DoubleDragons

Axiom, thank you so much for this thread. I quit drinking alcohol for the first time in 27 years, 18 months ago. I have not relapsed. But, I have been tempted. What keeps me from going beyond temptation is fear. I have seen my mom's alcoholism literally morph her into a person I barely recognize. If it could happen to her, I can't see how it couldn't happen to me. I keep a list of all of the stupid, scary, embarrassing, dangerous things that I did when I was under the influence of alcohol and I remind myself that I never have to add to that list again by simply not drinking alcohol. I haven't felt the level of shame an alcoholic event creates in me since I quit and I would like never, ever to feel that way again.

That being said, I still feel like a baby in recovery. It is hard to face myself, to get to know my authentic self, to face my relationships, to let go of my hyper perfectionism, etc. and my AV constantly wants me to think that I will get relief from all of this with red wine.

So, all I can say, again, is thanks. I understand your concerns because I have them, too.

Dee74

Every time I drank again it was because I wanted this time to be different.
I wanted to drink my fill, and have no bad consequences.

I'm stubborn. It took me 20 years to realise that was utterly futile.

D

Gottalife

What I might have called a relapse was really just a demonstration of powerlessness. Start in the morning with a firm never again, drinking that night with no actual memory of how I came to have the fatal first drink. No sane thoughts asserted themselves, the mornings reasons for stopping had evaporated, no effective defence against the first drink.

I don't buy the not going to meetings as a reason. To start with, people have drunk before, after and even during meetings, so I don't believe meetings in themselves provide a full defence. I think it goes deeper and perhaps we need to look at why people stop going to meetings.

People I spoke to who have stopped or were thinking of stopping (going to meetings) had one theme in common, they weren't getting anything out of it, so, as Heartcore said, it was becoming a chore. They said things like "I've been going to meetings almost everyday for three years and nothing has changed"

It seems at least in some cases, they had been given wrong information like no need to worry about those steps or the big book is outdated kinda stuff. All you need to do is don't drink and go to meetings. Under those directions it is not hard for me to see how going to AA would become a chore and that relapse is just about guaranteed. Another factor might be an over complicated program with mega self searching, endless fourth steps, controlling sponsorship etc, rather than the simple program outlined in the book

The turning point for me and many others was running into someone who knew and practiced the AA way of life and was willing to help me do the same. That completely revolutionised my thinking and things that might once have been a chore, became a pleasure. Trying to help others became a most rewarding investment of my time, trying to bring a little joy to others brought a great deal of joy to me. The change in thinking came about as the result of trying to live the program. The only reason I am still involved in AA today is that I get so much from it, quite the opposite of Heartcores experience.

Someone once said that if you go to AA expecting to get something out of it, you will be disappointed. All AA has to offer are opportunities for service. Or as Bill said in his pamphlet Emotional Sobriety, emotional stability comes out of giving, not receiving.

All this giving and service are completely alien to the alcoholic mind, so much so that I don't believe it is possible to reverse our thinking on our own power. Even with a few thousand meetings under our belt , self centredness will remain the root of our problem until we have a spiritual awakening, and we don't get one of those if all we do is go to meetings.

Mountainmanbob

I took sobriety for granted and deceived myself into making a decision to drink, yet again. It all starts deep within the one we see in the mirror.

Today I realize what a true blessing it is to be sober.
I waited and prayed many years for this. Only I can mess this thing up.

MM

LaTraviata

I love how absolutely you have rejected alcohol!

LaTraviata

On the role of meetings... Sounds like not attending meetings is a factor in relapse for some people and not for others. We're individuals so perhaps there are fine differences in how our alcoholisms are wired.

Attending meetings has been a great support for me in early sobriety. Why? I'm not sure. I don't hear anything profound there, and listening to the meandering stories of people's experiences with alcohol does become a little tedious.

HOWEVER...(and this is biggie, at least for me)...it's an environment where not drinking is the accepted norm.

Face it; we live in a society where drinking, even to excess, is the norm. It's accepted, expected, and glamorized. For me, daily contact with dozens of people who don't drink allows me to make NOT drinking MY norm so I can safely go out into the booze-saturated world and avoid consuming alcohol.

uncle holmes

Relapse is a complicated issue. Many in AA believe, "well it was a planned drunk, they didn't want it bad enough, they didn't turn it over, they didn't do a fourth step, they didn't do all the steps, they didn't get a sponsor, they quit going to meetings, they didn't go to enough meetings, they didn't get involved........

All these beliefs are true to some extent. There are alcoholics who don't work hard at it, don't want recovery and want to drink more than they want to stay sober.

But the fact of the matter is many alcoholics who continually relapse are in great pain even while sober. Some of them even work hard at it, go to meetings, do as suggested and still end up taking a drink.

Sobriety becomes unbearable to them and taking a drink doesn't seem like a bad option. How do I know this? I used to be one of those chronic relapsers. And I personally witness this with other alcoholics at a meeting I go to in a treatment facility.

IOAA2

Hi.
When I was relapsing I did so because I wanted to escape my emotional pain more than being sober. I don’t suffer well and being undisciplined drinking was my escape mode.
Other reasons were many different fears I had, insecurity, loneliness, low self esteem, and wanting the softest, easiest way out.

Getting sober required me to work and change that thinking and reactions.

After a lot of sober years I still go to 3=5 meetings a week, not because I need to but because I want to. I still feel an obligation to try to repay for my sobriety by perhaps helping another alcoholic by something I may say about my ES&H.
We in general have “built in forgetters” and I may need a REMEMBER WHEN to align my stinking thinking.

I know through observation experience that if I relapsed I probably wouldn’t be able to get sober again and die a miserable and painful death of an alcoholic.

BE WELL

dwtbd

I relapsed because of the reasons from the OP and then some. If I stopped alcohol consumption for any period , or at least tried to cut back or slow down, I would drink again or ramp it back up to the 'bad levels'. I never really accepted the idea that if I wanted to, I could make a commitment to permanent unconditional abstinence.
The first time I logged on to SR! I picked my screen name :
Don't
Want
To
Be
Drunk
Because that morning I didn't want to be drunk and I was looking for a solution to not wanting to be drunk going forward. I wanted to find what others had, the seeming ease to live life not dependent on alcohol.
I saw mention of RR/AVRT and was then challenged with idea that one could choose to abstain from alcohol consumption permanently and unconditionally. For me, relapse now means that I would change my mind and decide to drink. Been there done that so many times in the past , that I absolutely refuse to go there again. I will never drink again, and I refuse to change my mind about it.
I don't see why I can't do that, I don't see why anyone can't do that. I don't mean that as judgement against those that relapse, quite literally I mean, why can't that be done?

brynn

It can be done.

When outside factors (or internal ones for that matter) don't make or break your sobriety, you can confidently make that statement!

My sobriety doesn't hinge on how I feel, how well my job is going, my love life, my families health, other peoples opinions of me, my financial situation, etc....
My sobriety is independent of all of that, therefore I can confidently say that no matter what happens in my life, I will never drink again.

Venecia

In a couple weeks, I'll hit 20 months of sobriety and recovery.

For me, SR is now a big weapon in my arsenal to prevent going back to that terrible place. SRers may recognize this quote from David Carr's book "The Night of the Gun," which I've shared several times here.

"In various programs of recovery, adherents will talk about 'slips'; but the collapse into drinking and drugging can take a very long time. In that process, the prospect of getting high or drunk, unimpeded by obeisance to a higher power or a program of daily living, is rolled around in the mouth absently, surreptitiously, long before it is actually swallowed, to see how it might taste. That's how I finally found myself in my kitchen with that disgusting drink.

"When I really think about it, somewhere in the late nineties and into 2000, I stopped identifying myself as an alcoholic and an addict and began thinking of myself as someone who just didn't drink or do drugs. It took about four years to make that nasty drink in my kitchen, four years of not gong to meetings, four years of not speaking honestly with people in recovery, four years of a long conversation in my head, before the thought became the deed."

I've seen many wise observations about relapse here on SR, including ones on this thread. Outside of our world, Carr's words are the wisest I've ever read and they help keep me honest.

I strongly recommend his book to anyone in recovery or struggling to put alcohol/drugs in the past.

RobbyRobot

In retrospect, relapses were more about my not having sincerely established my quit, so in effect like I was merely creating intervals from one drinking nightmare to the next. I believe my behaviors of talking about quitting but drinking anyways was all about my active alcoholism. I wanted to be irresponsible, and alcoholism provided easy justifications. At the time, I didn't believe I had alcoholism, I did believe I was addicted though. I finally believed I had alcoholism after embracing AA and rehab. I haven't returned to drinking since I took responsibility for my alcoholism.

I think for a lot of us we enabled our so-called relapses to be murky, undetermined, and in the grey zone, so as to continue with our drinking. Now that I have successfully quit its obvious to me I played the "I'm clueless card" time and time again so as to justify my delusions, so as to continue to drink. Eventually, the buck has to stop with us, since we are the gatekeepers of our own lives. This is a good thing.

dwtbd

Robby
Part of continuing my addiction was "accepting" my alcoholism , for a long while I had implicitly accepted the idea that I "had" it, even if I denied it explicitly. The problem for me though was that acceptance was a delicious little get out of jail free card ,internally. So I decided to kill it, that was a big card to give up but it really helped me quit going back to drinking.

Johnston

A wandering mind and too much time on my hands.

RobbyRobot

dwtbd, thanks for your insightful share.

I can understand your way of taking responsibility. It speaks to our differing experiences just how importantly critical is an honest self-examination of whatever motivated us to drink, and to extinguish same with respect to our own responsibilities.

I finally accepted my alcoholism by putting it on ice, spiritually speaking, and so permanently in remission. At the time of my quit, I was far more damaged as a person well beyond my alcoholism, so for me, a revolution of my psyche was absolutely required. Anything less, and I wouldn't be here today.

dwtbd

The day I walked into the kitchen to eventually log on to SR., I was walking down the hallway away from my nightstand and the romancing the idea of a wholly different solution. A desperation made worse by active addiction.

Bmac

This is one of the things I do not like about AA. If one relapses, then it is because they did not do (insert laundry list you mentioned). It comes off as "our way is the right way and if you don't do what we say, you will relapse". That being said, I do go to AA. Not to work the steps or hear the big book read, but to be around like minded people whose goal is simply to not drink, regardless of the means in which they do that. AA is one of the things I do for my sobriety, not the ONLY thing.

I had 23 years. I relapsed because I became stagnant in my spiritual growth so that when emotional pain from anxiety and OCD hit, I had rusty tools with which to handle it. That along with the thoughts that I was only 21 when I first got sober and perhaps I am not really an alky. I was wrong. I'm glad I found out.

sillysausage

i spent many years discovering that nothing is certain. the only certainty is the very present moment, and of course death. so why would i even bother to concern myself with what i will/will not/might/might not be doing in six days' or six months' time etc?

if something happens tomorrow, the truth is i do not know how i will deal with it. what i do know is that i do not need (nor wish) to drink right at this very moment in time.

Boleo

That was true for me. When the suffering stopped... the drinking stopped automatically along with it.

silentrun

I tried to get drunk about 3 months in. I had used this site for a couple of weeks and was doing really good so I stopped coming around. I was done drinking and happy about it. Whew! dogged a bullet there. Then I quit smoking and my brain went totally haywire. I literally had an adult temper tantrum and had no stops in place so I drank. I got sick to my stomach from the alcohol and physically could not get it down. So no relapse just a really important lesson. Do not underestimate what you are up against!