This is a thread for ILXors ON THE WAGON (and for the Wagon Curious)

NO one told me about the fecking sugar cravings though. I never had a sweet tooth. What is this fresh hell.

Go for it Trayce, taking care of yourself is a powerful thing to do

2 wks.

The sugar craving is real! I went from not having of a sweet tooth to requiring daily dessert, sometimes more than one!

I don't have a sweet tooth either but I remember when I didn't drink for several years and was focused on working out and eating well, I was obsessed with ice cream for the only time in my life.

from the old to what extent does your life revolve around alcohol? thread

used to be a daily drinker to a greater or lesser degree but i barely drink at all now

the anti-depressants i'm taking at the moment make drinking a lot less fun - if regular drinking feels like putting the output of your senses through a fuzz pedal and playing a glorious windmilling pete townshend power-chord, then drinking on anti-depressants feels like fumbling a jazz chord and getting drenched in pints of piss hurled by an angry audience

― for sale: clown shoes, never worn (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 10 August 2017 13:27 (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

two years on from that post and i'm now off the antidepressants but i barely drink at all - i guess i just fell out of the habit and, since my wife barely drinks and i have a 15-month-old daughter whose sleeping schedule doesn't lend itself well to managing hangovers, i've never picked it back up again and i'm on the wagon by default ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Habit is a powerful force huh. Well, I’m on the wagon tonight in solidarity with y’all.

Sounds like a better place than 2 years ago, BG

4 weeks in, Friday night booze introspection: when I'm drinking, Fridays are when I have a few beers and sit about eating and listening to music. Without the booze, I'm more inclined to let the evening drift and don't have the same urge to get myself 'up' for it and am way less sociable (just ask my wife) - to the point where I can't really separate the sociability and the booze and I wonder if that part of my personality is really just the booze. Like, I can't face social occasions without the thought of drinking.

Short version: I worry about becoming a dullard.

i quit about a decade ago and have brief dalliances every now and again but have mostly sworn off alcohol as the least interesting of drugs.

was working in clubs and bars and restaurants and got into the habit of loading up at the end of the night as it was generally free or cheap but had one-too-many nights of throwing up on the subway or ending up at the wrong house trying to get in or just generally being an asshole. grandfather died of drink and i have definite obsessive personality issues so it seemed better to err on the side of caution. I will have a beer if that's all there is to drink but I find everytime i have one drink, I have six. it's just not a good idea for me.

and don't worry about being a dullard; i find most people who think drink makes them interesting are ignoring that it's more of a depressant and that it is, in fact, suppressing your real personality which is undoubtedly more interesting than you on booze.

3wks in and found the post work conference drink hard to navigate. Prevalent "it would just be the one" thoughts as I stood at the bar. Managed to get a tonic water without anything harder but didn't stay long with everyone who was throwing stuff down and have had similar introspective time since then thinking about sociability. Hard to come to terms with realising that there's been two of me for so long one of which is an obnoxious boor. Thanks for the useful perspective ulysses.

5 weeks today, gonna go sell records in a bar all day long

ymmv with this tactic, but something i did early on while quitting, as i had to spend a lot of time at or near bars: I would start by approaching the bartender at a quiet moment with a fiver on the bar and saying "Hey, I'm really trying to quit drinking, can you make sure I only have a cranberry and soda in my hand all night?" Bartenders are people too, they tend to respect if you tell them up front what the deal is and tip them immediately.
Also: candy helps to deal with the oral fixation elements. I would go through a packet of tic-tacs a night for awhile.

yeah I am all about bitters and soda. I spend a fair amount of time in bars anyway and I went into this knowing that. My wife's still drinking as well, none of that seems to matter - proximity doesn't seem to be an issue thankfully.

at least two of the other sellers don't drink either, shit we're all getting old

Hey, I remember hearing an AA saying somewhere (possibly Infinite Jest) about how "doing your best is what got you here." But searching that doesn't bring me any relevant results. Does anybody know what I'm talking about?

no but the implication (I believe) would be the "you can't do this alone" focus of 12-step - you, by yourself, doing your best, isn't enough to overcome addiction.

7 weeks for me this coming Sunday, last Sunday I tried about a 5-6 ounce pour of a fresh hop IPA at a DJ gig, it was pretty good but I had no desire to drink more either at that point or in the following days.

still reading The Naked Mind and it has turned from vague hippie nonsense to terrifying scientific precision regarding alcohol and its effects.

is the "spontaneous sobriety" thing that she's going on about here actually a real thing in anyone's experience?

https://www.addiction.com/12020/what-are-the-odds-youll-get-sober-on-your-own/

"Spontaneous sobriety" as described in that article is not exactly spontaneous. People quit drinking or cut back to non-problematic use without formal treatment, sure. But I don't know of anyone who has done this without making some significant changes. IME it doesn't just happen naturally, as the word "spontaneous" suggests. It takes effort. That effort may look different people, but sitting around not making any changes and hoping that sobriety happens spontaneously? Yeah I've never seen sobriety happen that way. Do that and you are way more likely to get worse, not better. EtOH is an addictive neurotoxin, that is really quite undisputable.

whew Monday night was rough, it's the boring evenings that bring on the desire.

52 days now, gonna try for 90 and then take stock

congrats. i never lasted more than 60 days without after my puberty, i think.

when you say boring nights, do you mean boring nights out or in?

both :)

congrats! are you feeling better in general?

not really, tbh, but I don't miss waking up at 3 AM with a dehydration headache that's for sure

pretty sure I've lost weight thought

thought though

getting enough rest though is really important to ensure your body has enough time to recover/repair. I need to get my yearly physical still and was just looking at my bloodwork from last year. My liver enzymes were on the cusp of being over the standard threshold so I am hoping they are much better this year.

I just saw this phrase, "wagon-curious," on a menu description in upstate New York. I forget which 0% ABV drink it was advertising. ILX, was that you?

I usually see it in articles as "sober curious".

I was just looking it up and the Club Soda NYC event people have a book called Sober Curious. I am wondering if they coined that.

ooh in other "wagon" news, my local pub now has a tap devoted to a 0% ABV/25 mg CBD soda drink :)

Interesting, I hadn't seen that phrase but it's definitely one. And yes it seems to come from a book by a faintly goopy mystic/astrologer/or as her site says, Author. Speaker. Curator. Book Doula.

omg thx for new DN

xxp delicious!

the company is called Ablis, I am learning interesting things on Google today:

Any beverage maker, whether a big corporation or a small business, faces a fundamental issue when trying to put weed in their water: Cannabinoids are hydrophobic, or insoluble in water. That creates confusion for consumers, primarily: How was the CBD infused, and, thus, will they feel its effects? The answer to the latter largely depends on the former.

“For compounds like CBD that don’t really mix well with water, usually you have to put another agent with it to help it dissolve,” said Dr. Yasmin Hurd, a professor of neuroscience, pharmacological sciences and psychiatry at New York City’s Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “Different ways used by people or the pharmaceutical industry are being adapted by cannabinoid companies.”

https://www.chicagotribune.com/dining/ct-food-chicago-cbd-infused-drinks-0529-story.html

lol they are from Oregon of course

https://www.ablisbev.com/

well I'm not exactly off the wagon but I had a total of 5 beers over 3 days last weekend. nothing since Monday. still really enjoying ginger beers and lime Topo Chico. I spent a total of 9 weeks completely on-wagon, single 5-oz. beer pour excepted. Let's see how it goes moving forward for the last 30 days of the 90 I planned. I have a new Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale in the fridge that has been there since Monday, I am definitely gonna drink it this weekend :)

I’m something over six months on the uberwagon, maybe a year of greatly reduced drinky overall. I find abstinence less effortful than “cutting back” so I guess I will just keep going with this because I’m lazy like that.

don't you get that feeling of unbearable soberness after a couple of days on the wagon? after a week usually i am so sober and dried out that i see no sense to stay on the wagon anymore as it seems just so boring and useless.

nah I liked it! I sleep way better with super limited booze intake, for one.

I only feel the unbearable sobriety when around others who are drunk i.e. some good friends invited me to karaoke Sat night and they will be fully loaded. I’m like, “do I have to?” Late-night dance parties are another example. Otherwise, no.

Christ yes I am hating being around my closest friends drunk when Im sober, but its also becase when sober I just dont want to beb social/talk to anyone and they all wont stop yammering on.

still on

Major wagon benefit: waking up early on weekends with zero effort, feeling good after a good night's sleep.

It still feels strange that I'll have been up and puttering about quite a lot on a Sunday morning, thinking "oh I guess it is about lunchtime," then looking at the clock and seeing it is 10:30 a.m.

That prick of joy has not gotten old.

^^^ ha yes I love that feeling and often reward myself with the mid-morning weekend nap. We’ve earned it!

Was at a big bat mitzvah party last night and accidentally took a big swig of someone’s clear booze drink, thinking it was my club soda. It tasted great tbh and many neurons in my brain perked up at the taste. Mixed feelings about that.

Major wagon benefit: waking up early on weekends with zero effort, feeling good after a good night's sleep.

It still feels strange that I'll have been up and puttering about quite a lot on a Sunday morning, thinking "oh I guess it is about lunchtime," then looking at the clock and seeing it is 10:30 a.m.

That prick of joy has not gotten old.

Also even if you don’t have to wake up early, you can stay up late and not feel like shit when you wake up if you haven’t been drinking!! A night person doesn’t need to turn into a morning person to reap the benefits of teetotaling 😎

My point is that staying up late does not need to include substance abuse! Seems obvious but it’s easy to forget in adulthood.

^^^agree. If I was having drinks I either didn't have or didn't pay attention to "bedtime!" signals. Now I notice when I feel like going to bed and just. . . go to bed.

I hosted thanksgiving for 11. I told people it would be dry, except for two bottle of wine for toasting/at the table. Two of the guests were children. Four other guests (including me) were non-drinkers. One of the guests brought a cooler of unsolicited drinks. The five people who drank left evidence in the form of 24 (empty) cans of hard cider, 5 (empty) bottles of wine, and a large (empty) flug of port.

They also left a fish sauce-dipped lumpia seeping into the pages of a first edition Mailer, an unflushed, unwiped poop in my upstairs en suite bathroom, and dumped three vape cartridges in the mailbox. FFS.

Sigh, yeah. I need to get back on my bike. Some of my meds have been giving me ass troubles and the bicycle has not been much of an option.

I should try meditating again.

Meditating isn’t easy. Or I should say that it isn’t easy to feel like you’re getting results. The trick is to stick with it, with the understanding that there is no right or wrong way to do it and no right or wrong way to feel afterwards.

I do think it can pay off in helping to train your mind to pause and deal with difficult moments. And can be a nice way to clear your head first thing in the morning. As in, very first thing before you look at your phone or jump into the day’s unpredictability. But it requires discipline to do it every day and I am nowhere near perfect on that front.

Biking rules.

echoing all of that about meditation. i don't always do my morning meditation first thing but yeah it's a nice way to start the day. there isn't usually any kind of epiphany or anything for me in meditation (although it has happened!). it's more just about quieting my mind regularly. the other important part of it for me is spiritual, which can be there if you want it to be. the mind quieting and the spiritual experience combined make it something i look forward to. i get a feeling like my soul is in a hot tub. the accumulation and frequency of going there makes it easier to access that place when i really need it, which is pretty much all the time tbh.

i'm glad my daily edible habit doesn't impinge on me staying reasonably focused and doing the stuff i need to / want to do, because i sure look forward to being a little high while moving through daily activities. if it is a bit of an addiction, it's certainly a lot softer and more functional than alcohol was. i'm allowing it, even embracing it. caffeine is probably still the 'hardest' addiction i have left. no motivation at all to drop that one. it's less compulsive than it used to be probably. i'm fine with it for now. the only thing that might lead me to dial back weed / caffeine would be a budgetary decision, or some major health development i guess.

I’m pretty pissed about letting go of weed. Maybe I’ll come back to it? But right now I have to get my meds sorted and it’s too hard to tease out what’s doing what and what’s reacting with something else with meds while stoned. But maybe I can reintroduce it when things are settled with meds? But if i’m bipolar, that’s probably just bad and I need to be stone cold sober and I hate it. I gradually turn into my stoic grumpy father when i’m really sober and I HATE IT. I told my therapist I don’t like myself sober and as soon as I said it I thought “well, I guess that’s something to work on.”

This is lovely:

https://bsky.app/profile/windowseat.bsky.social/post/3mb5jw5qbnc2i

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy_W-oSvRSM

lovely indeed

killing the cardigan game. may he live for many years to come.

Hopkins OTM

Today, I have been a wagon passenger for two years. I don't think if it as an achievement, really. It doesn't take effort or vigilance.

It's just a long-ish series of days on which something didn't happen over and over again. I still have problems, but I keep not pouring wine on them. And the calendar keeps flipping on to new pages.

The state of mind I wanted was for that whole aisle in the grocery store to just be irrelevant. Like, I don't have a dog or a baby, so I don't need to think about not buying dog food or baby food. It's there but it's not for me.

I went to the Dropkick Murphys St. Patrick's Day Tour show here last night (long story), and one of the openers was some other Boston band called Haywire. 2/3 into the set the singer/yeller asked if anyone in the crowd was drinking (Dropkick Murphys, Chicago, St. Pat lead-up show ... ), and after the expected cheers announced that he himself was celebrating 11 months sober, stressing that he was not judging anyone else or their lifestyles, only describing his own personal journey with alcohol and imploring people to be careful with their choices. He said it a lot better than I described it, not preachy at all, but I was impressed all the same by his courage, imparting his road to sobriety to a punk rock crowd of 4000 at a sold out Boston Irish punk show.

Interesting. I imagine that's a very 2026 phenomenon and may not have made sense 25 years ago; audiences are different.

There is a lyric in the Jason Isbell song "Cover Me Up" - "I sobered up, and swore off that stuff, forever this time" - and evidently when he sings it live, audiences cheer that line. Which is interesting because it requires both knowledge of Isbell's personal life and complete conflation of him with the character in the song.

i am inclined to fully quit, there are so many places out there which serve mocktails and NA beer and in recent months when i've gone out, i've exclusively had those.

xpost Yeah, can attest it happens at his shows. It shows I think a yeah maybe relatively newfound degree of respect, empathy, support and acknowledgment from fans, who if stats bear out are themselves drinking less, and for sure know people drinking less or abstaining altogether.