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Everything posted by GlenFromTheMailRoom
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Will you still live in the U.S. in 20 years?
GlenFromTheMailRoom replied to TexArcher's topic in Cloak Room
We're pretty politically moderate and have owned a home in the Durango area for 5 years now. We're pretty used to it and can tune them out. -
Will you still live in the U.S. in 20 years?
GlenFromTheMailRoom replied to TexArcher's topic in Cloak Room
This is us as well if you add NZ to the mix. The wife and I have been actively looking at selling both houses and setting up shop in the Boulder area. -
Figured I would post an update with how things are going. I was able to connect with @BearSchlong and had a great conversation with him. We were out of town for spring break and I actually attended a meeting where we were at. It's a smaller town in Colorado and the crowd was a bit rougher. I didn't participate much outside of formalities and did a lot of listening. Felt a bit out of place as we're in town frequently but don't live there. We've had our place there for a few years but still don't know very many people outside of our direct neighbors. First toes dipped in and wasn't an unpleasant experience. I plan on going to the weekly meeting near us as I feel like I'll be able to connect with that group a bit better. The anxiety was up and down all week. Rough at the start of the week with enough of a lull in the middle to take the kids skiing a few days. Overall we had a good time even though I was dealing with the mental and physical toll the anxiety takes on me. There seems to be a direct correlation with the amount of sleep I get and how bad it's going to be the next day. The littles don't sleep very well there and eventually I just let them sleep with their mom in our room and slept upstairs. The drive home was a little less intense than the previous few days and I was able to get some driving done to give the wife a break which is actually a big accomplishment when I'm like that. Another thing that popped up while I was there was symptoms of gastritis which was no fun. Chest pain, indigestion, and digestive issues which of course kicked off the anxiety. The local quack shack has great people there but didn't give me the best advice on what to take and not to take to manage it. Was having a rough day with it yesterday when we got home so I went to the minute clinic and they remarkably had a GI there that actually took what I was saying seriously because the other doc that was there was the first one that saw me when I was sobering up and had appendicitis. He told me to ignore what the other folks said and to carpet bomb myself with malox, sulfacrate (sp?), avoid NSAIDs & steroids, and continue to taking prilosec to flush my stomach out. I was able to have an initial telehealth visit with a psychiatrist in the Austin area to a grip on the anxiety issues. I really enjoyed meeting with her and have setup a weekly meeting to get a formal diagnosis and try CBT. I'm trying to avoid taking benzos for obvious reasons and SSRIs don't agree with me either. I've been doing meditation sessions in the morning and evenings before bed and those seem to be helping - at least to get me to restful sleep. Tuesday will be 9 weeks since my last drink. Keep fighting the good fight. It sucks but it's worth it.
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Apologies for being a bit slow to respond - the family and I are in Colorado for Spring Break. Things have ebb'd and flowed. Had a really good week last week except for last weekend. My brother in law had a bday party for his wife on the friday before this past one and their group is a pretty rowdy party bunch. I didn't partake and kept club soda in my hand all night to the amazement of some of the folks there. Being around that much booze though seemed to trigger some of the PAWS symptoms and I started getting the brain zaps while we were there. We left shortly after and I spent most of the weekend just getting by and exercising. It seems when episodes like that hit, they stick around for a 24-36 hour period and leave me feeling pretty terrible but I try to dull them with a workout. I still haven't had any urges to drink mentally but my body still freaks out. This past week was better most of the week until Friday. No brain zaps, thank god, but good sleep was really hard to come by this weekend. I'm pretty dead on my feet but can't seem to fall all the way asleep and that seemed to trigger an episode last night that lasted through this afternoon. More body zaps and racing thoughts. I'm going to try to load up on melatonin tonight and see if that helps on the sleep front. If there is a positive side of things, It seems like I'm slowly going longer periods between bad days. Even if it's an additional day each week between episodes, if that makes any sense, I'll take the wins where I can get them. There was an issue with my insurance coverage on the outpatient recovery center. They said that since I'm not actively drinking that my insurance kicked back the approval. They called today and said they had a work around but I haven't had the time to call them back. I'm going to see what they have to say and hopefully it's good news. I'm hoping they can help with the withdraw symptoms somehow because those days are the worst. Tuesday will be 2 months since my last drink. I know these things take time but the bad days can be brutal. Keep fighting the good fight.
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Apologies if my messages in this thread get long winded. Consider this as part of my journaling exercises associated with the process. I hope that anything shared in here might help others that are considering getting sober and if you need help to seek out the resources that are available. I've learned that you can't start your recovery journey if you don't take the first step. Today was a much better day. Got a good nights sleep last night and no feelings of overwhelming anxiety today, no brain zaps, etc.. I went ahead and called Sage recovery center today and had a great conversation with the staff there. They agreed that it sounded like PAWS and I went ahead and initiated the intake process to help manage my way through PAWS symptoms and to have a third party keep me accountable to seeing things through. One fortunate part of the appendectomy is that now my out pocket is covered for the year, doing the evening outpatient program for 7 weeks would cost less than my old monthly booze expenditures. I'd do the inpatient but I have to work. In addition to that, they have a clinician & psychiatrist onsite in the event any medication is required to help manage the PAWS symptoms. That's good to know. Are there any specific ones you recommend? I've tried a few here and there but it was interment/spot dosing so that may be the reason I never noticed any benefits. I think I may have similar issues with euphoric recall and have switched to kombucha mixed with soda water to have something to keep my drinking hand occupied. That seems to be helping except. The only downside to drinking that much water is that I have to piss every half hour. I'm dropping the light dosing of THC drinks as well as I think that euphoric recall may be coming from those as well. I hope I'm understanding and using that terminology correctly. For the short term, I'm going to be using the nightly outpatient meetings to satisfy this part. I worry that going to any informal meetings at this juncture might trigger something and kick me into anxious state. When I have a better grasp on things, I do plan on attending weekly meetings near me. I'm currently in the Lake Travis area if anyone has any recommendations for groups in the area. The timeline went pretty much like this: Panic Attack in early October -> first pass at tapering consumption -> get put on first round of SSRIs because of the panic attack -> PAWS symptoms kick in -> change SSRI because of symptoms -> repeat the last two steps two more times with trips to the er splashed in -> go two weeks without drinking just to fuck up and have a couple glasses of wine after a week of feeling okay -> ER the next day because of what I thought was SSRI side effects -> restart sobriety clock -> switch to THC drinks to help manage what I now know is PAWS symptoms -> stop taking SSRIs completely -> appendix ruptures -> narcotic based painkillers kick my dick in the dirt -> PAWS symptoms persist -> Me thinking the PAWS symptoms are the SSRIs not being out of my body -> mix in good days & bad days -> realize the SSRIs aren't in my system anymore and the symptoms are still there -> go see a cardiologist to see if it's my heart and told everything looks fine but a get a heart rate monitor to be safe -> fire previous behavior health specialist that kept throwing stuff at me instead of looking for the root cause -> start internet sleuthing to figure out what might be going on -> decide to visit the alcoholics thread on surly and make my first post -> today. I'm trying to be thoughtful, deliberate, and cautious with how I handle things so I don't wind up in the same situation you did. No offense. I hope my explanation of the timeline clarifies things a bit. It's been a rollercoaster to say the least.
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Today was another shitty day. I took a minute and looked into what you mentioned and after reading a bit more about PAWS, I think this is spot on. Almost everything on the PAWS Iist of symptoms has been going on. I was able to get in touch with a different mental health professional today because the last one wasn't listening and I feel like he should have brought this up instead of throwing a bunch antidepressants at me that just made things worse. I'm talking with them tomorrow at 8am to see if there's anything they do in the short term while I get the CBT piece figured out. Thank you for bringing this up and I sincerely mean that. I would have never found PAWS without you mentioning this and would have just tried to tough it out using edibles to help manage the anxiety. Happy to report back tomorrow after I speak with the mental health professional. I'm also going to talk to some folks over at a detox center to see if inpatient/outpatient might be the way to go while I get a handle on this. Thanks again for mentioning this. I owe you a box of Omaha steaks. I've actually used these types of drinks in the past as an alternative to wine & beer in social situations. Hop water I think it's called. In addition to those, I've been taking lion's mane gummies along with my vitamins in the morning which I don't know if it's actually doing anything but I'm willing to try pretty much anything on days like today.
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Well. I decided to start my journey to sobriety 6 weeks ago and what a rollercoaster it's been. I'd been trying to stop drinking for a while but was never really committed to it. New year's resolution agreement with myself type of deal. Well, that's when the anxiety decided to really start fucking with me. Any time I had anything to drink, especially after overindulging, I would have the absolute worst anxiety the next day - at least that's what the Dr.'s told me it was. Totally lethargic, shame, overly concerned about my health etc.. Where things really came to ahead was having a full blown panic attack. I've been healthy as a horse my entire life (minus the obvious) and have never had to deal with anything like what was going on. I've gone for a 30 minute jog every morning, work out at the gym 5 days a week, eat clean, take a multi-vitamin, and all the other healthy stuff one can try to do for years and this was new territory for me. I was driving to my oldest's soccer game in Bastrop and the panic attack hit me out of nowhere. I've never had any major health issues but my father has high blood pressure issues and my grandfather died of a heart attack when I was 1 and that's what I thought was going on. I had never experienced anything like it. Chest got tight, heart was pounding, vision was going black, and sweating bullets. I had my youngest in the car with me and had to pull off the road and call 911. The EMS showed up 5 minutes after I called and said no heart attack and gave me shot to calm everything down. Scared the living shit out of me to the point that I had them drive me to the ER so I could hear it from the doctor themselves. This is when the fun really started. After the quick trip to the ER to have them tell me nothing was actually wrong with me, I decided it was time to stop. In addition to that, I went to see a behavioral health specialist because of the panic attack and to see if there was anything they could give me to help manage the anxiety while I was trying to sober up. Turns out my body didn't respond well to any type of SSRI and because of it, 3 more trips to the ER happened because they were actually making the physical effects of the anxiety/withdrawl that much worse. Insomnia, high blood pressure, tinnitus, etc. You name the side effect, I had it. The last nail in the coffin was when out of nowhere my blood pressure shot up to 180/110 and another trip to the er just to say I have runners cardiovascular system and nothing was wrong. They did ct scans with the dye of pretty much my entire body and drew what felt like half a gallon of blood over all these er visits just to have everyone say "You're fine.". I threw all that shit in the trash (I don't know how shit that does that kind of stuff to people can be legal but also understand that it helps others) and started fresh with the cold turkey approach. Because shit wasn't already hard enough with the anxiety and trying to get sober, my appendix decided to rupture in the middle of my oldest's birthday dinner. After yet another trip to ER and one less appendix later, I was back home within 48 hours. This is when I learned that I'm overly sensitive to pretty much any medication. While dealing with going cold turkey from booze and trying to manage my anxiety (thank god for THC), the pain meds they gave me decided I wasn't dealing with enough and decided to join the party. I wound up losing 8 pounds in a week and felt like my skin was crawling before switching to just Tylenol so things would hopefully normalize. I wound up gaining some of the weight back but not all of it, turns out no booze while working keeping up with your fitness is a good way to get back in better shape fast, and have had more good days than bad since. The bad days have been hell but I'm committed to no alcohol. I've honestly had no desire to drink because of everything that's gone on with my body the past few months. I had no idea just how shot my nervous system was but I also understand that I have to reap what I've sewn. I did have a couple of questions for those others in recovery regarding the anxiety. Did anyone else deal with anything like this? Going 4-5 days of feeling fine just to wind up having a bad day out of nowhere? Did it eventually get better with/without SSRIs? Keep fighting the good fight. Glenn
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Transfer Cycle 2024-2025 - Handjob Helobious Is the Man!
GlenFromTheMailRoom replied to closetojumping's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
It's a good thing Jesus only cares about football. Lord knows he can't hit a curveball. -
I thought this was pretty decent without it being half an hour long.
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Transfer Cycle 2024-2025 - Handjob Helobious Is the Man!
GlenFromTheMailRoom replied to closetojumping's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
A younger, uglier, and slightly obese Barry Switzer was where my mind went. -
Transfer Cycle 2024-2025 - Handjob Helobious Is the Man!
GlenFromTheMailRoom replied to closetojumping's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Frankly, this is a short-sighted and stupid comment that you should feel bad about. Assuming it's those schools, in that order, in terms of portal budget and Texas is No. 4 out of 133 D1 football teams - Id say that's pretty fucking prepared. -
Transfer Cycle 2024-2025 - Handjob Helobious Is the Man!
GlenFromTheMailRoom replied to closetojumping's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Multiple crazies. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2025: Duck Around and Find Out
GlenFromTheMailRoom replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Nick Brooks looks like he's trimmed down a little. -
My wife's family has had vacation property next door to Will Stone's family for years now. Saw the Stone family over the break and asked Will when he was going to get a fair shake at taking FGs. He just shook his head and said he didn't want to talk about it. At least he got to try PATs vs. Ohio State.
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Texas Recruiting Notes 2025: Duck Around and Find Out
GlenFromTheMailRoom replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Those types are usually grad risks. Which means he should have zero issues getting into aggy. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2025: Duck Around and Find Out
GlenFromTheMailRoom replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
Lockett looks like he's going at 75% while Currie is going full speed. -
Getting snow reports back from Wolf Creek. Skiing was just okay over the holidays. Looks like the next few days are trying to make up for the lack of snow so far. Fingers crossed for spring ski.
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Texas Recruiting Notes 2025: Duck Around and Find Out
GlenFromTheMailRoom replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
The comment still stands. -
Texas Recruiting Notes 2025: Duck Around and Find Out
GlenFromTheMailRoom replied to texifornia's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
No. His parents just didn't have cable tv. -
Transfer Cycle 2024-2025 - Handjob Helobious Is the Man!
GlenFromTheMailRoom replied to closetojumping's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
I'm pretty sure Southern University is already taken. -
Transfer Cycle 2024-2025 - Handjob Helobious Is the Man!
GlenFromTheMailRoom replied to closetojumping's topic in 🤫$9.95🤫
In my last year of pop warner we had two members of the 2005 national championship team and a 2nd round draft pick on the team. We went 1-8 that year and I'm pretty sure our best player then is now a convicted felon. -
Texas A&M Recruiting 2025: The Land of Melk & No Money
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