Day 90, more new territory!

I am on Day 90 which is my longest continuous totally sober period for many many years. I started this blog in 2016 and have managed to drink a lot less since then,  with long periods of sobriety but I kept on lapsing, and in 2019 I drank nearly every single day. 

Maybe only a glass or two but still, enough to set off the nagging voice in my head again.

In the early days of trying to stop I listened to Andrew Johnson stop drinking app several times a day and still listen to it sometimes. There are lots of different ones, some are free, some a small charge.

I still do daily sober homework - I listen to the Belle podcast for the day and  I'm today doing  Day 90 of the Sober Sassy Playbook 100 Days to your Fabulous Sober Life daily emails. 

 I also re read  at least one entry per day from the one of these courses I followed earlier on : Annie Grace 30 day The Alcohol Experiment, Kate Bee The Sober School 6 week Getting Unstuck course and Club Soda Month Off Booze. 

 I have signed up to all these over the last four years and every time I lapsed and restarted, I re did them all, adding in the latest course as an extra tool to help me. 

This really helps me remember to self care and reflect on how I feel and my progress. 

When I wake up ( hangover free!) I start my day with my Headspace meditation, read my affirmations for the day (along the lines of don't drink, keep the sober momentum going, have sober treats, love myself, I am not broken, remember to leave other people to sort out their own shit unless asked to get involved and even then think several times if I want to get involved) and write in my journal - this takes me 20 mins before I get up - so while my tea is cooling enough to drink I do this. I still write in my journal how I feel, write down all the good things about sobriety, every single day, morning and evening. Sometimes I write during the day as well.

I am finishing offJackie Elliott's Fabulous Sober Life 100 day challenge at the moment so I still have a daily sober podcast and journal entry to listen to, to do and to enjoy. 

I listen to Belle's podcast of the day in the evening, so if I feel a wobble I can use it then. Also there are free one minute messages and a motivational email a day from Belle which are wonderful - . If you pay, you get extra support from Belle but there is a lot free - I actually went to a meet up with her and other sober friends in London in 2016,  which was excellent  

I also have a blog which I don't update as much as I should  But I'm now trying to blog more often. 

This may sound a lot of work but I know from previous experience that if I let the sober treats and self care and meditation and reading and thinking about why and what I am doing drop off then I start to drift into pre-lapse, then I risk lapsing. I don't want to do that, ever again. And staying sober is worth the time invested. 

I also remind myself that if I lapse I have to do Day 1 etc all over again (shudders) AND what ever it is that is making me want to drink would be so much worse if I were drunk or hungover, as well.

I have been through huge stress  in the last four years and the last year I basically drank my way through a lot of it. 

I have faced the worst three months of my adult life in the last three months and now with  the situation with COVID-19 worldwide and at home, I have still not drunk alcohol, not have I wanted to.

I honestly believe it is because of the work I have put in to staying sober, all those lapses have taught me something ! 

I've never been here before

Day 80, and I've never been here before ( to paraphrase Belle)

My previous longest time sober, apart from pregnancies and breast feeding, was 76 days back at the end of 2016, which was also when I first started blogging here.

If you've looked at the entries on here you will see I've tried a few times to put a significant chunk of sober time together, aided by various online sober coaches and their courses.

I bought so many of these resources over the last four years, trying and succeeding with each one to stay sober, for sometimes a week, two weeks, or even a month or two at a time. 76 days was my best ever achievement of consecutive sober time, back in Autumn 2016. I felt so good while I was doing that three months sober!

But each time, something happened, I drifted away from my sober support network and went back to drinking.

The reasons why I lapsed are something I've been examining closely and with the aid of my fabulous counsellor I've worked out at least some of the reasons why I did that. Same reasons and patterns of behaviour, every time!

So now I know what to watch out for. Forewarned is forarmed.