Day 27 without alcohol.  I'm genuinely shocked.  Can't even remember the last time I did that.  Pretty sure my age started with a 2, the year did not, and the Radio City Christmas Spectacular was to blame (I was a Rockette...that gig is 16 shows per week and my team started at 9am).  But since then, never.

I'm actually bummed Dryuary is coming to an end...for the following reasons:

Skin - My face is looking chiseled again.  No more puffer fish.  I don't dread seeing myself on camera or feel the need to stay far away from the lens.  A few small eruptions from either too much coffee or my skin is jumping in to help my body eliminate toxins.  Probably both.

Scale - Read 131.8 lbs...lost almost 7 lbs exactly, and I still have 5 days to go!

Sleep - Never better...and that's huge for a bipolar bear like me.  Not too long ago, I was in the throws of the worst manic episode of my life.  I was getting 2-4 hours of sleep per night for 6 months.  Before that I'd get 8 hours spread out over 12 (sleep 4, awake 4, sleep 4).  Insomnia will drive you insane.  There's a reason sleep deprivation is used to torture and break POWs.  Turns out the most important things in life aren't money and power...they're pooping and sleeping.  Ask Elvis.

Savings - I saved about $300... I know.

I wish I had it in me to go the distance, whether it's 2 more months for the magic 90 days or forever.  I probably do.  This has been very empowering (powerless my ass...never tell anyone they're powerless...unless you have them tied naked to a bottomless chair and are about to swing something at their nut sack).  But I don't have the desire.  I can't wait to have an IPA during the Super Bowl, or to have Champagne during the Oscars, or to visit a local winery with my husband to taste their pinot noir and pick their brains for growing tips.  I still need to do that blind taste test between Grey Goose and Oregon Spirit.  I really do want to visit every winery, brewery and distillery in Oregon (scoot over Julie & Julia).

Dry January is kind of like your parents coming home early to find you're having an out of control party.   "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!?"  The music stops, the lights come on. You know you're fucked.  "YOU...OUT! YOU...YOU'RE GROUNDED!  ONE MONTH WITHOUT ALCOHOL.  EVERYONE ELSE CLEAR OUT!  NOW!!!"

And after a month you swear you've learned your lesson, you'll never do it again, "Now may I please go play with my friend?"

"Fine.  But be RESPONSIBLE."

"I will."

"We'll see."

I look forward to this Friday (my first dry day was January 5th, so I have to stay after school 4 days in February).  But I'm going to enjoy the heck out of this last week.  I highly recommend Dry January to any and all who love alcohol.  No seriously.  Being high helps.

On a side note, remember that MindBodyGreen link I posted by Elettra Wiedemann?  In it she stated that without alcohol, her PMS symptoms were so minor she almost didn't notice them...yeah...that DID NOT happen for me.

NOW GET OUT.

Day 18 without alcohol.  Feels amazing.  The scale hit a plateau all week, but it finally read 133.9 today (I'm 5'7").  I have cheekbones again.  I'm sleeping better than I have in years.  I love being present in the evenings for my husband.  He likes not having to re-watch the same episode of whatever we're binge watching over and over and over again.  Dry January ROCKS.

The work weekend was hilarious.  One of my fans almost had a meltdown seeing me not drinking.  I finally put my lemon water in a wine glass to make him feel better (it worked).  One fan who takes me for long privates came in and asked if I was drunk yet.  I informed him of my Dryuary choice.  He said "Hmmm...I'll come back in February" and left.  In fact, 2 fans said and did that.  I had to laugh (a relieved laugh) and shake my head.  Why relieved?  Because the lesson learned is AWESOME.  Do what makes ME happy.  If I want to drink once a week on date night with my husband or drink during my shows or drink everyday or not drink at all, it's nobody's business but mine, my husband's, my corgi's, my doctor's, my nurse practitioner's, my therapist's, my yoga instructor's and my hair stylist's (cheekbones).  Everyone who drunk shamed me can go suck a dick...OR...they can get on a scale, take a picture of that number, tweet it, along with their naked picture from neck to navel, then get me a copy of their labs because I am DYING to see their cholesterol and glucose levels.  Then they need to give up red meat, dairy and sugar forever.  It's the ONLY hope for them.  Fuckwads.

I'm not a fan of Christianity, but I do agree with 'Take the plank out of your own eye before you worry about the speck in mine, man boobs.'  - Matthew 7 : 5

My husband who doesn't drink NEVER drunk shamed me.  Not once.  Even after horrific fights brought on by booze.  He was only loving and supportive, offering to get me whatever I needed, going without so I could have.  He's as surprised as I am by this Dryuary thing.  He's never seen me go this long without alcohol in the 2 years he's known me.   4 days was the most.  His abundance of support and lack of judgement were genius.  If you make something forbidden, you'll want it all the more.  If you have it shoved up your butt, you're happy to have a break.  I'm not saying he gave me a chardonnay enema, but considering what we have done, it's not too far fetched.

I admit that's very risky with alcohol (having as much as you want whenever you want...not using it as an enema...that's just fucking retarded).  It's kind of like putting an airplane into a steep dive to put out an engine fire, hoping you'll be able to pull up in time.  Not sure I would recommend it to all who are alcohol addicted, but it seems to have worked for me.

Witchcraft teaches us whatever we put out into the universe comes back to us threefold.  If I'm constantly being drunk shamed, it's my karma for being a judgmental, narcissistic bitch most of my adult life.  In my defense, I was raised by 2 judgmental, narcissistic assholes, so I have a lot to overcome.

I suppose this is the part where I should say we need to stop judging each other and start loving each other and ask you all to open your YouTube hymnals and join me in a chorus of 'Kumbaya'.

But I won't.  There is no 'we need to'... I can only speak for me.  I began exploring Buddhism BECAUSE I'm such a narcissist.  I'd finally learned to love myself and decided I deserved a better life.  And the only way to make it happen was to change my karma.  Not only in creating good, but going out of my way to not create bad.  Learning to have compassion for myself was a profound awakening.  Now if I could just get my head out of my ass long enough to have it for others...

So in keeping with that, from this day forward I vow to focus only on my own shit.  I won't spend one ounce of energy judging or criticizing anyone else or their choices.  I will never give advice unless asked.  I will never use the phrases 'You need to...' or 'You should...'

And I can't WAIT to have an I.P.A.

Namaste

So funny story.  Remember when I said vodka would be fueling my weekend shows?  When I posted that last post I was actually on Day 3 without alcohol (something I hadn't accomplished since March).  In the New Year my goal was to go one day per week without alcohol in January, 2 days in February, 3 in March, 4 in April, and then be at a comfortable cruising altitude I could live with, while still getting my shine on during my shows.  Then I read this mindbodygreen post:

http://www.refinery29.com/quit-drinking-for-a-month?utm_source=mindbodygreen.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=pubexchange_twitter#slide

Then I found this one:

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-23077/i-gave-up-alcohol-for-31-days-heres-how-it-transformed-my-life.html

And this one:

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-16932/quitting-booze-for-a-month-has-some-awesome-benefits.html

Then there was a Dry January segment on Dr. Oz and I was like "Well now I wanna do it."  But I told myself there was no way I'd be able to do it this year.  My body was way too addicted.

There are many who say I'm an alcoholic.  No seriously.  They actually say it.  To my face.  All the time.  The numerous men who've dumped me because of my drinking, not to mention all the fans who come into my chat room and say I need to go to AA.  It's the ONLY hope for me.  People don't think twice about shaming an alcoholic, but they wouldn't dare go to a food court in the mall and tell an obese person they're fat and they need to go to Weight Watchers.  It's the ONLY hope for them.  Someone might film it, put it on YouTube and that would be the end of their life as they know it.  You can't say fat, but apparently you can still say drunk.  I find their unsolicited advice to be the equivalent of saying: "You have cancer and you need to treat it with leeches and bloodletting.  It's your ONLY hope."  Archaic, arrogant, ignorant assholes.

The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

My 28 year old husband was surprised to learn my favorite episode of South Park is 'Bloody Mary'... until he rewatched it.  " Is that really what AA teaches?"  "Yep."  "I thought it was a South Park joke."  "Nope."  "That's ridiculous."  " I know."  "Absolute rubbish."  He's English.

I've been through the AA experience four times.  It's never worked for me and doesn't work for a lot of people.  Fortunately the science and medical monkeys have made incredible advances in the treatment of alcohol addiction, which I consider to be a reversible, healable MEDICAL condition.  God and His big penis are not needed here.

Gabrielle Glaser's book, Her Best Kept Secret: Why Women Drink and How They Can Regain Control, was a game changer for me.  It opened my eyes to Smart Recovery and a world full of women who were just like me.

For the record my husband, who's never had a drop of alcohol in his life, doesn't think I'm an alcoholic, but he's European.  In fact, half of his family is from Cork, Ireland.  Several of his uncles have fallen down while drunk, hit their heads and died, which is considered a natural cause of death in Ireland.   My therapist thinks I have a significant problem and is highly in favor of some outpatient rehab, however he is not a fan of AA, but he is of Smart Recovery.  My doctor thinks alcohol is a toxin PERIOD.  And a sugar, which she opposes in all forms (my precious wheat!).  She would like to see me be paleo and alcohol free forever.  I should mention she looks like a super model, so I value her opinion.  The nurse practitioner who prescribes my crazy pills is ok with me having 2 beers a day as long as I'm working with my therapist to titrate down and off.  That would be awesome if that's how much I'd been drinking, but I lied by my ass off so she'd keep prescribing without sending me to rehab.  Truthfully before Dryuary I was consuming 7 servings of alcohol per day (there are five in a bottle of wine...5 oz wine = 12 oz Beer = 1.5oz Liquor).  1000+ calories PER DAY just from alcohol.  30,000 + per month!!

It wasn't like that before my trip to Europe.  Before that I was abstaining Monday through Thursday, drinking a bottle of wine each day Friday through Sunday.  At that point my ALT (SGPT) level (indicative of liver damage/disease) was 22.  Normal range is 0-32.  A year earlier it was 44, so I'd made significant progress.  My current level drinking 7 servings per day is 36.  High, but still better than Charlie Sheen's on his best day.  I'll be getting new tests after Dryuary.

So here I am Day 11 without alcohol.  Scale read 138.7 when I started.  Today 134.6.  4 POUNDS IN 10 DAYS?!?!?  Doing the same exercise regiment and diet I regularly do.  Yep. Dry January is definitely going to be a yearly tradition.  Day 3 was rough, like bad headache and agitation.  I am and have been treating the symptoms of withdrawal with black coffee and weed.  They help immensely.  Also, one of my crazy pills (Lamictal) is actually an anti-seizure medication, which is given to patients in detox (usually it's Depakote) to prevent the possible seizures that come with severe alcohol withdrawal.  But other than that smooth sailing.  Ok last night was rough but only because I was a bad bipolar bear and changed (lowered/stopped taking some of) my Seroquel because I thought hey, I'm not drinking, I'm better now.  Common for bipolar bears (why do we hate taking our medication so much?).

My husband asked me if this is going to be the new norm.  I don't know.  Daily drinking is done for sure.  But I like the idea of the one cheat day per week diet.  First heard of it in a Daniel Craig interview promoting Casino Royale.  He did it then and we all know what he looked like in that bathing suit.  And by drinking only one day per week I can afford to splurge on more extravagant wine and liquor (I already splurge on beer...$12 per 4 pack?  Yep.  I'm a princess).

Smart Recovery says I can learn moderation.  AA would say no way.  But after healing old wounds and treating an underlying mood disorder with weekly therapy, going back on my bipolar meds after 2 years off (don't ask), getting my hormones as balanced as Suzanne Somers', replenishing depleted vitamins levels, detoxing my life right down to the toilet paper, finding an amazing partner and best friend (same person) who doesn't drink...yeah...I think I can pull it off.

And yet I keep hearing Forrest Gump's voice in my head...


That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go without alcohol.

So, I got to the end of the day, and when I got there, I thought maybe I'd go to the end of the week.

And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd just go the whole weekend.

And I figured since I'd come this far, maybe I'd just go the whole month.

And that's what I did.  I went all of January without alcohol.

For no particular reason I just kept on going.  I went clear to the end of the year.

And when I got there, I figured since I'd gone this far, might as well turn around, just keep on going.

When I got to another year, I figured since I'd gone this far, I might as well just turn back, keep right on going.

When I got tired, I slept.  When I got hungry, I ate.  When I had to go...you know...I went.

YODA: And so...you just stopped drinking?!?

ME: Yeah!

[Cue Music and Montage]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgnJ8GpsBG8


Ok so the last few lines haven't happened yet, but I believe in the power of manifestation.

Enjoy watching Forrest Gump! (oh you know you're gonna)

So the rosé was delicious.  It tasted like baby aspirin, strawberry Starburst and Pez (like from the dispensers), and it had an aroma of new ballet slippers.  Any dancers out there?  Remember that smell?  Maybe it was the because I was high and it was pink, but I could've sworn I was smelling the soft leather of a Capezio store.  I've only smelled leather in dark reds, but this rosé is made from cinsault, grenache, and syrah, all reds, so maybe that had something to do with it, but I'm guessing it's the former.

I forgot to mention I live on my parents' pinot noir vineyard here in Oregon.  Long story for another time, they have me here managing and taking care of it with my husband (meaning my husband takes care of it and I wave from the window).  We (he) have (has) a lot to learn in a short time as pinot noir is one of the hardest grapes to grow.  To be honest, at first I wasn't crazy about pinot noir.  California's tastes like strawberry Kool-Aid, Oregon's tastes like dark cherry Kool-Aid.  It's too lady like.  A little boring.  I like spicy and interesting.  Then I discovered Badger Mountain Pinot Noir.  They're an organic vineyard and winery in Kennewick, WA in the Columbia Valley, but this is made with 100% organic Oregon pinot noir grapes from the southern side of the Columbia River.

http://www.badgermtnvineyard.com/

It was so spicy!  Medium-bodied, dark cherry flavor, soft tannins, it kept me interested through the finish (and only $9.99 at Costco!).  I wish I'd bought 2 cases because it was sold out when I went back.  It's sold out on Badger Mountain's website too.  They only made 2000 cases.  Dammit.  I cannot wait for the 2015 to be released.



Now onto vodka because I'm craving cocktails this weekend.

In my quest for all things organic, Oregon does not disappoint.  I was at my local liquor store looking for an organic vodka and as I was picking up a beautiful Portland specimen, the sales guy came over, saw what I was holding, picked up another bottle and said, "This is an amazing vodka."  I desperately searched for an organic label, but couldn't find one.  "Like it's really good."  I was feeling the pressure.  "You ought to try it."  Dammit.  Now I HAD to buy his vodka or I'd be rude.  I begrudgingly bought it as someone else said, "That's a really good vodka."  Grrrrrrrrrrr.  I had it over the weekend, but having not had vodka in a long while I had nothing to compare it to.  It was odorless, very smooth with no alcohol burn.  I tried 3 more Oregon vodkas that month and turns out he was right.  It was my favorite vodka of the 4, and while it's not organic, it's pretty damn close.

http://oregonspiritdistillers.com/

Vodkas can be distilled from all sorts of things...potatoes, corn, wheat.  Up until now my favorite vodka was Grey Goose.  I never understood why until I stumbled upon this clip.  If you love Grey Goose and have 3 minutes, CLICK THIS LINK:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Teyb9BSCwTY

Turns out Oregon Spirit Vodka is also made from winter wheat, just like Grey Goose (the other 3 were made from corn).

I love wheat. I'm back on wheat after years without thanks to Amy Schumer.  All she had to say was "Remember bread?" and I was like "Yes!  YES Amy Schumer.  I do!  I remember bread.  I want some fucking bread!"  I'd been paleo for awhile.  Since switching to a Mediterranean diet with bread and pasta I've never been happier, my skin has never been clearer and my moods have never been better.  Yeah, fuck paleo.  There's a reason the phrase is Skinny Bitch.

As a 39 year old cam model, I get a lot of roleplay requests.  One of the most popular with the young guns is their old babysitter (whom they run into in the wine section of Costco.  I added that last part..to set the scene).  Out of that came my Naughty Babysitter cocktail line based on some old standards aiming for as little added sugar as possible.  Vodka has 97 calories per shot.  It's what you mix it with that determines the conversation you have with your bathroom scale.

Assume the word organic precedes each ingredient.

The Kermit: 1 shot vodka, 1 shot freshly squeezed lime juice, 1 shot green juice (cold pressed green apple, celery, cucumber, spinach), shaken with ice, strained...on your third one you must drink it while listening to The Rainbow Connection without crying.

The Miss Piggy: 2 shots vodka, 1 shot cold pressed cranberry juice, 2 shots spring water, on the rocks

The Gonzo: 2 shots vodka, fresh blueberries, ice, blended

The Animal: 2-3 shots vodka (depending on your hangover), homemade tomato juice, Himalayan salt, fresh squeezed lemon, 2 advil

The Big Bird: 1 shot vodka, 1 shot freshly squeezed lemon juice, 2 shots spring water, shaken with ice, strained

The Count: 3 shots vodka, fresh blackberries, ice, blended (you must count out the shots saying 1 bwah ha ha...2 bwah ha ha...3 bwah ha ha...if you feel the need for more vodka, go for it...just continue counting in his voice).

The Oscar the Grouch: 1 straight chilled shot vodka (pounded), chased by 1 shot cold pressed kale juice. Feel free to reverse the order...as long as your least favorite is last...then go sit by yourself in a garbage can or dumpster.


I'm very excited for the work weekend.  My shows will be fueled by Grey Goose and Oregon Spirit.  Vodka makes most women very slutty.  Not as slutty as rum, where we go from zero to anal in 2 doubles, but definitely more "adventurous" than beer or wine.  Good rule of penis: Don't even think about going near her butt unless hard liquor is involved.

Have a great weekend!