Old 11-22-2012, 08:51 AM
  # 226 (permalink)  
GerandTwine
Not The Way way, Just the way
 
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Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: US
Posts: 1,413
Originally Posted by BRD View Post
I'm fairly new to sobriety. I have been doing 12 step for about three months. In that time I have had two relapses ...[snip]...

RR and AVRT makes more sense to me than 12 step... [snip]...I am going to have some social engagements where alcohol is present but it will be around a lot of people who don't know that I recently sober. I'm wondering if anyone has tips on how to handle yourself in those situations.

As a person I tend to be quite introverted, alcohol for me was a real social lubricant in that it 'helped' me to interact with others.
When you say it "...'helped' me...", I think it would make more sense to qualify the "me" instead of the "helped" like this "...helped 'me'..." because it really wasn't YOU in your right mind that was engaging socially with others, it was an ALTERED STATE YOU.

In doing a cost/benefit analysis of future drinking, I found it useful to make the two lists - costs and benefits. On the list of benefits I put DEEP PLEASURE at the very top. Then listed all the rest of the benefits and realized they were bogus - such as - Drinking helps me tolerate all the unpleasantness all around me. I realized the bogus benefits were actually costs, so I put them over onto the costs list - Drinking increases all the unpleasantness all around me.

I was then left with a true cost/benefits analysis with lots of costs and only one benefit - DEEP PLEASURE. Reminding myself of this as often as possible helped me understand the nature of the Beast, the persistence of the Addictive Voice, and how I, the me in my right mind, could quite easily take the moral high ground and refuse to indulge in that pleasure ever again - even though it would mean killing off a deeply ingrained bank of memories and way of spending time.
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