I got my antabuse script refilled for the first time the other day marking my first month on the drug.  That makes one month into my six month sobriety challenge.

My sleeping has been amazing.  I seem to need to do a lot of it, and will sleep between 11 – 13 hours a night.  When I was drinking I would go to bed around 8 and wake up around 1 in the morning.  Sometimes I would go to bed on my own, sometimes I would need to take the other half of my seroquel tablet.  I don’t get much of a hangover any more, but I was experiencing dry mouth.  That has stopped now.

My mood has been up and down.  I’ve been stressing out because of this time of year and all the things I need to do and I find I’m taking seroquel to sleep and to calm down.  I’ve also been skipping meals due to being busy and this has a major effect on my mood.  I cannot cope when I’m hungry.  I get edgy and light headed.  The other day I had a hair appointment at 11, which lasted until 3, and drove straight to Pea’s house which in holiday traffic took the best part of an hour.  On the freeway I started to feel lightheaded and was wondering why then it hit me – duh, I haven’t eaten today since having a protein bar at 8 in the morning.

To combat my low mood my doctor has increased my fluoxetine from 10mg to 20mg but I won’t start seeing the effects of that for a few weeks. This is done cautiously because some antidepressants can cause rapid mood cycling in bipolar patients.  So far it hasn’t done that to me, and has been a huge help with my anxiety but we’ll see what an increased dose will do.  The doctor says the detrimental effects of binge drinking on my mood can take up to six weeks to lift.

As for temptation, it’s hard to be sober at this time of year.  On one hand, the control has been taken away from me; it’s not really a matter of self control as there are real life threatening consequences stopping me from drinking.  If I were to stop taking the antabuse I would still have to wait a week to start drinking.

Alcohol is everywhere.  On Friday Pea and I went to his company Christmas party.  They had booked a restaurant with a bar that served a variety of cocktails that I would have been all over had I not been on Antabuse.  Instead I drank my mocktails and found I couldn’t have too many of them as they were so sugary.  As everyone at the party got drunker I found it hard to join in on the conversations and ended up retreating into the corner on my phone.

We had parties at my parent’s house on Christmas eve, Christmas day and boxing day.  There was and abundance of beer and my dad’s sangria.  And one thing the antabuse has done is made me suspicious of food.  I’m not sure to what extent that alcohol evaporates out of food when it cooks but I don’t want to take any chances.  But still I get caught out.  My sister passed out some rumballs on Christmas eve and I nearly ate one until mum stopped me.  Luckily I didn’t have to forgo trifle as my aunt doesn’t put alcohol in hers.

New year’s eve is approaching and that will be another challenge but I guess I have to pull out the mocktail recipes I amassed when I was in hospital for new years two years ago.

Mac