Tuesday 5 March 2019

Trying Times - Day 57


Being alcohol free, taking your meds at the right times and in the right doses, staying off all forms of self-medication is really hard work.
I have two injuries at the moment that I am carrying and two weeks ago I had to take a stronger painkiller as I was nearly not walking, I was in so much pain.  No, I am an all or nothing type of person, so after the first dose I completely failed at taking the medication as it is meant to be taking and
landed up taking higher doses.  It was an over the counter medication with codeine in it.  I felt awful the next day, not only did my head feel cloudy, but I had failed and done what I said I wasn’t going to do.
Now I hadn’t posted for awhile till this last weekend, and this is the reason why.  I wasn’t sure what to say or if I was going to blog about it at all.  But if I can’t be honest with myself then who can I be honest with.  I must stand up to my mistakes, face them, forgive them, and put them behind me and move forward.  So, I have finally made some form of peace with the mistake I made
.
I am proud that I have stayed alcohol and cigarette free.  I slipped up, but sometimes you must go backwards in order to move forward, and this was my few steps back – now to make a leap forward again. 
My anxiety is high again, today was one of those days when by lunch time you are craving wine o’clock or gin o’clock to come quicker, wishing the day away.  I must learn to stop doing that.  There are a few stresses in my life at the moment, and one of them can trigger my PTSD so that’s why my anxiety is high again.  I am trying to learn to breathe through it, it can be so hard and debilitating though.

My son isn’t well at the moment either so that just adds another layer to the anxiety.  Hopefully I won’t have to take him into the hospital.  He has asthma, and he is very wheezy at the moment.
I still can’t believe that I have managed 57 days without drinking, I never thought I would be able to stop drinking for this long, and I have to say I am loving the fact that I wake up hangover free.  I am tired though, really tired a lot of the time, and I haven’t lost any weight, in fact I think I might have put on even more weight, and it’s not like I needed to do that at all.
  
So, now that the alcohol-free thing is ticking over, I have decided to join the gym to try and get my life back on track, loose a lot of weight and take another step to being healthier.  One of the things that I do struggle with is eating, when my anxiety is high, I often can’t eat, so land up taking small snacks, but never healthy ones to tide me over, and this is normally followed by me over indulging when it passes.  This does not help my weight problem at all.  I have bulimia, who would have thought that bulimia is not only for people who are anorexic!  It’s not all the time, but when I am under duress or anxiety is high this is one of the things that I turn to. 
It’s frustrating in a way that I can’t just wake up and be better, it is a slow step by step journey that I am on, changing one thing at a time, it would be too overwhelming trying to change everything in one go.  I have also learnt to be a lot more compassionate towards my self.  I still carry a deep sense of shame because of what I have done to myself over the years, and I think it is going to take a lot more time to get over that feeling of intense shame, but I am on the journey.  I might take a few steps back every now and then, but I have to learn to forgive myself and get back up, never quit – slowly keep moving towards my goals.  Slow and steady right.  This is a new concept for me,

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