It’s been a while since I have blogged and I guess I want to update where my life is at now.  It’s not often that I stop and think “hey, how am I going?” and when I do, and am really honest with myself, the answer can surprise me.  I did this recently and after exhaustive rumination I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going great, and I’ve started putting some habits in place to rectify that.

First, the drinking.  It’s funny how drinking and sobriety episodes have become such a major episode of my life – and this blog – but here we are.  After several binge drinking episodes at the start of April co-inciding with my meltdown when Pea went on his weekend away, I realised I had to do better.  And so my energy has gone into stopping binge drinking.  Not drinking altogether, I’m picking my battles.  I went on to have a couple of binge drinking episodes over the next month but there were greater lengths of time between them.  As of now writing this I haven’t had one since late April – nearly a month ago.

With binge drinking all but conquered for the time being, I had to be honest with myself and realise that I was still drinking too much in a day, even though I wasn’t getting drunk.  I was drinking most days and I began to realise that it had taken its toll on me, most noticeably in that I have gained about ten kilos over the last couple of months.  Alcohol is a lot of empty calories, plus drinking makes me want to eat junk food.

So now my energy goes into losing weight.  I have realised that if that is going to happen, I have to stop drinking altogether which I have done as of last week.  I’m allowing myself a couple when I go out, but if I end up finding it hard to control myself then I will cut that out too.  I know I can lose the weight provided I am able to say no to drinking, I lost five kilos at the end of last year when my weight crept up once I started of seroquel.  I was on Antabuse at the time so obviously I was having no alcohol.

Staying sober without Antabuse is hard, it is really hard to say no.  Some people might say why not just go back on it?  I did say in one of my Youtube videos that I want to see if I can stay sober without a drug but truthfully I’m scared of the effects if you do drink.  I’m scared I might snap one day and have one of my binges which on Antabuse can kill you.

In my experience weight loss has more to do with what you eat than exercise but I am staying active.  I have thrown myself into roller derby fully, we are training on Wednesday night for two hours and on Friday night for three hours.  I go down to the local netball courts during the day and get on my skates when I have a day off.  I view learning the skills as a project, and I love having a project.

I have also started running.  Pea and I have registered for the city2surf again which for non Australians is a fourteen kilometre fun run from Sydney’s city centre to Bondi beach.  I know I have to train or it will be a struggle so I have been going running three days a week.

Work has picked up and I am now working a second shift a week.  Two days a week may not sound like much but increases in any activity is hard for me to get used to.  I have a lot of insecurities about work and feeling useless, worrying if I am making a useful contribution to the team but working a second day gives me a chance to develop into the role a bit.

Hopefully all these changes will make next month a better one

Mac