Letting Go

 When I first stopped drinking last February, I was hesitant to get rid of my alcohol. My bar remained intact, and I kept a cask of wine in the fridge - so it would already be cold, just in case.

 
8 months sober. I was getting ready to move house. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my alcohol. I looked at it every day, trying to figure out whether I would keep it or not. It was one of the last things I packed; kept, but labeled to go straight to the garage. 

My first time moving house without cans of pre-mixed vodka, instead taking Thermoses filled with black coffee or cold brew iced lattes as I set up the basics and took measurements to figure out where furniture would go in the new house. 

At the new house, my bar becomes my coffee station. I kept a single bottle of Rosé on hand, stashed at the back of the fridge, behind my assortment of sugar free soft drinks. Just in case. 

14 months sober. I deep clean the fridge. When I put my soft drinks back in, I look at the bottle of wine. I think maybe it’s time. I leave it out, sitting on the table, unsure of where to put it. It no longer belongs anywhere.

It sits there for months. During a home visit, Psychologist spots it and tactfully asks “Is that a bottle of wine?”. I no longer look at it when I’m in the kitchen. I don’t even see it. It’s become invisible to me. 

18 months sober, this Wednesday. I go out to the garage, to the stack of boxes I no longer need. I go through them to check for the things I want to keep, pieces of paraphernalia I rather like. I can almost taste it; the Shiraz, the vodka, the Kahlua. 

Then, I let go.

S has a friend or two who would appreciate a large donation of drinks for their parties. Two dozen bottles of wine, plus maybe 30L in casks. A dozen bottles of spirits and liquor. What can’t be rehomed, I have asked her to dispose of. It fills the boot of her car, plus the backseat. 

I always wanted to be able to moderate, to be able to occasionally have a glass of wine with dinner. But it’s simply not possible for me. I’ve never been able to moderate my addictions. If it was there, I needed to have it all. 

I kept a small cask each of red and white wine, for cooking purposes. Though I don’t cook much these days, I do like certain dishes with alcohol in them, and I still want to be able to cook and enjoy them. Admittedly, this is something I haven’t done in the past 18 months, so I’m unsure how I’ll feel about pouring the wine. I try to think of it as: they aren’t drinks - they are ingredients. It would be like drinking soy sauce. 

(I did also keep my Absinthe, purely for aesthetic purposes.)

* * *

I haven’t had any appointments since my last post, due to things shuffling around. I know I need to tell my team about the laxatives, probably Dietitian first, as she’s easiest to talk to. New GP will find out immediately from the notes anyway. If I’m feeling particularly brave one day, I might email Psych, as it’s always easier to make confessions through text.

I did tell S. I wasn’t even really planning to. I was having a Good Fire day, and was explaining to her what I shared in my last post, how some days it feels like my brain’s on fire. Then I told her about the laxatives. I did feel better having told someone.

I haven’t taken any this week. Mostly because I feel like the amount I took didn’t hurt enough, and getting more than two bottles requires planning in advance, shopping at multiple retailers to get around the limit. Plus the idea of spending $40 on one OD is insane. It’s not a sustainable habit. 

Part of me just wants to see if it’s possible to get the kind of pain I want. Three bottles? Four? I tell myself I’m just sating my curiosity, just once, but I know that’s a lie. I’ve even been considering trying the little pills again, wondering if my body might’ve forgotten the instinct to throw them back up, even though the thought of them makes bile rise in my throat. 

One week until my next appointment with New GP. I just hope increasing the seroquel further will stop this madness. 

xxBella

Good Fire, Bad Fire

 I’d been toying with the idea for maybe a month. Occasionally I’d find myself browsing pharmacies online, catalogues of laxatives, looking for something I might be able to take without vomiting, the way those tiny pills had started to make me do last year. 

They stayed in my cart on DoorDash. A liquid, a different type of laxative to those I’d used in the past, but still a stimulant. Every now and then, I’d open the app, just to see them there. A kind of relief, a safety blanket, knowing they were there just in case I might need them. Almost subconsciously, I mentally noted the store’s closing time - no late night panic order possible. 

I don’t know what the exact trigger was that day. Only that my brain screamed “DO IT!”. And so, with 4 minutes until orders closed for the day, I did. 

That was two weeks ago. I’ve since taken them four times. 1/3 bottle, 2/3, a whole bottle, two. 

I tell myself it won’t happen again. That it’s not worth it. But within a matter of days, the idea plants itself in my head again, and it’s like I can’t concentrate on anything else until I do it. 

15 doses, all the way up to 90, and none of them gave me the level of pain I was looking for. While I never want to experience the pain of the volvulus or post-surgery again, I think it’s skewed my perception of GI pain, and I’m left underwhelmed by what laxatives themselves are capable of. 

They’re dangerously easy to take. Tasteless, though a bit tricky to empty the bottles designed for counting drops. But at 6x the price per dose compared to the little tablets, it’s not practicable for the amounts I take. 

I can’t believe I let myself do it again after what happened last year. I know it’s stupid. I haven’t told anyone yet. I know I probably should. I suppose admitting it here is the first step. I wasn’t even sure if I would share it. 

Overall, I’m not sure if the higher Seroquel dose is helping yet, self-harm urges aside. Maybe a bit? Theoretically, it should be. New GP thinks it might have to go higher still, but I want to wait a bit longer until I know for sure. It’s so hard to tell in the short-term. To quantify mental health. It’s only in looking back that I’m able to see. 

The best part of the lower dose is that sometimes it feels like my brain is on fire. It’s kind of like it lights up, but with unbound intensity, in a way I rarely felt while on the higher dose. 

When it’s good, I’ll be amazingly productive, to the point I struggle to keep up with myself. I have all these thoughts in a million different directions. I can’t move fast enough, like time moves too fast and I move too slow. I’ll write for hours because it just keeps coming and everything fits together with perfect clarity. I have all the energy in the world, and get through to-do lists and life admin, cleaning and organizing and sewing. It feels amazing. I wish I could bottle it. 

But other times, it’s the same intensity, but of stress and overwhelm, fixating on self-destruction and everything that is wrong in the world, when I’m unable to think of anything except the pain I crave. 

I wonder if the good justifies the bad. 

Apple blackcurrant sugar-free cordial. You’d never know there’s 90 doses of laxatives. 

xxBella