Alchohol

[Gemini_man]

Good luck for tomorrow Chris - and whatever they chuck at you you will still be one step closer to drawing a line under that chapter of your life and starting the next one - mind you it sounds as though you've already taken it by the scruff of the neck and started it  [:)]

[mint]

Just a very quick post.  Yes, Chris, I shall be thinking of you and rooting for you.  Well done, Meg, Twinks and Ann.  Londoneye, you sound more like me, NOT a real problem AS YET.  Mind you, I have not been able to go completely without.  This week, I aim for a little less than last week.  Good thing is, I HAVE been able to stop after 2 glasses max so perhaps there is hope for me, eh?[:)]

I think it was Gluey who said that mostly we know when we are drinking too much so, in a way, it's not the exact amount per se, it's that inner voice telling you whether FOR YOU, too much is too much.  For example, I am a very small person physically, so every glass has a disproportionately big effect.  My OH is over 6 feet tall and can have his 2 or 3 glasses and can go without whenever he chooses.  It's not fair but then neither is life!

[vervialle]

Good luck Chris tommorrow, glad you are finding a new way and glad you came back to the forum, there are some lovely people on here.Are you still in the Limousin ? because you were only about 40 miles away from me.You are always welcome to drop by when I am in France.You are so talented and a real artist and I know I speak for a lot of people on the forum.Your inner strenghth is carrying you through all this and you will just go onto a better life, I had a dreadful experience when I was in my twenties and I pulled myself out of it and have never looked back. I changed as a person for ever and it is suprising how many people have gone through something dreadful in their life, it is not until you talk about it , you find out how many people have shared similar experiences, this thread for example.We will all be thinking of you tommorrow, God Bless.

[Chris Head]

Cheers guys, it's just a bunch of suits and a shed load of words that won't bother me & can't do anything to me, I just hope the judge doesn't mind 501's & cowboy boots (highly polished).[:D]...& a healthy dose of truth? It'll feel good walking into court with a clear conscience and clean blood...boy it's good to be clean! Hey it might even be a laugh?

You lot who're thinking and doing it are a source of of help...sure it's only the internet but it's pretty cool eh?

[Just Katie]

You have had some lovely words on this thread Chris.  I had a bereavement last year and the support and words I had from 'strangers' on the forum where really quite touching.

[vervialle]

Truth is always the winner !!! hey its not just the internet, its the living france forum crowd, and we are all rooting for you and we are real really!!!!

[woolybanana]

What is frightening about this thread is the number of people who have a problem with booze.

By the way, I am currently watching (perhaps I should say hearing about) someone dying from the effects of alcohol. Not nice, believe me.

[Just Katie]

Wooly, that is exactly what I thought when I read it.  Also I find it alarming that perhaps many of these people did not realise they had that much of a problem until this thread brought it out into the open. I hope these guys can work it out.

[TWINKLE]

I was a little tetchy this evening.  I think my most difficult 'hour' is around 6pm - 7.30pm.  I was cooking this evening and after last nights meal there are a few nice looking bottles of red wine in the wine rack that our guests bought that weren't drunk - I had that little pang again[:)]  Anyway, after a nice wine-free meal and some giggling at my daughter trying to scare my husband with fake spiders I feel relaxed again. 

I also feel a success that after 5 days I still haven't had a drink.  This is a first since I was pregnant and breast feeding[:(].  Please don't get me wrong - I wasn't sozzled 24/7 - but I was having a glass or two or three of wine most nights of the week.  The last two mornings I have awakened with a dry mouth and during the day I feel a bit dizzy - probably normal withdrawal symptoms.  I've taken note now about what Chris said - drink pleny of water.  What it must be like for people who were drinking the strong stuff before I can't imagine.  I haven't had the shakes or cold sweats that you hear about though. I felt less tired today and my skin looks clearer.

 

[Frederick]

I call it the   " Alcohol  Brake " .....when you get up in the morning after drinking and you find that you have slowed right  down ......like trying to ride a bike when the brakes are partly on...its just harder to get along .....Have a few days without the stuff and when you get up in the morning the  brakes are off ...you find yourself getting round much faster .......Twinkle ....you brakes are no longer binding !!   well done ... 

[ann49]

                              GOOD LUCK

                                   CHRIS

                                      [:D]

JUST THINK THIS[:P]

[Chris Head]

Pack it in Ann You on the pull or something?[:D]

The scariest thing was when I first saw her avocat...he's the spitting image of Dick Smith! Certainly made me chuckle, Tintin, my bloke asked what was funny, told him I thought I just saw a ghost.

The saddest thing was seeing someone who you know and loved and who is/was in the grips of alcohol and distressed & not being able to help her out, didn't feel too good bringing the alcohol issue out in court...hearing all the crap flying around was sorta like being on the outside looking in , it was like a precis of all the damage the booze had brought on over the preceding years, trying to deal with the aftermath and the pain isn't easy,...and all for what? It all seems like such a waste...tough being a human innit?

Thanks a bunch for the messages.

Keep going y'all eh? You know it makes sense.

 

[Patf]

Sounds like a "Days of Wine and Roses" situation Chris. Hope you can put it behind you now, you can't keep beating yourself up over it for ever. Some people do though.

[Just Katie]

[quote user="Patf"]Sounds like a "Days of Wine and Roses" situation Chris. Hope you can put it behind you now, .[/quote]

Well said Pat, he shouldnt let that image of Dick Smith haunt him forever! [:D]

[ann49]

Pleased it's over for you Chris

The past is where it should be, in the past. The future is now yours.[8-|]

[vervialle]

I think it is easy to let alcohol control your life, it is nice to drink, it is sociable and I think you are more of an outcast if you don,t drink, people think you are odd.It can become such a habbit at certain times of the day and I think it is very difficult to try and change associations with it, like cooking dinner, nothing nicer than that first slurp whilst peeling the garlic.I get into very bad drinking habbits when I am in France and not going to work,so when I come back I cut down gradually  over two weeks until I reach a level where I can take it or leave it.It is suprising how easily I slip into the bad habbit when back in France.So although I have not got a real problem it shows you how it can be association.I kind of look at it as a villain, I must control it and not let it control me.Incidently I was  married to an alcoholic, who eventually tried to kill me and it is only down to luck I am here to tell the tale.Anybody tried the non alcoholic beers,I think they are quite good and there is nothing wrong with brandy essence in coke as soft drinks do get a bit boring all the time.Thanks for your pm Chris.

[woolybanana]

I am going to skew the debate slightly by asking how far one can get involved in helping those in trouble with booze and how you react when so called 'friends' back away and say they do not want to be involved?

[Russethouse]

Are you talking about the people you know that you have mentioned ?

[woolybanana]

Yes RH, but hoped to get a wider view too.

[Chris Head]

by asking how far one can get involved in helping those in trouble with booze

As far as you want to before you can't anymore?

and how you react when so called 'friends' back away and say they do not want to be involved?

That seems more of a statement than a question.

 

[woolybanana]

Hello Chris. In the particular situation in which I have become involved (I have sort of given bits of it in various posts), I have noticed that certain people who were thought to be friends have backed away as soon as serious problems surfaced and have said that they do not want to be involved. My reaction, though kept to myself, is one of disgust and anger. I was just wondering whether others have had this happen and have felt the same?

[YCCMB]

I don't know....sometimes you're almost forced into a situation where you have to back away.

Long story, but en bref. 2 couples (English) - friends of ours in France. One couple split after the wife discovered that her OH had been secretly and systematically drinking his way through their entire savings, and as their marriage, business plans and life savings dissolved into nothing, she made the decision to go home (after getting her OH to go back to the UK once efforts to get him treatment in France failed due to his lack of acceptance of his own alcoholism). She was set to return  with their teenege daughter. The other couple, meanwhile, had tried their utmost to help, been there for support, and done all they could have done and more to support the family. On the Sat a.m, wife and daughter flew back to the UK. On the Sat pm, husband returned en voiture to France from the northern UK having driven......yes, driven...back to collect some stuff. He called the other couple who invited him over for a barbecue. He arrived, ostensibly sober, joined his friends and their guests for dinner, drunk moderately (he'd brought a bottle of scotch with him which he didn't touch till digestif time and then had a small glass). At the suggestion of the other couple, he agreed nonetheless to sleep over on their sofa rather than drive home.

The next morning, all seemed well. The couple woke up and set about quietly tidying up from the previous evening.....the door to the living room was closed and it appeared their friend was still sleeping on the sofa. Going outside to tidy the barbecue, it was only after a while that they found his body, collapsed in the little side road by their house. Although he was still semi-conscious and breathing, he was clearly in a very bad way and the emergency services were called. He was airlifted to Bordeaux for emergency surgery having suffered what appeared to be a brain haemmorrage....and meanwhile, the Gendarmes moved in, due to the suspicious circumstances of his accident..

I was called later that evening to help translate for them, their house guests and family as they gave their formal statements to the Gendarmes. At this stage, the couple were both shocked and upset, as it was clear that the Gendarmes suspected foul play, and more specifically, them. It wasn't until late that evening that they got a call from Bordeaux to say that an examination by a forensic doctor confirmed injuries consistent with the guy having essentially fallen down drunk, like a felled tree. A search of his house and a medical exam confirmed he'd drunk at least 1 bottle of scotch, possibly more, before driving over to the barbecue. The hospital only finally gave him a chance of lasting the night after emergency surgery.

He went on to spend the next 6 months in hospital.....his family having more or less disowned him. Through all this, feeling both somewhat responsible and concerned for his welfare (he was suffering from memory loss and didn't speak French) the friends continued to visit him (a 3-hour round trip to Bordeaux by car, then a 2 hour round trip when he was transferred to reeducation). Only to discover, some months down the line, that both his wife and parents HELD THEM RESPONSIBLE for what had happened that night, and indeed were still spreading rumours that they believed he'd been hit in a fight with the husband. I'm afraid that my disgust and anger in these circumstances (and I am pretty confident that I know as many of the facts as anyone else involved, having interpreted while all the statements were taken) is directed, not at those who tried to help, but at those they thought they were helping. No-one, faced with such a situation, could have done more, least of all when the person's own family had done absolutely nothing.

[raindog]

   "One couple split after the wife discovered that her OH had been

secretly and systematically drinking his way through their entire

savings"

Blimey, that's some secret drinking binge.

[Pierre ZFP]

But there's none so blind as those who will not see.

It's not always just the person that has the substance abuse problem (drink drugs whatever) that will not acknowledge it,  family and  friends can not/will not see it or tell themselves its not serious until, well, it becomes very serious and denial is not an option anymore.

[Missy]

[quote user="raindog"]   "One couple split after the wife discovered that her OH had been secretly and systematically drinking his way through their entire savings"

Blimey, that's some secret drinking binge.
[/quote]

 

Do you want secret binge?...

Mother, son, grandson and great-grandson of a family close to me have drank themselves through quite a fortune. All the drinking was done in the woodshed.

Mother pawned all the family jewels and other antiques to fund her gin. Drank to forget that her husband was a bully. Died aged 65.

Son drank the proceeds of the sale of a 300 acres farm, the sale of a 2000acres farm in Africa and the best part of his shares portfolio. Drank to forget that his father and his wife were bullies. Died aged 64.

Grandson drank the housekeeping money and whatever money the wife made running a very successful B&B. In the space of 10 years, drank the proceeds of the sale of 2 houses(3bedrooms with 2 acres of land each). Drinks to forget an unfortunate childhood at the hand of a bullying mother (still alive), despite the most idyllic place to have been brought up in Africa, and drinks to compensate being bored stiff with nothing really tangible to do in his life. Now aged 56.... It took the wife the best part of 10 years into the marriage to see that things weren't quite right. Despite her efforts to curb the drinking with the help of others (family and friends and least of all the youngest of the 2 children) she remains in the marriage but only just. She has given up (so have the friends and family) the battle to curb the drink and has quite a separate life from him inside the house and you certainly never see them together outside. She finds solace in going out to work, her colleagues, her daughter, her very small circle of friends and her twice a year holiday in France (as her family is from there). She is desperate to just walk out of the place and is saving like mad to afford somewhere else to live. 

Great grandson learnt to drink at the tender age of 10! looking for/following his father. Despite his mother's warnings, love and support. University was just one long binge. How he got his BSc, his MSc and a job is a mystery. Works abroad in the most desolate of places between Russia and Iran, very good job earning very good money but as there is nothing to do after work and no female company other than russian floozies with a dose and a yearning for a oneway ticket to UK ... drinks himself senseless ....  Now aged 25...

Secret binge?... Genetic programming?... Woodsheditis?... What ever you want to call it...