Originally Posted by
ananda I just want to know if anyone actually recovers without ignoring their own beliefs and experience (counting in that when we drink things get skewed).
Have any of you found a way to stay sober without buying the party line? I admire all the programs that help so many, but after 30 years of struggle, I'm more interested in what could help me get sober and stay that way.
Nands
Hi Nands
Yeah, people CAN recover and still be themselves EVEN AFTER doing all the resultant requiste changing which naturally follows from quitting drinking / drugging. Seriously.
It's always been about personal choices for me. I didn't fall into alcohol and drugs by accident. I began playing around with alcohol before age 10. Smoked ciggies too a bit. Drinking only made sense, and felt good, so why not? I was already into petty crimes of stealing coins and bills from my folks and sharing it with my gang of friends. We would often distract the corner store cashier and lift candies, chips, comics, batteries, etc.
My biggest haul at age 10 was a twenty I brazenly 'borrowed' from my mom, and after blowing about eight dollars of it on me and my friends with ice cream, soda, candies, chips, comic books, bubblegum cards - I returned the last of it back. Twenty dollars goes a long way back in 1967. Really hard to spend it all, lol. I was a city kid back then. We moved that same year 15 miles deep into farm country. Big difference, lol. I loved the city. Hated the emptiness of the country. No more street action on the corners, lol.
Why am I telling you this? What's the point?
Because it's part of my collective life story. I was always trying my best to be me, even when being me meant being bad, you know? Trouble wasn't trouble for me. Trouble was more like an opportunity to meet the challenges in a different way. Thinking out-of-the-box is the only way I've ever known. Life started out hard and difficult for me right from the start, and the city streets just taught me to be me, or else fade to black, and forget about it.
Anyways, by age 12 i'm drinking enough to be in trouble with booze. I'm still only playing with ciggs though, lol. By 15 I'm an alcoholic goner. Chronic drunk. I'd show up for my homeroom class in the morning, smoke pot with my 'friends' and then at noon head to the local bar and do my thing til closing. Needless to say, after three yrs in high school, I still barely had enough credits for my grade 10. Big deal. Like I cared, lol. I always tested as 'gifted' so to hell with school. I drank my way through two college scholarships as the years went on. By age 20 there were no more scholarships. They were done with me. I was officially tagged as a an incurable schizophrenic chronic drunk. A write off. Good luck with that, I was now being told. Thanks for visiting us in the nut house. Bye for now. See you later.
So, how does a smart-ass guy like me sober up? This became a problem of no small proportions, lol. I completely refused any professionally organised treatment offered and just went back to drinking and drugging and completely grokked out for a couple of years what the hell I was doing with my life. By age 22 I was free from my street drugs of choice - like acid, maryjane and hashish. Quit on my own. By age 24 I was still dying from alcohol abuse. Very suicidal. Very angry. Very dark. Very alone. Very stupidly drunk.
I slowly came to the deep understanding I was gonna die as a drunk drunk no matter what game plan I came up with. No matter my way forward, I was as good as dead, and I would be drunk too boot. No way out. I was powerless against alcohol the drug. I simply could not be me and quit at the same time it seemed. I had to either become a new me or die failing as the same old me. I was too f_cked up to care anymore about the old me.
Call it paradox, but whatever, the more I didn't care about the old me, the more I cared about the new me. The more I threw my alcoholic self under the bus, the more I rose to the challenges before me. The more I surrendered to the reality of my sorry alcoholic existence, the more like a phoenix I rose from the ashes of my alcoholic hell. The more I kicked my alcoholic thinking self to the curb, the more I stood up and became responsible. Something had to obviously whither and die so I could live and prosper. In the most simple terms, I killed off my alcoholic-minded self, and here I am to tell my story, heh heh.
I've been clean and sober now 31 years. So it's working, lol.
I've used rehab, AA, gestalt therapy, and AVRT to put on ice my old alcoholic life. I did, and still do, do things my way. In AA I'm still, and always will be, a total maverick member. In therapy, I'm very present and in-your-face as only I can be. In AVRT, I'm very mechanical and absolute with what is and isn't AV. My Beast is reduced to a beast of burden. I have no shame in my complete indifference to 'it'.
It's not easy to create a complete and functioning new sober life, but it's also not too difficult to do the next right thing when you're starting from the bottom, and every way you can choose from there is always up at that point, lol. Later, as things start to get better, life choices become more costly and difficult. Now after 31 yrs of better living, choices which change my life cost me more then ever they did. So, you can imagine, I'm careful about my choices going forward.
Life is easier now. I'm on easy street now. It's all good, even when it's bad, lol. Life is much more then I ever dreamed it could become. I am overwhelmed with success. It's difficult to share how much easier and together my life is compared to my old and now dead drunken past life. Like night and day.
And yet, I'm still me, myself, and I.
I didn't sell out myself as the price paid to embrace my sober freedoms. Yes, I've had to pay an unbeliveable price to get where I'm presently at today, and yet the price paid is always worth the tickets for enjoying this sweet ride of my life. I've had to be responsible for some serious changes going forward. There's nothing free about the costs of true freedoms.
I was a down and out drunken loser sleeping in ditches and loving it. Today, I'm simply not that guy anymore. I'm different, and yet, I'm still the guy who will be and do
whatever it takes to be himself. I like that about myself.
You can do it too, Nands. YOU CAN. You just can't take the old you with you for the ride. Give yourself up, and turn this around for yourself. Master the different tools from different ways and means to quit alcoholic drinking and abusing, and set yourself up sweet and happy.
I hope my post helps a bit to help you help yourself. Yes, I've recovered, and I still have my original core beliefs and experiences.
Awesome.