bemyself

Greetings friends,

It's pretty much bedtime for most of you but here it's just gone 5pm Sunday.

I haven't wanted to start a new thread for ages, mainly because of relapsing / choosing to drink again. This has lasted not quite a month. The past 3 days in particular I've consciously tried for a full-quit day ('one', or 24 hours, as we say in the addiction community). I'm doing it on my own, as in without wanting to return - yet again - to a rehab facility as I did in late February for a seven day detox.

I'm pretty well-versed in how my previous withdrawals (all medically supervised in a facility) have panned out. Essentially - and somewhat surprisingly - those first 2 - 3 days were always pretty benign, with only a very few small doses of valium required. (PS I do still have a few 5 mg tabs left from last year, and took just one mid-morning. I will also get into to see my GP early this coming week too.)

I thought I'd try to occasionally diarise from today; I 'made it' quite well since my last drink last night (at about 8.15 pm) through 20 hours in total....up until 45 mins ago, when I drove to the shop for one bottle of (white) wine. Now am drinking the first.

No doubt some in this section would suggest I move over to the general Newcomers section. However, I hope I don't have to...if you don't mind putting up with me....as I don't wish to be inundated with the 'pressure' replies (along with the more positive or uplifting ones). I would prefer to write here about what I call this 'trapdoor' effect of never-quite-making-it-through the first full day / 24 hours without drinking.

Much of what I say - that I'm drinking at all! - might seem oddly 'stupid', given that I consciously know / studied / reflected upon seemingly every conceivable 'method' (to use the term very generically) of quitting. Plus keeping up with as much as I can of the neuroscience and psycho-biology of addiction.

I've been a year more or less in the mainstream A world, but don't currently wish to return. I've devoured Rational Recovery as well as most if not all the AVRT and related threads here in Sec Con. I get more wonderful insights and discussion (of the often intellectual - and contemplative - kind that I love) here than I ever do these days in my real life. (I sometimes wish we could in fact 'meet' as confreres, in the regular way that they do in AA etc, but of course that's physically impossible).

Of course, the call-response cycle here for an Aussie like me (those damn massive time differences) may be disjointed and delayed at both our ends. Still, I guess I'd like to do this little writing exercise for a bit, if only as a way of journalling my small successes. By successes, at the moment of course, I mean simply experiencing (again) how it FEELS to actually get through the bulk of a sober day....before that trapdoor of my mind just bangs shut.

the trapdoor metaphor is open to question of course - it just somehow came to me. I have absolutely no doubt that the Beast / It is so keen to get me and IT together in that cellar, rather than still out in the house or garden (as it were). I'm not by any means desperate - another reason I don't feel I belong right now in Newcomers, where so many are truly suffering. Oddly, I don't seem to suffering as such. It's more that I can strangely objectively watch and see what's happening in this relapse as well as in these attempts to 'stay' with even a full day of sobriety. Kinda creepy? Possibly.

I look forward to hearing from a few wise and interested members. I'll do my best to jot down random thoughts as they come to mind too. But remember those time differences, crew, so you don't think I'm being rude if you don't hear back from me for hours n hours.