Friday night used to be so much fun

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Friday night used to be so much fun

Postby ukguy » 29 Jun 2012, 10:13

A few drinks, some nibbles, out for a meal with friends, nightcap, get home late, fall into bed, sound night's sleep.
Now I find I dread being invited out - trying to avoid the pressure of social drinking, avoiding snacky (delicious) foods, wanting to get home for fearing of needing the loo.
Heaven knows I'm miserable now ...
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Re: Friday night used to be so much fun

Postby jillywilly » 29 Jun 2012, 13:44

Yep I'm with you on this one I havnt had an alcoholic drink for over 2 months, previously I would enjoy several glasses of wine on a Friday & Saturday night & some nice (but naughty) food, the only upside to my new af friendly diet is that I have lost a stone in weight (which I did need to lose) trying to find a positive again whilst I desperately hope that one day I will have my life back!!
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Re: Friday night used to be so much fun

Postby ukguy » 30 Jun 2012, 04:15

I had 1 pt Guinness last night. I felt like the Devil incarnate.
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Re: Friday night used to be so much fun

Postby whatwhat » 01 Jul 2012, 12:19

I get you so much ukguy.
I had a hen weekend this weekend.
10 of my best friends on a mad weekend away with plenty of the social pressure!
Worst I ate was a couple of sandiwiches and few glasses of wine and still bled with pain this morning after being ok for a week.
I came home early instead of staying with my girls for more fun and games...and now on the sofa feeling completely annoyed & thinkin how unfair it feels. I'm getting sick of being the one moaning all the time about it, don't feel any of them really understand how much it's upsetting me. (not their fault it's just one of those things isn't it)
Starting to really obsess over what goes in and comes out now. Heaven knows I'm miserable today with you too uk guy
Sending a hug
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Re: Friday night used to be so much fun

Postby ukguy » 01 Jul 2012, 15:33

I am so sorry whatwhat. All I can say is I share your mental and physical pain! This weekend I had an awards evening Friday night (open bar), friends leaving do Saturday (free bar) and then friends 50th birthday party in the park today (booze was flowing).
A year ago I would have been all over this weekend like a cheap suit, but then that's probably why I am where I am. I watched a bloke today, about my age, he must have downed 8 cans of beer, ate several plates of crisps and sausages, and looked like he didn't have a care in the world and I just thought 'you lucky sod'.
But then I thought again, and I thought about the crap he was putting into his body and that would have been me. I looked at my plate of salad and salmon and my glass of juice and thought that perhaps, just perhaps, this AF is my body's way of telling me something. You can't go on like that bloke for long. Admittedly I would have settled for a couple of pints and just a few sausages but it's not to be, at least not yet.
All over this forum you hear the same thing - be patient - and as crap as that might feel at times, it's what we have to do. I'm really sorry you had a relapse, same happened to me last week after 3.5 weeks, but we have to get back on the regime and just try and be patient.
We will get there, and in the meantime we're thinking a lot more carefully about what we put into our bodies and it might just help us enormously in the long term. This might be our yellow card warning. The other bloke downing all that beer might just get a straight red card with no warning and that would be far worse.
Take it easy and keep strong.
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Re: Friday night used to be so much fun

Postby AFpaininthebutt » 01 Jul 2012, 19:49

ukguy:
I really appreciate what you said.
Its been frustrating. I struggle with accepting the lifestyle change that accompanies AF, but your post helped.
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Re: Friday night used to be so much fun

Postby whatwhat » 02 Jul 2012, 05:57

uk guy
So very true. Wise words!
I told the hen this weekend I was being good and she sort of gave me the look as if to say - really, on my hen do, can't you just let your hair down for a couple of days? We had a cocktail class in front of a load of people at a busy bar and I had absolutely no choice but to drink chilli shots (oh my god, horrific). The pressure was massive for me though with everyone clapping and shouting me on, even though it was fun for everyone else and they weren't to know how I felt... I felt like I would genuinely be ruining other peoples fun if I didn't do it - the party pooper. I think the difficult bit about this weekend for me has been more about having to live up to peoples expectations of " having fun " than living up to my own. I had a great time, but it was dulled a bit by the AF and the fact I felt I couldn't fully engage without the danger of paying the consequences, which eventually I did! ahhhhh
You are right though, as far as changing our diet and general lifestyle etc go, we should accept the yellow card and appreciate that it is not a red. It is all in our mind set. Not to wish bad on anyone at all, but realistically sausage and crisp man could most likely end up with bigger problems than an AF.
I'm so glad you're on here as you seem to have a similar lifestyle to what I have been having too i.e all over free bars and parties like a cheap suit (v funny). I can eat and drink people under the table yet remain (fairly) slim so always thought I was lucky it didn't take it's toll but now I am realising it was, just not where I or anyone else could see it. I think my day yesterday was like your retear day last week deffo where you just felt deflated by it, but today is a new one eh....
:)
Now .... anyone for prune juice?
WW
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Re: Friday night used to be so much fun

Postby ukguy » 02 Jul 2012, 06:18

Yep, I get that ww. I write a blog in my spare time, but my AF ailment is an embarrassment I keep hidden from my friends who read it, so unfortunately I can't send you the link as that would open up a black hole portal affecting the time-space continuum forever.
Anyway, I just wrote a new entry that is secretly about my AF fissure misery, dressed up as a general 'getting old' whinge and moan. I'm sure you will relate to it ;-)
Blog:
It was around the time I turned 40 that the hangover became a two day affair. As a younger man, a mug of tea and a bacon butty would usually clear the fug, but in my 40s, I noticed it took much more, and with a much longer recovery period.
As I get older, I have noticed I've developed a much more focused sense of my own mortality. Niggling aches and pains, recurring and persistent injuries that won't go away, and other medical ailments that were once just words you heard uttered by grandparents, are now being uttered to me, by my own doctor.
I'm certainly not alone here I think, friends of mine are also suffering more. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, overweight, warnings of heart problems, cancer scares, warnings of impending diabetes - these are all phrases I hear increasingly. Some directed at myself, some at friends of mine.
Sometimes, at least in my view, the medical responses are lazily diagnosed by disinterested GPs (I will blog about Statins one day), but generally the basic premise, the warning, is usually well founded in solid science. In layman's terms they're clear indications that our bodies are being stretched beyond their functional operating range, and we all face two choices in response to such news - we either carry on, ignoring the warning signs, continue to live life to the full and perhaps die at an earlier age (crash & burn), or we moderate our behaviour in some way.
I'm not preaching one approach over the other here. Each to one's own, say I. Some people are perfectly happy living their lives to the full, preferring to burn the candle at both ends, possibly dying earlier but leading a much higher quality existence in the meantime. I'm too scared to do that. Death worries me, I have too much still to do and I'm not ready to ignore these warnings, so my personal choice is to try and follow the second route of moderation.
As a younger person, moderation to me just meant having a day off, whereas in my 40s it really means lifestyle changes, serious lifestyle changes, and that takes a lot of getting used to. Especially for me as I haven't traditionally done moderation very well as I tend to do extremes. Intense days of excess, followed by several days of complete abstinence. And as I said earlier, that seemed to work as a kid. Flush out the old system, give your body a 'ctrl-alt-del' style reboot and off we would go again.
That doesn't work too well in middle age though. I've found that out, and that's why I'm now trying to practice the true art of long term moderation. That no longer means taking it easy Mon-Thurs then going balls-out Fri-Sun, it means taking it easy, (almost) always.
At first that was a depressing thought, but recently I tried it. This past weekend was an interesting one as I had social events Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. All three events centred around drinking, as is the British way, and so all three came with a certain level of social/peer pressure to participate.
In the past, when trying to moderate and faced with such a weekend, I would have responded in one of two ways:
- avoided the occasions altogether, made excuses and not turned up, or
- dragged myself reluctantly to the events and sat in the corner avoiding as much human interaction as I could get away with, watching the clock, rocking from side to side, sobbing and stroking a dead sparrow, begging my wife to take me home so I could beat myself with birch twigs.
This weekend however, I tried a different approach. On Friday night I had one pint of Guinness, and no more. On Saturday night I had one glass of champagne to toast soon-to-be absent friends, and on Sunday I just drank soft drinks. Sounds easy doesn't it? But for me that isn't easy. For me, that first drink has always been like a klaxon going off in my head, the sign that we are now officially off and running, the red mist would rise and that first beer would turn into a second, that would turn into a third, then perhaps move onto wine if I was feeling bloated from the ale, maybe 2-3 glasses of Shiraz (ironically feeling virtuous having switched from hop to grape), then be driven home to continue drinking in front of the TV, rounding off the evening off with a couple of fine malts, convincing myself I deserved them using some kind of warped logic that also makes the drunkard think a kebab is a good idea at 1am.
And you now what? It felt good*. And that's because a significant knock-on effect of not boozing is an improved diet. The urges for that kebab or another bag of crisps are nowhere near as strong or as attractive to the sober mind as the inebriated one. The perverted logic that I need salty, fatty food to soak up the booze looks as flawed as it always should to the sober mind, whereas to the soused brain such logic seems scientifically sound and positively health promoting. "Yes, a burger from that white van opposite the taxi rank, that's just what I need right now, I am going to live forever".
I enjoyed my weekend. I did have a couple of drinks, drinks I enjoyed as drinks in their own right, not as precursors to an evening of hedonistic indulgence. I had many lucid conversations with friends, made some new acquaintances, and still remember their names. I slept well, rose early each morning, had productive days and returned to work on Monday feeling relaxed, fresh and raring to go.
* What utter bullsh1t. I looked on more than a little enviously at some of the imbibers who were slurping their way through several bottles of very nice red wine, pizza cheese stuck to their chins, and I desperately wanted to unshackle myself from this new, boring regime and get bloody stuck in. I wanted it badly and I felt utterly miserable nursing my warm, flat, sweet glass of coke. I looked on misty eyed. I called them names. I was insanely jealous if truth be told. I wanted to do that so much. I told myself it was the chimp inside talking, trying to get out, the chimp who desperately wanted me to be one of the troop, down with the lads, getting wrecked.
But I can't. Not any more. And it's hard.
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Re: Friday night used to be so much fun

Postby whatwhat » 02 Jul 2012, 06:49

You have a brilliant, wonderful way with words! If you blog any more (secretly or otherwise) about your AF and lifestyle changes do share, as long as it doesn't cause the black hole of course :)
Love the usage of ctrl-alt-del, that sums up life as an "extremer" pretty well!
In fact, the whole computer analogy is very apt.
Maybe we are in a stage of whole system de-frag at the moment instead of that quick fix ctrl-alt-del. De-frag always takes longer and is always more boring, but the system is always far faster afterwards.
Unless of course you have a high end apple mac, in which case de-frags just don't tend to be necessary. Oh how those with Windows PC's look enviously upon those mac owners who can't recall what a pop up or trojan virus look like, sauntering their way through cyber life with only the odd rare technical slip up/failure as other around them sit on hold to a Windows customer service agent in Delhi for 6 hours to ask how the hell they can get the anti virus software doing it's job.
We are those de-fragging PC owners right now uk guy and that man with his sausages is the Mac...for now!
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Re: Friday night used to be so much fun

Postby ukguy » 02 Jul 2012, 07:17

Fantastic, I love the PC/Mac analogy. Ironically I am a Mac user, but living a Windows PC type existence ;-)
Defrag is perfect for what we're going through. I've just had a defrag lunch #boring
This forum is like a retreat in a country house. We are the in-patients, and as people heal, they stand up, tell their success story and leave, and us 'residents' are left feeling both happy (for them) and sad (for us defraggers left behind).
If I ever reach the point where I have my knapsack on my back and my release papers in hand, I hereby pledge my life to helping the remaining residents.
"Hi, my name is ukguy and I am an AF sufferer".
Thanks for cheering me up. As the sign says, "You don't have to have an AF to be here, but it helps".
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