BEDM Day 5 - Cinco de Mayo

I had never even heard of Cinco de Mayo until I went to see American Girl and Boy in 2008. We ran through the things that we would be doing when I was over – a bit of shopping (the £ to $ exchange rate was amazing back then, almost $2 - £1), a trip to Vegas, a visit to the Grand Canyon, “…and we’ll be out for Cinco de Mayo as well” she added.

Erm excuse me?

I’ll be honest I’m still hazy on the details of what the day was and why we would be going out to celebrate it. You are big grown ups, you can Google that for yourselves.

All I knew was that whatever this was, it involved a night out and I am all on board for that.

My Cinco de Mayo experience can be summed up in a few bullet points:

• Cinco de Mayo is basically like a Bank Holiday Sunday. People don’t really know why they’re out, you just are out.
• I discovered that American shots are much bigger than UK measures – there was a close call with a shot of tequila

•           Watching aghast as two very drunk College girls ‘danced’ in short toweling beach dresses and probably didn’t stay in their own beds

•           A couple consisting of a very old man and a very young girl. He licked her shoes. I’ll leave it at that.

•           American Girl threw most of a drink all over a table in a diner.

•           And the night ended in an empty strip club with me getting a lap dance.

(There are no photos of that.)

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Black

I woke up and knew that something was wrong. It didn’t take long to figure out what. There was vomit all over the pillow next to my face.


I tried to think and tried to remember but it was black.

I was still in the dress that I went out in. My hair was in disarray. My make-up was all over my face. But none of that was particularly concerning me, what was concerning me was that I had absolutely no idea how I’d got there. It was black.

I was at my Dad’s house because I was dog-sitting. I was totally alone. I wandered through the house looking for clues but everything was eerily tidy. No mess anywhere. My shoes and coat were by the front door, my purse, with all its contents in, was on the kitchen table. My phone and the house key were on the table by the phone. I went back upstairs and there was a glass of water and a bucket by my bed. Everything looked normal but I knew that it wasn’t because my mind was black.

I rang a friend. “What happened to me last night?” “What are you talking about?” “I don’t remember what happened to me last night. I’ve woken up and I can’t remember anything.” “Are you joking?” “Does this sound like the voice of someone who’s joking?” “I left before you but you were fine, you were drunk but you were fine.”

Cue frantic texts to people to ask them if they knew how I’d got home.

I was shaking violently and uncontrollably. I knew that nothing completely horrendous had happened to me. Someone had got me home but I had absolutely no idea who that someone was. I got in the shower in an attempt to clear my head but everything remained black.

A knock on the door revealed everything to me – a male colleague was standing on the doorstep looking incredibly worried. “Did you bring me home last night?” I asked him. He nodded, he’d come back to check on me because he was so worried, he hadn’t wanted to leave me but didn’t know what else to do so had put me in the recovery position and hoped for the best. “What happened?” I asked him, “You were just incredibly drunk,” was all he could tell me.

I spent the rest of the day lying on the sofa, shaking and trying desperately to penetrate the blackness but it’s become clear that the blackness is there to remain. I’m never going to regain my memory of what happened. I can remember being at the party, I can remember talking to people and dancing, but then it’s just black. No memory of collecting my coat and going for the taxi and no memory at all of what happened once I got home.

It’s terrifying. It’s horrible. It’s scary. It’s something I never want to experience again.

People have been kind to me and have offered me a million and one excuses as to how or why it happened;

“You haven’t really drunk in 6 months”
“You’re half the size you used to be, you can’t handle that much anymore”
“You didn’t eat any dinner”
“You were drinking wine, you should have been drinking spirits”

But really they’re being too nice. The simple fact is I drank too much. Way too much. All those excuse are contributing factors as to why I was affected so badly but there aren’t any decent excuses. I’m 27 years old, I should know that I can’t drink over 2 bottles of wine (I remember counting to 5 or 6 glasses) without there being some serious consequences, whether or not I've eaten dinner or I haven't drunk in a while or am thinner than I used to be.

What I still can’t work out though is how I did it. How did I let myself be so incredibly stupid?

I don’t have any answers to that. I think I just got so over-excited about seeing everyone and being out that I just wasn’t concentrating. It’s a lame excuse I know but it’s true. I didn’t intend to go out and get drunk, it was just an unfortunate accident.

I don’t need lectures. Trust me I don’t need to be told how incredibly foolish and dangerous my actions were. I don’t need to be told how lucky I was and how much worse it could have been. Believe me I feel bad about it. I sat for a weekend and cried and cried and cried about what I did and dreaded coming into work in the morning to see people and not have a clue what happened.

That’s the worst – not knowing what other people know. Someone saw me today in the kitchen at work and said “Wasn’t Friday amazing?!” and I had to be honest and say I didn’t really remember. I do know that I was most definitely having a good time, I just can’t really remember the specifics. Lucky for me I held it together at the party – people knew I was drunk but not quite how bad, apparently I was just your average, fun, drunken, life and soul of the party, person, not a complete mess. That’s one thing I can be thankful for.

I know that I seriously owe my life to the person that helped me get home, stayed with me in the house and put me to bed. It doesn’t bear thinking about what could have happened and I’ve run out of ways to apologise to him and thank him for what he did. In the end there is no way of conveying how grateful you are to someone for those kinds of actions, some chocolates and a card were the best I could do.

I wasn’t sure whether to post this story or not. It’s most certainly not an image of me that I particularly want to portray but it is real and it did happen and to pretend that it didn’t would be to lie and I don’t want to be that person. This blog is supposed to be Just Me and I guess this is just me, warts and all.

(The dress looked bloody amazing though.)

One night in Torbaydos a.k.a. The Night I Fell Off the Wagon.

My problem is that I'm not very good at exercising self restraint. The phrases "I'll just have one" or "I'll just have a small bit" just don't seem to appear in my vocabulary. I'm an all or nothing girl. That's why it's just safer to not surround myself with temptation. It's best for me not to buy a multipack of crisps so they last me for the week. Because they won't last me for the week. They'll last for 2 days, maybe 3 if I'm lucky. I can't buy a packet of biscuits without shoving the whole lot in my mouth so it's easier to just not buy biscuits. I had hoped that now I'm eating much more sensibly I would somehow miraculously discover the ability to not plough my way through a massive bag of Sensations in one go but so far that hasn't happened.


The same rule used to apply for alcohol. I'm your classic binge drinker. I will never have just one glass of wine. I'll have 1 case bottle instead. I've never been the kind of person that will go "Ooh I'll have a lovely glass of wine in the bath". Nope. I drank to get drunk. If it wasn't a big night out, that was fine, I just wouldn't drink, I had no interest in just having one glass of wine, I'm not desperate for the taste of alcohol. In some ways this has been useful since going on the warfarin because it's meant that, to be honest, I haven't missed alcohol that much - I only drank once in a Sheffield flood, it just happened that when I drank, I drank.

I've been lucky in that I have a friend who is also a warfarin addict so I've been able to turn to her for advice. I asked her how she coped on big nights out when she was the only one sober and she informed me that she was a bad girl who, on those nights when it was a big occasion, she would just not take her warfarin, have a drink and hope that the alcohol thinned her blood out enough. I was dubious. I am a rule follower after all and the Doctor said I could only have one drink.

But.

I went down to Torquay. I knew that drinking would be involved. And, seeing as my INR has stabilised a little bit in the past month or so (hurray!) I decided that I would try this little bit of trickery out. I would forgo my warfarin, have a few drinks instead of just the one glass of wine and everything would be alright. I did feel a little dubious about it but my cousin assured me that everything would be fine and she is literally the only person I know that can use the phrase "Trust me, I'm a Doctor".

Except I forgot didn't I. I forgot that there was no way I was "just going to have an extra couple of glasses of wine". Because I can't do that.

And so I fell off the wagon.

And let me tell you. When I fall. I fall.

I was like Phil Mitchell getting addicted to crack. I was like a kid in toyshop. I was like a bunch of army lads on leave. I might as well have just asked for a top shelf drink. I managed to consume over one evening:

- gin and tonics
- wine

- margarhitas

- jaegerbombers

- vodka and coke

And I have no idea how many of the above I had.

I'm not proud. It was not big and it was most certainly not clever and my hangover the next day punished me (although I have to confess that I didn't feel more hungover than I would have been on any other big night out, I thought I would be much worse considering this would be the first time I'd had a mental night out since the beginning of May).

But more than that, I felt like crap because I knew that I was drinking for all the wrong reasons. I went back to my old ways of using alcohol as my safety blanket, as my secret confidence booster and I should know better than that, I should be able to handle myself in a group of strangers without being drunk. I've done alright with it so far but this night out was tough - I was surrounded by ridiculously good looking people and if they weren't good looking, they were clever and doing worthwhile jobs. It's bad enough that I was out with a load of Doctors but when the only other person who isn't a Doctor works with a freakin' bomb disposal unit in the army, you can start to feel more than a little pathetic that you do nothing really worthwhile with your life.

Lots of good looking people + lots of talent = levels of self-loathing through the roof

So I drank to care less that I was the fattest person there (and this is after losing 2.5 stone, if I'd been in this situation a few months previously I'd have probably ended the night by throwing myself in the harbour) and I drank to care less that I was having to talk to strangers, and I drank to make myself not care about either of these situations.

And I ended up becoming the person that I don't really like. I was like the person that I've been observing on my nights out when sober - I was too loud and probably obnoxious and my sarcasm levels went absolutely through the roof. My sarcasm can get me in trouble at the best of times but when I'm drunk the opportunities for me to come across as a complete bitch are many.

I won't lie. I had an amazing night. It was hilarious and I wouldn't change it for the world. It was just that afterwards, as the sea wind was blowing my hangover round my head, I realised that I don't want to go back to being that person. I don't want to go on a bender like that again. And I hope that this realisation is enough to finally knock the notion of self restraint in to my head.

I just need to find self-confidence some other way but have no idea how.

Reckon Phil Mitchell will lend me his crack pipe?

(Obviously joking. Don't do drugs kids)

Two months in...

It’s now been about two months since The Big PE of 2010. Which also means it’s been the same amount of time since I said goodbye to my alcohol friend.

To be honest it’s not been that hard. Mainly because I’m your classic binge drinker. I could easily go for a few weeks without touching a drop, but when it came to a night out I’d make it my intention to make up for lost time.

Nevertheless the past couple of months have thrown up a few observations:

1. Company is key
A good friend of mine went through a period of a couple of years where she couldn’t drink because it would make her violently ill. I asked her how she coped with going out and being the only sober one and she said that a lot of it depended on who she was with. She was bang on.

If you’re with people who are nice and you get on well with, you won’t even notice that you’re the only one drinking. If you’re out with people who are awful the night will drag....and drag........and.....drag.

2. There is only so much Diet Coke you can drink
Fact. I’ve had to switch to water at some point in the night, or alternate between the two. There’s nothing that makes you feel like more of a pretentious boring twat than ordering a glass of water at the bar, at least when you have a coke you can pretend that there’s vodka in it and nobody is any the wiser but with water you are laid bare. Of course you could always pretend that you are so drunk you’ve had to switch to water.

3. Being trolleyed isn’t attractive
This has been rammed home to me with a sledgehammer. There’s nothing like cold sobriety to juxtapose extreme drunkenness. I’ve seen people, especially girls, be incredibly drunk and had that horrible feeling in the back of your mind where you think “Oh my god is that what I’m like when I’m drunk?....” It’s not a nice feeling. Whereas before I’d wake up with a stinking hangover and secretly feel a little bit cool for being so drunk the night before I now realise that I most definitely wasn’t cool and was probably more likely a loud-mouthed bint who was staggering all over the place and immensely annoying people with my witty repartee. Not a look I particularly want to go back to. If I ever do get to go out and drink again I’ll be taking a lot of care not to be that person.

4. Watch your mouth
Important to remember. You can’t get away with the old “Oh I didn’t know what I was saying I was so drunk last night” line. Other people’s tongues might be loosened once they’ve had a drink and this might encourage you to do the same. Stop. Think. Because in the morning you might regret being quite so honest with your opinion when you can’t hide behind the Long Island Iced Tea excuse.

5. Being sober is not easier on the wallet...
Seriously. I haven’t saved much more money by being sober. Soft drinks are ridiculously expensive and don’t get me started on the bar that wouldn’t give me tap water meaning I instead had to buy an incy wincy bottle of mineral water for nearly £3. Times like that I really wish I was still drinking. Being hammered meant that I could cope a little more with the rape and pillage of my bank account, when you don’t even have a hangover to show for your night out it makes me perversely resent spending the money that little bit more

Also. I’ve found myself caught up in buying rounds. Tricky because you don’t want to be the tightarse in the corner but does mean that you spend more money than you would like to because everyone else is on the wine. This is exacerbated by the fact that you don’t drink your soft drink/water as quickly as others drink their alcohol so you end up missing out on getting your drink back from someone else.

6. ...but might help your waistline
I don’t really know if this is true or not but it could be a contributory factor to my rather (in my opinion) impressive weight loss as of late (22lbs thank you very much. Man I had to fight with myself not to put that in massive capital letters). In WW speak, alcohol can be pretty hefty on the ol’ points side of things, diet coke and water on the other hand, is zero. Could be something in it.

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In summary, I think because my relationship with alcohol was kind of very unhealthy in the past, this experience has been, for the most part, a positive one. A re-education if you will.

But still. Sometimes. I’d give my right arm to feel that familiar dull ache behind my eyes on a Sunday morning which means you’ve had a cracker of a night before.

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(My INR rating, in case you were interested, (and obviously you are, why wouldn’t you be?) has been frankly all over the shop. We thought we’d cracked it when I had two readings which were between the correct range of 2 and 3 but my smugness was shortlived as it has since spiked up to a stonking 5.4, making me worried my blood was so thin I was going to start bleeding out of my eyes, before dropping to an annoyingly thick 1.6 in the space of a week. I’m back on Monday and fingers crossed it’s gone up a wee bit because I don’t want to have to start injecting Fragmin again and end up with a stomach looking like this again.)