Track down your local Chinese market… not the “international” aisle at Safeway, the real deal where you feel kinda uncomfortable being there, and they have live fish swimming in buckets in the back.
You can probably find some bulk green-tea bags for use at home. Brew up a gallon or more at a time, and you should be set!
Good luck with everything! I have no useful advice, except that at our house we buy lemon-lime seltzer by the gallon (well, 8 liters a week, roughly). It’s no-calorie, has nothing artificial-tasting in it, and provides a pretty strong sensory kick, being very highly carbonated. Might be worth a try. It’s also cheaper than most soda at about $0.75 a liter where we are.
Awake another day. Sober since last Tuesday evening. It’s been almost a week! I have been feeling strange, though. My equilibrium is off, and I’ve been replacing the second and last words in sentences. I find I cannot type well, and I misspell a lot.
My wife asked me to go pick up my son’s (whom is four) blanket (yes, Linus) from daycare that she’d left there yesterday.
I walked up to the nice lady and I said “Can you tell me where Jacob’s jaby janket is?”
:smack:
My wife also returned with groceries the other night and had all the bags lined up on every available counter space. As I was leading my oldest downstairs, I made a sweeping gesture with my arm and said “Need any help putting away the dishes?”
:smack:
I’m not certain what’s wrong with me. I feel like I’m hungover half the time. Disjointed. Not All There. It took me forever to type this, and I just woke up. I’ve become the hunt-and-peck master. Day off with the kids.
I’m taking a multivitamin, folic acid and thiamine.
Can it take time for the brain to resume normal functions after being soaked in booze for over 20 years? I hope that’s it, because I even find I have difficulty driving. I go too fast, and can often start wandering within lanes, only to catch myself breathlessly at the last second. What’s wrong with me?
Normal brain function takes about 18-24 months to be restored.
However, the stuff you’re experiencing now will generally clear out (mostly) after a few weeks.
Your neurons are just not accustomed to functioning without alcohol, and it will show.
Paging Qadgop?
Maybe you should talk to your doctor, FG.
That is normal and I experienced the exact same thing myself. Long-term alcohol abuse screws the hell out of your nervous system and it takes a long time to heal. That is a big reason why so many people relapse during that period. It is a very scary feeling. I lost my ability to write anything legible for a couple of weeks. It will heal over time as your nervous system rewires itself to normalcy and functions will return one by one. Keep in mind though, that if you do relapse, you are going to have to repeat all of this again. It is a pretty terrible condition to have. The vitamins will help a lot so keep taking them. You almost certainly have some malnutrition issues.
You might check out information on Post-acute Withdrawal Syndrome. In the rehab program I went through they spent some time on it, so we would know that some of the weirdness we were feeling was to be expected.
My advice on cravings? Don’t remember what it was like to have a drink. Remember what it was like to need a drink.
If it’s any consolation, it could be worse. I had a nice case of alcoholic neuropathy going when I quit drinking, and for a while I thought the electrical shocks and tingling in my feet were going to drive me insane - especially when I was trying to sleep, which was when it was the worst. It was more than a year before this went away, but to this day I still don’t have much feeling in my feet, and I probably never will.
We reviewed PAWS too. I experienced the same thing you’re describing, and it lasted about a month or so.
Are you going to any meetings or outpatient programs?
I haven’t been eating well since the detox program, where they keep you veritably stuffed with food. Caffeine isn’t helping that, especially since I’m trying to keep myself heavily caffenaited (I’ve NEVER done that before) in a lame attempt tp overcome my perceived neurological slowness.
I have my first private counselling session on the16th. THey could have gotten me in sooner, but it was always during work hours, which I must attend, due to my recent “vacation”.
Sorry about the misstypings. I am not myself lately.
The phone just rang; it was a bill collector and I answered it “Esteban OchoCinco?”…he he .
Don’t forget to load up on the water, especially if you’re drinking a ton of coffee/pop. It may help clear out your brain a bit and bring some equilibrium to your body.
I’m glad to hear you’re back and doing well! Also glad you’re posting here - so many nice folks to give you reassurance.
I’m not a caffeine drinker myself…I do have one diet cola every morning. It takes me most of the morning to drink it. I find that if I drink any caffeine after 3 PM I’m awake all night! Maybe you just need to switch your drink after a certain time of day?
Have you considered Gatorade? Full of sugar, but so is pop. You could switch to Gatorade after a certain point of the day. It’s got Electrolytes - The Stuff Plants Crave!
If you have serious problems eating, you can buy packs of Ensure meal replacement drinks at supermarkets and pharmacies. They have most of the important stuff to keep you alive and healthy in them and they aren’t that expensive. Smoothy type drinks with fruit and yogurt and whatever else you desire are also good and easy to get down. Lots of people recommend hard candy as well.
FWIW, caffeine has never had that effect for me. All it does is make it impossible for me to fall asleep. So with caffeine, I’ll be foggy-brained **and **tired **and **jittery.
Wising you continued success! Welcome back.
I might suggest soemthing to make it seem better.
Take all the money you were going to be spending on beer and put it in another account that you can get access to in a year, like a CD or something.
Then you could be saving for kids’ college, badass bass boat, musket gun, hot tub, model rocket, Corvair, or whatever you are into.
Good luck!
Glad you made the decision dude. I’m coming up on six months on the right side of the magnetic doors, and it’s been great. As someone who floats between agnosticism and very liberal Christian theology, I’d like to add, don’t rule out AA. You don’t have to be an AA fundamendalist to go to meetings and it’s nice to hang out with some folks who at least can relate to your experience. Also would add that in the first couple of months of my sobriety I was twitchy as hell. That’s gone away. Wishing you the best - rehab is “interesting”
Just dropping by to send some sober vibes and see how your journey is going.
The 16th is a long ways away, just make sure to take care of you, life gets overwhelming QUICK in early sobriety.
Something else I was wondering, are you familiar with the different types of AA meetings? I was thinking you might be fairly comfortable with a speaker meeting, where you just sit down and listen. Or even a discussion meeting. There isn’t as much “Higher Power” preaching as you would find at a meeting where you read out of the books. Heck, I don’t agree with everything I hear in those meetings, but I keep going. AA is like a buffet: I take what I like, and leave the other stuff incase I want it later.
Remember people here are rootin’ for you. Early sobriety can be downright shitty. Just remember, you never have to go through this part again! YES!
I appreciate all the well-wishes, and I kinda feel like I’ve turned this into my own personal AA thread! Regardless, the vague unpleasantness I get from AA really hasn’t much to do with God, I’m at peace with that concept…it’s a couple of things.
One, I feel like an elitist, outsider snob at those meetings, like I don’t belong somehow. I don’t want Joe the mullet guy glad-handing me and volunteering to be my sponsor, I’ve never spent a night in a gutter like Bob, never been to prison like JoAnn and am not facing litigation like half the other people I’ve met in there.
I know how this makes me sound. I am sorry. I also know we all have alcohol addiction in common, but I need some other common footing to stand upon, some meaningful conversation! I don’t relate to most of the people in there! Now, I’, not so high and mighty that I have the fear…no, I’ve lived in a trailer park and toted a shotgun, but I need meaningful conversation! I have to have it, or all the platitudes are just lost on me!
OK, I guess that’s ONE thing that I get vague unpleasantness out of AA from…
In my experience, both personal and professional, those that don’t connect with a sober peer group don’t do that well in the long run. It needn’t be AA.
There are always exceptions to that, of course.
But whenever I lived my life hoping to be an exception to the rule, it didn’t work for me real well.