Making the decision to cut the wine
I’ve had the hardest conversation tonight in my 27 years. I opened up to my husband and broke down. After drinking two bottles of wine last night, I woke up feeling tired, sick, dizzy and anxious. The anxiety that I have been able to control for a couple of years now is slowly creeping into my life again which is incredibly scary. I’ve noticed that during lockdown, my alcohol consumption has decreased dramatically as I haven’t been out seeing friends on the regular! The start of lockdown, 3+ quizzes/hen dos every weekend, the drinking carried on but then after a couple of weekends it slowed down. I got comfortable with having relaxing nights, not reliant on wine. I’m loving the feeling of waking up early, with a fresh mind and energy to start the day! As the lockdown has started to lift, the nights seeing friends has increased (which is amazing and I love them all) but so has the drinking - which isn’t so great. I’ve been fighting with myself for so long now telling myself I’m not going to drink again only for the next weekend to see my friends, hear some great music and open a bottle or 2... or 3 of Oyster Bay again. Don’t get me wrong at the time, I love it. This is until it gets to the point of feeling sick, making stupid comments or picking arguments with my husband over the smallest thing. It doesn’t happen everytime but when it does, I hate myself for it because I know that if I wasn’t drunk, those situations wouldn’t have happened. I wake up and the next few days are horrendous. Heart racing, over thinking about what I said/did that night to embarrass myself or others, apologising and feeling guilty for arguing with Matt, eating a weeks worth of crap, fatigued and most importantly anxious. Ive feared saying this out loud and its so hard to do. I don’t want to be "the boring one". Everyone who knows me, knows I’m the big drinker in the group, I’d never turn down a glass of wine or a shot. And if that’s all gone, anything that’ll keep me going. I don’t want to say it out loud because then I have to commit to it don’t I? What if I can’t do it? What if I can’t say no to drinking? Now, I know that when I’m asking these questions to myself that there is a problem here. I’m not saying that I’m going T total and I’m not saying that I’m always going to make the right decisions. What I am saying is that I’m going to TRY. I’m going to try and help myself. I’m going to have a couple of drinks here and there still but I don’t want to rely on having two bottles of wine to myself whilst popping over to say hi to my friends for an hour or two. I don’t want to automatically buy two/three bottles of wine before going to a friend’s house because of the fear that one won’t be enough. I don’t want to have the side effects of the worst hangover for the following few days. I don’t want to argue about stupid things that the alcohol have manifested in my head. I don’t want to apologise for what I said the night before. As a 27 year old, lover of wine, this is incredibly difficult to open up and tell myself let alone anyone else but it needs to be done. Now you know, I’m hoping I can get the support and not feel like I need to drink in excess to enjoy my nights out/in. Like I said, I’ll still have a couple of glasses but it’s the excess, the bottles after those couple of glasses that I want to say no to (for now at least anyway) and see how that feels. I feel like I needed to say it out loud, I don’t know why? Maybe it’ll help me now everyone knows. I’m going to take it easy and try my hardest to help me!
Amber
X
