Day 58, matched my PB

This is as long as I managed early last year before I fell over on day 59. Tomorrow will be the longest I’ve been without alcohol in my adult life. It’s a personal best! It may not get me an olympic medal but I feel like I’m stepping up onto my own winner’s podium 😀

I’m starting to think a bit less about the whole not drinking thing. Moments of cravings still pop up out of the blue but when that’s not happening my mind is less preoccupied, unlike a short few weeks ago. A quoted line from a book that was reviewed in this blog post by Good Choices really resonated with me yesterday. ‘Drinking alcohol with your mind isn’t freedom’. It was reading this that prompted me to realise that my obsessive thinking is easing off somewhat. It’s not gone entirely, but it’s not at the forefront of my mind. It’s a relief.

I’ve just been for another round of blood tests this morning. I did go to my doctor’s about the dizziness and I was overdue on my annual thyroid check anyway. I had an absolute superstar phlebotomist who managed to get blood out on the first attempt – multiple attempts in each arm is not unheard of with me. As it was a fasting blood test and I have a different sleep pattern than most people it worked out that I hadn’t eaten or had any coffee for 15 hours. I was ravenous and had a mahoosive coffee withdrawal headache on the way to the hospital so I took a jammy scone and a flask of coffee in the car with me for afterwards.

The hospital is fairly close to a nice canal area so after troughing my scone in the car I took the coffee to the waterside. It was a nice change. I love water. I’d love to live by a big lake or the sea but that’s not realistic for now. The sun was surprisingly hot given it was still early morning and I got to chuckle at the hundreds of hopeful duck, swan and pigeon eyes trained on my carrier bag that they were sure must contain some bread. It’s a classic feed the ducks spot so it’s understandable.

I’ve been wanting to expand my cooking repertoire into fermented foods for some time now. This is the next thing that I’m going to experiment with in the spare time that is opened up by sobriety. Today I’m going to have a first attempt at making sauerkraut. It’s a strange concept really. Take some cabbage and salt, mush it all together, pack it in a jar and let it rot. I always wonder about the people that invented this sort of thing back in the day. I can do it with a degree of confidence because it’s an old tradition that’s been passed along the generations and the science of it is understood. Imagine being the first person to try it though without any of those reassurances.

That’s just reminded me of an interesting concept I heard during a recent podcast – I forgot which one though Somebody was positing the theory that the genetic tendency to hedonic addiction which is a disadvantage in modern society was actually an advantage in our early ancestors. The modern day alcoholics and addicts would back then be the pioneers within a group of humans. We’d be the ones to walk further, hunt longer and fight harder for something that would bring pleasure or enhancement to their lives. It’s an interesting theory but I don’t know how much truth it holds. I like the idea of being a pioneer though. Moving into a life of sobriety certainly feels like being on a frontier at times 😀

Well, my fellow pioneering sober peeps, I’m going to shut up now and go do violent things to a cabbage. Have a lovely sober weekend all and extra hugs and strength to anybody struggling x