Aellyce

Thank you very much, everyone.

What I have to report is unfortunate and creepy, because I did drink last night. After everything I've done, including inpatient rehab.

This is what comes closest:
Clearly, my awareness and intelligence does not help this addiction. In fact, I think it often makes it worse, because I know full well what I am doing and how it works. I know all the emotional and social implications. I know what sorts of molecular mechanisms are likely to fire when I abstain, when I crave, and when I act out. I know how to manipulate everything and everyone. It is sad. I still do it.

I totally agree with Venecia's insight, that there is terminal uniqueness in all this. I am starting on Step 1 with my AA sponsor this week, and it could not be more appropriate for me. Hopefully doing the steps will work, but I'll need to input my effort as well.

Dee74

My intelligence and insight didn't help me at all in the end really.

I/addict me was very skilled at throwing up roadblocks to recovery, sending me off down the rabbit hole to ponder things (but still drink) and discovering valid reasons why it was ok for me to drink, and reasons why my case was not the same as everyone else's.

Your alcoholism will try and kill you like it tried to kill me Aellyce - but first it will destroy everything you love and hold dear.

You are under attack.

You need to forget everything else for now and fight back - hard.

D

Aellyce

^This! This is exactly the cognitive dissonance (if I have any intelligence left), which is the most painful for me. That I know and will witness with all the perception, understanding and vision I have... I will see my world, the world I love and I know is right for me, the world I've built up during all these years... crumble. I know all this and see it coming with full awareness. And all this knowledge, awareness, and intelligence that you guys tend to acknowledge here (thanks BTW) and what I apparently value in myself so much, will also crumble, sooner or later, if I continue to drink or even if I continue to settle into the cycles of sobriety and relapses. Even if the mechanisms in my brain don't get affected quickly and in a terminal way, the rest of my body will, and that will eventually feed back into my brain, want it or not. It'll all go to ash way too soon relative to what I could get out of a healthier life.

Dee74

Exactly. You can worry about rewards and inner rebellion and notions of self and all that other stuff later...but first you need to save your life...and the things you treasure.

I believe you can do it cos I did it

KAD

Aellyce, for many years, I also fell victim to the notion that I could intellectualize my way out of this addiction. Spirituality was just mushy sentimentalism, I thought. All that "God stuff" couldn't possibly work for me. "I control the mechanisms that go into procuring and consuming alcohol. Control the mechanisms, and you control the behavior, you control the addiction." I'd also entertain these ideas while engaging in the behavior. So many times I said, "This is the last time I'll walk into this liquor store." "This is the last bottle of vodka I'll ever buy." "Once I sober up..." I'm gonna put all these brilliant ideas of mine into action.

Yet I went back to the bottle, over and over and over again. It took something drastic in my life to finally wake me up to the reality that this addiction had control of me, not the other way around. I had to admit, and accept, defeat. I surrendered. Getting past the spiritual roadblocks was quite a challenge, but I finally did it. Getting involved in AA and actually following the steps, for once, has resulted in remarkable changes in my behavior, which has resulted in alcohol no longer being an option for me. If I ever drink again, as I'm so often told in AA, the 12 Steps will ruin it for me.

I am glad to hear you are beginning to realize you can't out-think or outsmart this thing. I'm also glad you plan to get into working the steps. I didn't believe in them until I started doing them, until I saw it actually working.

Aellyce

GMO, I more and more tend to think that way. Because I keep failing at everything I can choose and do myself. I come here and report my cravings, then go drink regardless. I go to therapy, AA or other recovery meetings, discuss whatever openly, then go to the liquor store. I know full well and accept my alcoholism and that I can't have a single sip of alcohol, and I still do it. I really don't know what else than some kind of miracle could help me at this point. I don't feel that I have free will no matter how passionately I like that concept. Will I really have to go through all that insanity and lose everything dear to me in order to learn and stop this??

KAD

No, you don't have to go the extent I did in order to finally get it. I know why you would ask that, because I also had the advantage of learning from mistakes others have made, but still failed to accept that it could happen to me. However, I tended to not listen to anyone else when I was in "drinking mode." I would avoid coming here, and I wasn't going to meetings. I was avoiding anyone and anything that might discourage me from doing what I was so certain I could control...this time.

I urge you to go to those meetings, but also work daily with a sponsor. Forego argumentation with the parts of the program that seem to run counter to what you currently believe. I found that the more I opened my mind, the more I opened my heart, and then changes began to take place. Don't get down on yourself or give up hope. That will only lead to more of the same. You have what it takes to get through this.

fini

Aellyce,
i'm sorry to read this.

i know the spot about passionately believing i have free will about this while my own experience was one of no choice .

i lived there for years and years.
grappling with what i ended up calling "the choice-thing" and coming to peace with it took a long time, both drinking and sober.

my "surrender" wasn't intellectually knowing. and a lot of my "working the program" spoke and speaks deeply to your question" why is it never enough?"

no-one can carve out this way for you, but you can most certainly trust that there are ways many others have done this and found peace. found 'enough'.

Aellyce

Yes this is really the only thing I trust at this point: others' experience. That's the only thing that gives me hope right now, that many have found a long term or permanent solution to this addiction.

GMO, I like what you pointed out about listening to others. I do tend to listen and consider others' opinions and advice but often I feel it's even worse because I can be given great advice and agree with it one minute and in the next I make my own stupid decision and act on it.

KAD

You're not stupid. Stubborn maybe, but not stupid. You're quite intelligent and independent and master of your domain in so many ways. But in this particular way, I believe you're going to have to concede defeat. Bill Wilson was also a very intelligent person, but there's a reason he called this illness "cunning, baffling, powerful." It routinely seems to totally defy reason and logic. In the face of indisputable reasons to not do this one thing, we feel hopelessly and helplessly compelled to do it anyway! That's the addiction, the "phenomenon of craving."

Again, I urge you not to let yourself get dragged down and discouraged by your inability to fight this on your own, the way you did in the past. As you mentioned the last time you relapsed, you seem to have lost the momentum that propelled you before. You lost the inspiration. So, it's time for something new. I think you already know the direction you should probably be headed. Right?

Aellyce

Yes, I really don't feel I have many options left, or even a few. I feel that my first relapse changed some things in me in a very permanent way in terms of what recovery tools I am responsive to.

strategery

Have you tried AVRT? I recognize similar arguments my AV has tried to use on me.
You have intellectual curiosity. Why not make it work for you with assessing why you're allowing yourself to pick up and what is triggering your cravings?

Venecia

You have options, Aellyce. It just doesn't seem like that right now because the alcoholism is speaking. I have a feeling it's tell you that this is the only way you have to mourn the losses of the last year.

You have a voice, too, Aellyce.

We're here with you.

Aellyce

Yep I think the way I go through cravings is pretty much AVRT, I just don't use the terminology Jack Trimpey came up with in my head. It worked very well the first time I got sober, I had frequent and intense cravings back then as well but never picked up until my relapse two years later. I don't even know how else one can resist cravings in the moment actually, when there is a strong desire to drink but we want to stay sober.

And also yes to trying to figure out triggers and why I allow myself to act on the impulses -- I think about these things all the time, this is also one of the main areas I work on with my current therapist. It's often said here on SR that trying to find out why we drink is kinda irrelevant to staying sober, but I personally don't find it useless and am really interested in dissecting it. One thing that I've recently found it that I tend to crave some other things (not drugs) almost the same way I crave alcohol (also the experience is similarly unpleasant and restless), and it can be equally challenging to resist those desires as well. In terms of triggers, I am well aware that positive experiences such as accomplishments and success with something is my biggest. Interesting, because stress, trauma, emotional pain etc are often considered the most common triggers for addicts, but I don't seem to work that way. Actually, the times when I have the least desire to drink are times of intense stress and negative emotional states. What happened yesterday was that I gave in to my most ordinary trigger. It's pretty disturbing for me to re-read that part of this thread: I came here, talked posted about my craving, then just closed SR and got drunk.

Now why I don't make all the possible precautions if I see these things so clearly is a good question... I was always very prepared when I first got sober, for example on a day like yesterday I would make a plan that I don't go home until it's late and I can go to sleep straight, because I have no issue not drinking when I am out and with other people. I am much sloppier now making those kinds of plans and preparations, I think this is part of the problem. Part of me is kinda annoyed, ashamed and does not want to accept that I'm basically back to being a newcomer when it comes to dealing with urges, and I should treat myself that way.

Also, I think the suggestion to work with a sponsor on a daily basis now is very valid -- this is something that will require quite some forcing because I don't have the desire for it, more the opposite. (Which is interesting because, for example, I would have no problem working with my therapist on a daily basis, actually I would love to do that kind of work for hours every day.) But I guess recovery is not about pleasing ourselves and I should be much more serious about it than I have been.

Venecia

Don't be ashamed, Aellyce. It's an emotion that does nothing but hurt us. I think of shame as us bullying ourselves. Bullies are bad.

You're not the same woman you were a year ago, two years ago. You've grown, grieved, explored, gained and lost.

(((Aellyce)))

Aellyce

Thank you, Venecia. As for the losses - this is an assumption many people make by default because it seems so logical, but I truly don't think that is the case. My picking up pattern is about wanting the momentary pleasure of alcohol's effect every single time, typically when I've already had something good happen to me on that day (what I described in the previous post). I more tend to question what in my life don't give me enough natural reward so that I supplement this way. What do I miss or what do I want to escape from. I tried to contemplate whether it's those losses, but it just does not feel correct no matter how I think about it. I think it more has to do with some old experiences I had during the time when I became a heavy drinker, I feel a certain nostalgia for those that I kinda chase in this very futile way (and other ways I am not getting into). I did not have this nostalgia and craving for those old things during the 2 years when I was sober, at all. It's not surprising that relapsing reinstated that though, because alcoholic drinking and that era are intimately linked for me as they co-evolved many years ago. All this is not healthy at all, that was by far the most destructive phase of my life in many ways. So there is definitely this romanticizing element, and it's completely irrational as with my sane judgment I have no doubt it was a very unhealthy experience.

Oh, I've just seen you have edited your post, Ven... I responded to it anyway

awuh1

Aellyce I'd like to be supportive, but that obviously has not helped. Well, at least not for the long term. The bottom line is that you want to do sobriety your way. THAT's the problem. Doing sobriety in this way works for some people, but it has not for you. Little wonder that you have avoided doing the steps for so long.

The bottom line is that your pride is preventing you from staying sober long term. Your pride is more important than your sobriety.

Don't feel bad. It's happened to many of us.

Sorry to be blunt, but that's as gently as I can put it and still be clear.

entropy1964

Hi Aellyce

I just had some time to skim your thread (I'm sure I missed a lot). I'm sorry you relapsed.

You mention that you are quite skilled at manipulating others and seem to enjoy this. I suggest (and maybe it already has been) that you are quite skilled at manipulating yourself. Your personal mental gymnastics are quite effective at keeping your addict in utter control of YOU.

It may have been suggested already but have you been assessed for bipolar disorder and /or BPD?

I love to intellectualize my addiction....which is just me trying to control my addiction. It's simple. I'm a drunk. I can't drink. I will always enjoy learning about addiction and mental illness. But thinking I can solve my issues through non stop intellectualizing? Complete waste of time. One of the gifts of serenity is the ability to STOP the thinking, and focus on action.
Good luck

Justincredible

Hey Aellyce,

Just dropping in to show you support and let you know I am in your corner. Sorry to read you slipped. All I can say is do the steps to the best of your ability, and remember to stay focused on one step at a time, focus on the journey of the steps, and not just getting through them. Sounds like your sponsor is good and will do a good job in guiding you through. There is a clear difference to me of me before I took the steps and me after I took the steps and I'm so glad I found them in my recovery. It might just be the thing that really makes things 'click' for you.

Keep us posted and thanks for sharing your recovery journey here, I really relate and get a lot out of reading what everyone shares here.

Aellyce

Very interesting post, Frickaflip. I think that I am a master of manipulating myself when in an unhealthy state, yes, aren't most active addicts that way? But true, I tend to turn my mental powers against myself with the intellectualizing.

And yes I had psychiatric assessments. Definitely have bipolar tendencies but not something that is enough for a formal diagnosis. BPD is an interesting one... I sometimes thought that I must have come across that way to certain people especially when I drink. The psychiatrists don't think so. Some of the defining criteria, e.g. the intense fear of abandonment or generally very volatile emotional reactions I don't have. I totally get why I might come across like someone with BPD on this thread though.

My recovery strategy definitely needs more action, and not the kind of acting out that I have been doing lately.

Thanks, Justin. Almost everyone who had success with the 12 step program talks about a transformation -- I would do it now even just out of curiosity.