Originally Posted by
aeo1313 
There are so many posts about relapsing and I have questions. This is my first attempt really at sobriety and I am 36 days sober. There have been times I'd like to drink, or try and find pills, but I don't.
I guess what I'm wondering, or trying to ask/say, is that isn't relapsing a choice? I know in the past I'd say "no more pills" and be calling the doctor's office 5 hours later. I had to pick up the phone, dial the number, get in my car, pick up the rx, etc. There are so many "acts" involved in using.
Why are people surprised when they relapse...wasn't it a conscious thought?
There is no judgement here at all...I just want to understand. Because I don't want to relapse. In the past after I would say no more, I'd say "f^%$ it, I'm drinking" and I don't want to do that again.
Relapsing was my choice, until it wasn't. It came to a point for me, towards the end of my drinking life, when I would be on some sort of creepy autopilot, and honestly have very little conscious thought on the act of going to the store and coming back with a box full of vodka bottles. Seriously, I am not exaggerating that in the least. My brain would become zombified, almost wholly shut down. Exactly like Displaced Grits described it really; like watching a movie and knowing what's going on but being absolutely powerless to hit the stop button. Felt like I was being directed, cued, and positioned.
Yes, before the progression of alcoholism became really perilous for me I had made plenty of half-hearted attempts to quit. They were always not serious enough, and when I decided to throw in the towel I knew full well what I was doing when I decided to drink. But make no mistake about it, in my experience after a certain point came and went, it really and truly was a case of me coming to on my living room floor, looking up at an empty 26 oz bottle of Grey Goose or Jack Daniels, wondering how in blue hell I ended up there.
A few times I would sit back and think that this must be how an alien abductee feels lol. In all seriousness though, my later relapses became truly disturbing for just these reasons. I woke up once in an ER with tubes coming out of me and my wife and uncle both bedside and both crying, and the only thing I remember from that entire experience was heading to the store for cigarettes before a Stanley Cup Finals game came on.
I can sort of remember there were a few times when I'd recall this weird internal dialogue...
... "I guess you're getting drunk then?",
..."yep".
But it never felt like me. It did feel exactly as if a few blokes had taken control of my head and were debating my destruction as if they were arguing what channel to watch on TV.
Getting the booze, that was often the truly creepy part. During the last year of my drinking career I'd rarely have a conscious recall of getting it, and if I did, it was as described... a movie scene I was not participating in but watching play out before me.
I don't know how that helps but take it for what it's worth, because it's 100% how my dis-ease progressed.