I toy with not drinking all the time. I wrote on someone else’s blog about drinking and how I’ve played the game of switching which drugs/organs to abuse to give the other ones a rest. Well, except for the pot using to quit cigarettes — you inhale smoke with both, I just did a lot less pot than cigarettes. Quit smoking was hard because I loved the ritual of it, playing with the smoke, blowing smoke rings (tried and hated vaping almost immediately). I no longer smoke anything and the cigarettes were by far harder than pot. Three days off pot and it was no big deal. Three days off cigarettes was like losing a friend, but an abusive one…

Giving up my wine is going to be right up there with losing a friend. I don’t like drunk, and I hardly drink outside of my home with more than 1–2 wines, once in awhile a shot. Mainly, because I hate the expense. I met a friend once at a very nice bar and she got there first. So, she ordered me a Glenlivet scotch (I paid for it, not her), and I nearly gagged when I found out one shot was $14. Ok, that’s very expensive for me. So, I drink at home, and it is ok if I’m alone. I clean, I think, I purge closets, I dance, I sit in my hot tub, I sit outside, garden, and I love(d) it.

Here’s what I don’t like about it… I don’t like the weight gain because it’s all in the belly, or the distention I’m noticing. (I don’t like to exercise much because I have missing cartilage in my knees, and I never like swimming, so it won’t be a replacement.) I become more reclusive, my entire family has sleep disorders whether drinking or not, but it doesn’t help. I think that I shouldn’t drink even though I rarely get drunk, and usually by accident because I drank a shot with it. I love flavors, I hate pop except for an occasional cold one on a hot day because my system doesn’t handle carbonation very well. So, I quit beer except for an occasional one on a hot day…but I just bloat from them both.

My first husband discovered recently that he has Liver cancer (on top of Hep C), and that’s what my baby brother died from at age 51, but he had a fear of dying of old age, too. I don’t want to die from liver cancer. I don’t want to die from lung cancer, either. I don’t even want pancreatitis — my brother in law died from pancreatic cancer. I have relatives who drank and smoked into their 80s and 90s so I have no idea which way my die (haha) is cast. My aunt who was always afraid of alcohol — said she was allergic to it — because of the alcoholism in my dad’s family, died at 57 from lung cancer. I don’t know, is it a crap shoot? I do use PEMF — Pulsed ElectroMagnetic Field therapies to heal my body, and I listen to lots of subliminal binaural beats, brainwave entrainment, etc. when I’m sleeping. I feel better when I use them, so I know they work and it’s not just ‘snake oil’..

The problem for me is it accentuates whatever mood I’m feeling; sadness, anger, happiness, confidence…but then, I don’t know how much of that mood is real. I can be reclusive, anyhow, because my work involves touching people’s bodies and as an Empath, it is hard to not absorb their energies and then decipher which are mine, and which are taken from them. Not that wine helps with deciphering…

Amy is right, it is a slippery slope, and if your energy is already down 25%, look at that. I am speaking to myself, as well, here. I am saying all these things to me as I say them to you, dear Audience. Maybe I’d also be less giving if my emotions weren’t enhanced because I may have a different judgement on someone else’s plight in life. I have no real answers because I am working this one out myself. I’m a workaholic, too, and trying to not be that, as well. But, I’m quite happy working even when others my age are retiring. You ate more sugar because you were trying to replace the alcohol sugars. Since the brain needs glucose, it knows where the sugar is, and it can be a feel good food. So far I don’t have a chocolate habit….

Namaste.