Hey everyone,
Sorry for delay, my kids "graduated" today so I have been really busy with parents meetings and helping to fill out the various paper work they need for the kids going to kindergarden next year or other LRE programs, I feel like I've spent my entire life in meetings! I did decide to hit up an AA meeting yesterday after work, and it was a speaker meeting, it was acually very helpful because the person was a very grounding speaker. She talks about how she'd begun drinking in her late college years but had never been interested in drinking prior to that. She talked about how she loved it too much right away but the black outs and the embarrasing nights all seemed normal in college and how she'd be sober off and on through her twenties and early thrities and then pick back up again and always land in the same place. Her story was similar to yours lb2101, she wasn't physically addicted right away but it DID reach that pount and I know from people I talked to in rehab and in outpatient that I coud reach the point where I am physically addicted but I am not physically addicted right now. I fill like I don't get physically hooked on things very easily but mentally I do...I mean it's not like it's impossible for me say no to a drink , I've done it, even in early sobriety and I think that what has me questioning my alcoholism or lack there of.
My issue lies with once I pick up that drink. Sometimes I can keep it in control maybe. Tho normally I can't stop at just one, or two, I keep going until I am pretty drunk, although it's not always until I black out, not at first. Although I always seem to want more. It's like once have one there is no off button. And even if I did manage to shut myself off one night it's not long until the black out drinking every single night starts. This time around when I relapsed it took 2 weeks, and it was also the first time I was drinking in the morning and pretty much all around the clock.
I feel like it's easier for me not drink when I don't have a reason too...especially now when I have a desire to stay sober. But then other times, like when I posted the other night, at the end of a long day for example, or watching the Red Sox or even tomorrow when I go to my cousins graduate party with an open bar and everyone is drinking and having a good time, I find myself really wantin to partake in that. Cos I wanna loosen up an feel more comfortable and not so awkward and shy.
I got asked out on a date next week by this really nice kid and I want to drink on that too because I want to loosen up and not be so awkward and nervous and shy.I guess most of the time I am fine not drinking even if part of me wants to because I like drinking just to drink but when there is an actual reason, it really ignites that desire you know? But I guess other times I can take it or leave it and I guess part of me is like "well if you were an alcohoic there would never be a time where you'd leave it" Although as I read this over again i realize that this leave it thing didnt begin till I actually went to rehab or was activly trying to stay sober when I was drinking I sure as hell NEVER said no to a drink so I guess its not the same
But my therapst told me that the reason alcoholics stay sober is because they dont drink period, don't make drinking an option, that all sober alcoholics say no to alcohol all the time and being able to say no doesn't mean I am not one and that the proof lies in what happens when I take that drink and how something in my brain goes off like a switch and demands MORE. We have actually discoverd I am like that with A LOT of things, I am very all or nothing or black and white which can really be a hinderance
I guess I am bad at seeing grey areas and that is what is hurting me here.
And GottaLife, your post is a lot like what I hear in the rooms of AA or from people whose lives have been saved by the program. But I don't know, I don't think I can do this on my own forever, and I think right now TBH a big part of why it's been easier for me to say sober is because I am accountable to my parents, living under their roof, by their rules, I don't have a lot of money and I don't have a lot of stress since they're around to take care of me and disaplin me it's actually almost like being at a sober house...
I know a lot of people say they can't do it without their higher power, and I am afraid once I move out, once things get more back to normal and I am more accuntable to myslef it's going to be harder to stay sober and i am really going to need something more then what I am doing now.
In some ways I have changed. I don't spend as much time in my room. I wake up early some days even at 5 AM to go run, I try and engage with people more. Because of my NLD it can be realy hard to interact with people but I try to do that even if it's just small talk at the super market. I am also trying to push myself to join a running club to meet fellow runners and more local people who have stuff in common with me.
My therapist and I come up with lots of plans for me but I have trouble with follow through. Someone onace said that addicts pave the road with good intentions or something along those lines and I think thats pretty accurate about me I mean to do all these good things but I dont always do them because they are scary or hard or whatever...
I know meeting would be much more helpful if I introduced mysefl as a new comer and stayed after to talk to the people who say theyre temp sponers but it makes me so nervous and I hate to feel vulnerable (a big reason why I drank) so I end up just running out or hoping someone will approch me . Its actually an issue taht carries over into a lot of my life...
IDK but the cravings I am getting are not at all physical, they are very much mental/emotional and they have certainly been a lot worse in the last week then they have been in a while. But I also haven't been running this week (shin splints UGH) and I've sort of had a busy/stressful week so that could be part of it...and then there's the Brun's and summer parties etc... I've also been ahving a lot of dreams in which i drink and even in my derams I feel horribel and i wake up thanking god it was ony a dream so that tells you something...
Someone I forget who now said that no one ever wakes up in the morning wish they had drank last night and you were so right. When I woke the morning after postng this ( was it Thursday I think so...like I said busy week haha) the first thing I thought was "Thank God I didn't drink last night" I know drinking so wont be worth the consequences I know these ones will be even worse then the last ones...so that right there should be enough not to drink right? And if it isnt if I'm willing to risk having a place to live and my family in my life for a night of drinking well then damn that tells you something huh?
I guess it's just confusing for me because I feel like I need alcohol not becase I'm addicted but because it helps me, helps me not be so shy, helps me sleep, helps me relax, helps me have fun etc...I don't know if that really makes me an alcoholic but then otehrs times I'm drinking just to drink when things get out of control so...who knows.
I overthink everything, obviously. But reading my old posts here I have no idea why I'd want to go back, I've heard the stories, I know it all you know but I still can't get rid of that desire, I dont understand it. And I'm afraid I won't make it that I'm going to go back that I'm actually going to get physically addicted like everyone says, it wont take much, not with how I get once I start...I know I am the only one with the power to stop it but everyone says AA is really the only thing that works and IDK if it's going to work for me so sometmes I feel like it's just a ticking time bomb so I might as well get it over with but it so doesn't have to be like that
Sorry for typos I just got in iPad and I am not used to the typing yet