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Old 07-16-2007, 03:05 PM
  # 9 (permalink)  
Sav
Sav
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: NYC,NY
Posts: 128
Congrats!

It sounds like you're doing pretty good, all things considered!

You have to remember that you've been using alchohol to "numb" yourself. It's also been acting as a "first wall of mental defense".
All the things in life that people normally deal with on a daily basis, go though, and (hopefully!) gain emotional maturity from, you've been drinking to numb and lessen the emotional impact from.

So of course you're having mood swings. You're having to do all that with a whole wall of defense ripped away. So you're normal "being" is having a hard time coping.

I've said before that we effectively stop "maturing" at the time we start using. From the time we stop, we have to learn to cope with being our physical age, while having an emotional maturity that is only developed up to the point we started using.
And considering what we did at that point, none of us were very capable of coping!
So yes, you will have mood swings. Even after the chemical effects have passed out of your body. But I think we all have an advantage in some way over "normal" people. We've been through such hell, and seen ourselves at our lowest (as well as the rest of the world!).
I like to think that from all the awfulness of the ruin of addiction, we can achieve a state of grace from the insight we gain of ourselves in order to become sober.
And from that, we can find an emotional wisdom most people never achieve.
Sav is offline