New Years Day Audio

I think the idea of intention is important. One thing that I have learned from being on the Belle 100-day challenge for the last —what? Two freaking years?—is that I need to pay more attention to the sober thing. When I finished the 100 days (finally) I did not feel the need to stay on challenge. It was sort of as if I thought I was cured and could just proceed with my life. Moderation was not the issue. I learned from all my stopping and starting on the challenge that I could not moderate. However, the idea that after I finally completed the 100 days I was cured took hold. It’s true that at the 100-day point I no longer had cravings. What I did not see coming was Dry Drunk Syndrome and Post-acute-withdrawal syndrome (PAWS). I had read about those things, but frankly, I thought they were a bunch of Bull Shitsky.

I first heard about Dry Drunk Syndrome when I was (briefly) in AA and it sounded like a load of crap. That was because they explained it incorrectly. To AA, Dry Drunk Syndrome means you have to get up in front of a bunch of strangers and confess your sins in order to recover. If you refuse, then you are accused of being a Dry Drunk. I was like, are you freaking kidding me? I am barely hanging on to a couple of days of sobriety and you want me to expose myself in public? and relive the most horrendous experiences of my life? and dwell on all my worst faults? No thank you. It took me years after that to find Belle’s 100-day challenge. All she asks is that you stop drinking for 100-days and that is it. This approach has helped me tremendously. Belle has encouraged me through all the 40-days >relapse; 10-days >relapse; 60-days >relapse, until I finally made it to 100. I thanked Belle, and told her I did not need to join Team 180 and sign up for 80 more days. Then I stopped reading the blog much or listening to the podcasts. Drinking was an episode in my life that I just wanted to forget about.

At around day 165, I reacted violently to a couple of sarcastic comments my husband made. Actually, I lost my freaking mind. Rage surged through me and I went into a frenzy that was similar to the blathering outbursts I have when I’m drunk. Except I wasn’t drunk so my ability to rant and rave and break dishes (my favorite dishes) was not diminished by alcohol. Afterwards, it felt like I had blacked-out in a way, just like when I would drink myself into oblivion. I started reading medical websites and found that this is an example of Dry Drunk Syndrome. In a nutshell, my neurotransmitters are F’d up and my coping skills are zilch from so many years of drinking. It will probably take 2 years for my neurotransmitters to readjust to their baseline. The readjustment time is dependent on what, how much, and for how long you drank (me = a lot for a long time).

This is my lengthy way of telling new people to just commit to the 100-days and do it with blind faith. Sign-up again and again until you succeed. It does work. If you are nearing 100-days or past 100-days, you may want to take a moment or two to explore a longer commitment to sobriety reminders and do further research. My new Day 1 is December 27th, but that doesn’t mean that I lost all the 40/30/10/60/100 days when I was successfully sober, it just means I need to plan better for the long haul.