This is hopefully my first and only grasp at the sobriety life ring. At day 25, things are going pretty good.
My drinking had been almost imperceptibly increasing for 34 years, from once a weekend in high school, to 5 or 6 days a week in the last couple months. About a year ago I recognized the drinking was getting out of hand and was adversely effecting my life and my relationships in my family, but that wasn't enough to stop me. It was then I started reading about the negative health consequences of alcoholism, but that wasn't enough to stop me either.
It was only when I read about how alcohol changes the brain, and about PAWS did I have the big AHA! moment. This explained
why I kept drinking despite all the negative consequences,
why I would continue to increase my alcohol consumption in the future, and gave me a heads up as to
how my brain was going to try to trick me into drinking again once I did try quitting.
I give full credit to the years and years and dozens of attempts it took me to quit cigarettes 10 years ago. That experience was horrible. It let me know just how brutal and devious the brain can be when something it's used to getting is taken away, and just how long it can take to reach some semblance of normalcy or balance again.
I think SR is just as vital as my quitting cigarettes experience. The small town in which I live has few choices when it comes to recovery groups, so this website allows me to share my thoughts and to learn from both those who are successful, and from those that learn from their relapses as well.
Some of us need to find our unique Alternative Approach to sobriety, because we're just wired that way or may have unique world views that don't fit well within other more formally organized recovery groups methods. Nothing wrong with thinking outside the box
Murray