Brittany Bare at 500 Days

Here’s an absolutely beautiful post by Brittany. I liked it so much I listened to all her music choices. ❤

Brittany Bare at 500 days.

Breaking up Sober

Having gone through this hell myself, I like how H. Ryan is honoring herself by not drinking post-breakup.

Here is her blog from Love Over Wine: Day 6: Life Anew.

I’m Sick : (

I’ve got a week-long virus, apparently. I just wanted to let those wonderful people who have either emailed me or commented on my blog or posted blogs that I want to read to please forgive my (temporary) absence. I’ve been busy laying on the couch, binge-watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

And with a cold, cough, insomnia, a fever, and general achiness, I still feel WAY BETTER than when I used to have those hangovers from hell.

💕  Shawna

A Drinking Story

What’s Your Story?

Mine runs something like this: I had a great childhood, though I grew into an anxious adolescent. By high school, I was pretty much OK. Going to college, however — that place of higher learning — changed that.

I hadn’t experienced much of the drinking culture in my small hometown. Instead, I jogged and played tennis and painted and went to movies. I was shocked at first, and then gradually drawn in to the almost nightly ritual of going out. The habit of drinking instead of doing other things was formed here, as was the feeling of being truly lost. The two went together, although I couldn’t see it at the time.

If life can be described as navigating a river, then I started to hit the occasional rapid. Sometimes it was exhilarating — flailing about in the raft, trying to get myself back into the flow of the river, and sometimes it was scary, not knowing what might happen next. Sometimes, without warning, I was thrown from the raft completely. Then life became more like survival.

Still, for most of the journey, I traveled with everyone else on the river, especially with other fun people with floating coolers. You can go a lot of places with these people. You can tie your raft to theirs. You can ride the rapids together. You can befriend them, marry them, and have children together. Then you won’t feel so alone — so afraid when the next rapid hits.

So the end of the story goes like this: I went in way over my head eventually, and began to experience some near-drownings. But as is the nature of addiction, I was less afraid of the dark swirling water when I had alcohol flowing through my veins. Soon, I had to drink during the calm parts of the river, just to anesthetize myself from the stress of being out of control. I was no longer sure where I was headed. Part of me didn’t care.

But as luck would have it, I began to link the rough waters and terror and loss of control with the alcohol itself, and not the river. I began to see what a mind-game the whole thing was — drinking to prevent or survive the effects of drinking. I recognized this, and could talk a good game about why I needed to quit. But I didn’t quit for long.

After decades of living like this, slowly making my way downstream, I could see the foreshadowing of how one might die while drinking on the river. It would happen sooner or later, either by declining health or by being flung one last time into the cold, rushing water. And on some deep level — one that barely registered in my wine-addled brain — I knew the choice of how the story ended was mine.

Two Years’ Sobriety for Frances Cobain

“It is an everyday battle to be in attendance for all the painful, bazaar, uncomfortable, tragic, f–ked up things that have ever happened or will ever happen,” Cobain wrote to her nearly 800,000 followers. “Self destruction and toxic consumption and deliverance from pain is a lot easier to adhere to. Undeniably, for myself and those around me becoming present is the best decision I have ever made. How we treat our bodies directly correlates to how we treat our souls. It’s all interconnected. It has to be.”

Frances Bean Cobain article

Rising Above the Drinking Voice

“Beyond the thinking mind is a higher level of consciousness representing intuition, love, compassion and creativity.”  — Eric Hoffman

I’m enthralled these days with learning about how your thoughts create your reality, and I came across this article by Eric Hoffman. In the throes of my drinking, I remember someone saying, “I didn’t quit drinking so much as transcend it.” Yes! That’s what I wanted. Almost all of my thoughts involved thinking about drinking. Here’s some great insight into transcending destructive thoughts:

What Were You Thinking?