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A Very Sober Christmas

Mac the Disordered Uncategorized , , , , ,

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

The Rehab Diaries Redux – Week 2

Mac the Disordered rehab diaries , , , , , , ,

We’ve reached the end of week two. The original plan was for me to go home after two weeks but considering I’m still fantasising about nailing myself with vodka as soon as I go home I decided to stay on for another week at least.

I have still been feeling low and unmotivated. I am supposed to be looking for work but I haven’t been motivated to do that.  I have a recruitment company looking for work for me and they got me a job interview that I had to go on leave for.  Obviously if I got the job I would have to discharge myself, but I didn’t.  They couldn’t give me any feedback except to say that I interviewed well but they needed to cull some applicants.  The whole thing sapped my mood even more.

The AWS assessments seem to have stopped. I was told at the beginning that I would be breathalysed after going on leave but that hasn’t happened yet.  I haven’t got any of the withdrawal symptoms mentioned in the assessment but I’m told feeling low can be one.

My regular doctor went away and I have been seeing the same one I saw when she went away during my last admission. Previously I’ve been frustrated with him because he has a conservative approach to treatment and is hesitant to make any changes but this time he put my antidepressant up when I told him I’d been feeling low and prescribe 2mg of diazepam to combat any agitation that might cause.

He also pointed out that this is a regular private mental health facility; there is no alcohol specific programs. We discussed whether my aim is to cut down or stop completely and I said I wanted to cut down if I could; I wasn’t ready to cut it out.  He said that most alcohol programs are abstinence focussed, and I need to look at controlled drinking programs.

I continue to fight with myself to eat properly. The food is heavy and often unappetising and so far I have gained 2kg in here despite sometimes only eating a bread roll for dinner.  The 5pm dinner time is still throwing me off.  I’m lucky that my boyfriend is here most nights to take me out for dinner.  Come to think of it, that could be responsible for the weight gain.

Sleeping has been surprisingly easy; I usually take two hours to fall asleep after taking my night meds but here I have been falling asleep after only one, despite having a room across from the dining room where most of the patients hang out at night and make the most noise. Only problem is, I have been waking up early.  Like, really early.  I wait until 6 to eat then take my meds with food, as advised, and fall asleep at 7.  When I do this at home I will wake up at 5 or 6am but here I have been waking up at 3am.  All I can do is get out my headphones and watch the tv shows my bf downloaded onto the computer for me.

I have been making myself go to group therapy to fill in time because left to my own devices I would just watch my shows all day.  Trouble is I have heard most of them before and end up sitting there bored out of my mind and getting annoyed with the other patients oversharing or interrupting with their ‘hilarious’ comments.

There was an addiction specific group and I thought I’d go along to that, but I left feeling more annoyed than ever. The other group members were very judgemental – one guy was a former smoker and said that all smokers are losers.  That’s right.  He came to an addiction group and called people with addictions losers.  Are.  You.  Fucking.  Kidding.  Me.  I wish I had said something but I was to appalled at the time.

Another girl who was there because she was worried she had an addictive personality but no actual addictions (I wanted to shake her and tell her to get a grip) said that she didn’t want to associate with her friends because they drink and do drugs and she thinks they will ruin her reputation. Well how am I, a problem drinker, supposed to feel comfortable sharing after that?

I went over the session with my inpatient therapist who happened to be the same therapist running the group. She helped me realised that the underlying emotion to that annoyance was shame, and the comments from the other patients triggered that and made me shut down.

I’m still not sure about my connection with this therapist who I have never seen before this admission but apparently she is good for tackling addictive behaviours. I have had three sessions with her so far and I feel that I am opening up more but I still don’t have the same chemistry with her that I have had with others.

I will be seeing my regular doctor again next week and if all goes to plan I will be writing week three’s edition from home.

 

Mac