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Originally Posted by gneiss  I wanted to stop drinking and using because I thought my life would be better. |
You can't really do sobriety like this. As in, I am going to be sober as long as my life gets better. Especially when the time limit on that is pretty immediate. It has only been a week. Unfortunately, things don't change in a day or a week. The other thing I learned is I had to go into it with sobriety as my number one priority no matter what. There was no contingency on how I felt. I could feel crappy for a few weeks but I didn't question my sobriety. I accepted the crappy feeling and dealt with it as it came. And the world happens. Any day something crazy could happen— you can't control for the perfect world in which to be sober no more can you control for feeling great all the time while sober. I think if you accept this early it makes it easier. Sobriety for me was about accepting the whole range of emotions not just the good. And what I learned in doing that I now have access to a whole lot of more nuanced "good" feelings. So in essence staying sober over the long run definitely will end up in a better overall feeling but I don't think that can be your motivation. Feelings are much too fleeting. I realize talking about feelings was sort of getting away from what you were talking about but I guess I just associate that with life being better.
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Originally Posted by gneiss What's happening to me? I feel like I've lost any sense of why I stopped using. |
Honestly, probably your addict brain/voice is talking/rationalizing to you. I feel like this used to happen to me all the time. If you ignore it and just stay committed to sobriety no matter what, don't get into any sort of pro and con argument in your head about going back to using or controlled using because your addict voice could win, that voice gets weaker over time.
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Originally Posted by gneiss I don't want to go back to where I was in terms of drug use, but I wish there was something worth the effort to stay 100% clean and sober. |
I can tell you it is worth the effort but I don't know how much that will be worth to you because honestly I don't know how much it was worth to me. I sort of went at it on faith, one day at a time. By faith I mean I went at it not knowing in what I was getting into. I didn't know if it would be better. I tried not to think too far in the future or too much about me feeling better and my life getting better. Everyone said it would be if I kept going sober and worked on recovery. I kept putting one foot in front of the other. I waded through a lot of emotional pain in recovery. My personal timeline was I didn't really feel a joy to be sober until six months. And even then it was fleeting. Now it is solid. I am sometimes overwhelmed with gratitude. I am appreciative for the journey of recovery. My life finally is falling into place. But I didn't know that when I was one week sober. I didn't know what was going to happen. I had to take people's word and I have a hard time doing it. All I knew was that my life up until then wasn't working. I hope you do keep at it.