Bigger, badder drunk driving penalties

I think it's probably a proper punishment for a drunk driver to lose his/her license. I mean, you're driving a one ton weapon at other people. More often than not, you're going to make a bad judgment call and hit something/someone.

Now, California can take your license away for ten years if you have three offenses. I think it's pretty insane that you have to screw up 3 times to get your license revoked for that long. Apparently, three times is the charm. The first time, they only revoke your license for 6 months. I think that may be pretty standard, though I think my friend lost his license for a year. Wait, that was a second offense. That makes sense.

Right now, the law in CA is one year for every offense.After the fourth offense, it doesn't say what the penalty is. I bet there are a lot of folks who just drive without licenses after a fourth offense. I wonder if you get a fifth or sixth in ten years if it's just automatic jail time.

I think ten for 3 times is a gigantic jump, but probably a good penalty. If you don't learn your lesson the first two times, you're probably not going to learn it anytime soon.

Dehydration sucks

I think I'm dehydrated. I've kinda got the shakes, and I know it's not booze related, cause it's been almost 90 days since my last drink. But man have I been inhaling the caffeine.

I have a really addictive personality, apparently. Once I start doing something, I just can't seem to stop. I can't have one anything. If I have one, I want another immediately. I want another cookie. I want another breakfast. I want another cup of coffee or diet Coke. I want to keep running even when I'm tired and hurting. I want to write another blog post. I want to drive a few more miles. I want, I want, I want.

So part of AA is learning to let go of these wants and ask what God wants. Does God want me to have another diet Coke? Apparently not, since he's saying through my body, "Drink some water, damn it!" I should probably do that, huh? I don't know when the last time I drank water was, but I'm sure I could get addicted to it if I tried.

In the deep

I was discussing a lot of stuff with my therapist tonight, and she always seems to be amazed by me. It's neat. We talked about my last big depression, where I was a 9 on a scale of 10. It's back in 07 when I was unemployed for three months and off meds.

It started out ok. Well, I was manic. I was drinking like crazy, cooking bacon in the middle of the night, and generally annoying my roommate/boyfriend. I was up all the time, but never leaving the house. And then I started not leaving the living room. And then I never left the little red armchair. It's a plush chair, and really comfortable. And so I moved my laptop to the chair one day, and didn't leave for about three weeks.

I slept in the chair. I didn't shower or change my clothes. I didn't really get up except to go to the bathroom and to eat. And I stayed in the chair to eat, too. I just loved my little chair in the living room, where we could close the shades. I would be sitting in the dark when he came home just sending out my resume all over the place.

My therapist asked, "Well if you were so depressed, how did you job hunt?" Will. Luckily, I'm a pretty strong-willed gal. People I know are laughing right now, cause strong-willed doesn't quite cover it. Stubborn. Determined. Willful in the first degree. So all I did was set up a search and refresh it constantly. I applied for anything and everything. I just sent email after email from my chair, and stared at the computer screen.

It took me 2 months to move from the chair, and the only thing that did it was an interview. They called me, and I put on my "cheerleader voice." It's that fake happy voice we all have. They called me in for an interview and I got up out of the chair, took a shower, and drove down. It was the first time I'd really been out of the house in months, except maybe to go to a bar. I think I went to the bar once or twice then, but mostly I drank at home. My boyfriend bought everything, which is good, because I was getting poor, too.

Anyway, I made it to the interview. I must have looked ok, because they hired me, but I remember feeling a mess and being really exhausted after from all the effort. It took me another 4 months to crawl out of that depression. I was back on medication and had a sense of purpose in getting out of bed every day. I was out of the chair and back at work.

525 calories

I keep thinking I should be losing weight from quitting drinking. I mean, alcohol has a lot of sugar and calories, right? And if I was drinking a bottle or two a night, that's a lot of calories! In fact, a bottle of wine has about 525 calories. That's 1,050 calories a night some nights. And women my size only need about 1,900 to 2,000 calories a day to live. So the majority of my calories came from alcohol.

But it's not working out that way. At least I'm staying the same weight, but I'm sure not losing any. I suppose it's all the replacement sugar (read: cookies and ice cream) I'm eating to make up for it. That urge is starting to wear off, though, so perhaps it'll change soon. I'll be able to stop taking in so many calories through junk, and get back to eating fruits and veggies for the majority of my meals.

I'm still on Weight Watchers, but I haven't been really good about it. Plus, I've been a slacker with running. I finally ran this weekend, and my legs are now really pissed at me. So maybe I should do it more often?

To the newcomers

I know I'm still new, but I remember being really new. Being there in the room and saying: I'm an alcoholic. I wasn't sure I believed what I was saying. I mean, I believed I was an alcoholic, but I couldn't believe I was actually saying it to a room full of strangers.

There were a lot of newcomers in the meeting tonight, so we talked about the first three steps. They were pretty hard. Admitting you're powerless and insane is hard to do. "But I've been able to take just one drink..." you think. And then you think back on it. Could you, really? I sure couldn't. I had to take more than one, more than 10. I couldn't stop. That's powerlessness.

And it was driving me insane. I couldn't stop. I drank for grief, I drank for anger, I drank because the sun was up, because the sun was down, because I was off work, and I always wanted a beer at lunch, even during work. It's hard here, because there is alcohol everywhere. Every restaurant has a liquor license. There's wine at every store. There's all my haunts on every corner. I know going home won't solve that, my old haunts are there, too. It's just time that will make those places lose their powers.

Step three is still a challenge. Every day I have to tell myself: turn it over. It's not your decision. It's hard to do. All you want to do is take over the wheel, to be selfish. Someone said tonight, "I don't think much of myself, but I'm all I think about." It's so true. Alcoholics, and I think really everyone, is only concerned with themselves. People are inherently selfish, because we're all worried about our own role in the world. We worry what others think of us, what we look like, how we sound, etc.

And that's what AA can do: make you less selfish. AA helps you think of others, and stop pondering yourself all the time, but lets you think about your role in things and how to make yourself better. It's a nice combination of inward and outward reflection.

Diabetes and mental illness... chicken and egg?

So now they've found a link between diabetes and mental illness. "We know that people with diabetes have an increased incidence of mood and other psychiatric disorders," they say. I had no idea! I wouldn't think that an insulin disorder would have anything to do with a dopamine problem, but...

"...insulin -- the hormone that governs glucose metabolism in the body -- also regulates the brain's supply of dopamine -- a neurotransmitter with roles in motor activity, attention and reward. Disrupted dopamine signaling has been implicated in brain disorders including depression, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder."

Huh. So your insulin levels actually help moderate your brain function. But of course, and this doesn't make sense, a lot of psychiatric drugs can cause diabetes. If insulin regulates brain disorders, why mess with insulin and cause people to become diabetic? This is the part that makes no sense to me.

There's a lot of diabetes in my family, and a lot of mental illness. I'll have to see which one came first.

Death comes to us all

I hate death. I don't know if it's because it scares me and I don't want to die, though I don't know that I have that fear, but whenever people are sick and dying it just hits me really hard.

When my grandpas died, I was a mess. During both of the funerals I cried more than my grandmothers, or my parents. I cried through the whole thing. I got super wasted after both of them, and tried to drink away all the feelings. And now, Ms. Grace is really sick. She's just my neighbor, but it's still really bugging me. She's so spunky and full of life! I just can't imagine her being sick enough to actually die. She is in the hospital now, and covered in bruises from the blood thinner and a fall she had. She's got cancer that's everywhere, even in her brain. My upstairs neighbor, the paramedic, read her chart and said it really doesn't look good. I just can't imagine.

It may have all started with my first funeral. I was obsessed with death as a kid, and even wanted to be a forensic pathologist. I thought all that stuff was so cool, and would dissect anything I could find. I would bring dead roadkill home and ask my parents if I could dissect it, and they always made me throw it away.

Anyway, when I was around 13, my friends' mom died of cancer. We went to the wake, and she was all dressed up in makeup (which she never wore) and had on a weird wig (which was so unlike her hair). She just didn't look like herself, and it hit me: I know this woman. I loved this woman. She took care of me. And now she's no longer here. And I cried. And I almost vomited in the parking lot (actually, I may have). And I cried.

Death of my loved ones is not my friend. I was still able to go on dissecting things I had no personal relationship to, but I think even if my dog died I wouldn't be able to look. I'm just not good with death.