AF,5,AF total 25, 4AF
Week 8: 8, AF, 12, 12, AF, 1.5, 1.5 total 35, 2AF
Week 9: 12, AF, 10, 2,AF, 10, AF total 32, 3AF
Week 10: 9, AF, 10, AF,1.5, 6.5, AF total 27, 3AF
Week 11: 12, AF, 14, 3.5, 1, AF, 7.5 total 38, 2AF
Week 12: AF, 8 AF, 9, 2, AF, AF total 19, 4AF
Week 13: 8.5, AF, 9, AF, 12, AF, 14 total 43.5, 3AF
Week 14: 7.5, AF, 8, AF, AF, 9, 9 total 33.5, 3AF
Week 15: AF, 9, AF, 9, AF, 9, 10 total 37, 3AF
Week 16: total 34, 2AF
Week 17: total 32, 3AF

Good going Sticky - Your units are coming down. It does sound like you and I are in the same place. If the wine bottle is still full I just keep drinking when I don't have a strong desire to do so most nights. I think it is time we apply some effort. As soon as I read Nick's post to me to go to 4 glasses a night I realized that was just fine with me. So, I'm doing that this week which should reduce my units significantly. I had six glasses on Wed so that will bring my unit numbers above 28 for the week but if I stick to 4 per night for the rest of the week my units will be at 30 which would be one whole night unit drop.

I understand the secret thing. So typical of those of us who are addicted to alcohol. If I wanted more wine and didn't want my husband to know I'd sneak out of the family room into the dining room and drink straight from the bottle. My living room window faces the side of my neighbor's house and I always wondered what they thought of seeing me drinking straight from the bottle! I'm sure they observed me at least a few times. But, then they know I'm a drunk as when it is warm I will go outside and pull weeds and if they come out I have had many an occasion of stumbling around and slurring my words. So, you sound good. Are you having the same experience as me in that you drink but don't feel any strong craving all of the time to drink? Let me know if you need help with the graph. It took me weeks to figure it out. I'm no techy!