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Old 01-08-2016, 03:14 PM
  # 22 (permalink)  
thomas11
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Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: MN
Posts: 8,704
Originally Posted by LBrain View Post
not to pile on... So you are admitting you are not doing 'the best you can do'.

What I am about to say is not entirely directed at you 'Thomas'.

I read a post this morning from someone who made it 6 days and tossed an excuse 'out there'. I had to log off because I got angry about how this person treated it and I didn't want to call bullsttt! at the time. It was, but I needed to collect myself due to my own anger at someone else who it seemed to me to just shrug it off.

I get annoyed when I hear of folks who "slip" after a week or a month. Or the folks who throw around the word "relapse" after a short amount of time 'sober'.

Sure it is semantics, but I don't consider drinking again after a month as a relapse. I consider it still caught in the addiction mind set.
Until someone has serious sober time and drinks again - a relapse - they are still trying to figure out what to do.

To me, a 'slip' in the 'beginning' is nothing more than not being fully committed (giving 100%) to sobriety. When it is termed a 'slip' in a lighthearted manner anyway.

Closing the door, not leaving it 'cracked open' is the only way ensure something doesn't 'slip' through that door.
Putting a screen in the window with a hole in it will not keep the insects from entering. If you want to keep the insects out, fix the hole or get a new screen. You need a 100% barrier for it to work.
Same goes for the decision to get and stay sober.

You are either 100% or you are not. To quote a 'program', 'half measures availed us nothing...' or something like that.

Regardless of how anyone approaches their 'journey', 'program', 'plan' and commitment to sobriety, until you are 100% > all in < you are not going to succeed.

You have to want it. More than anything else.
LBrain, I don't take it as piling on. And I can't disagree with you. I have preached to others exactly what you have told me. And truth be told, I have been most successful in my life in one capacity or another while I gave 100%. Not 98, not 99...100% I believe it is a REQUIREMENT for success. But to be perfectly honest (and many will call BS on this) at 48 yrs of age, I have given 100% so much of my life, that I have this (likely false) impression that at my age I should be able to slow down a little and smell the roses. I don't have the desire to go 100MPH from 6AM to 8PM 6 days a week anymore. I just don't. And I'm scared. I am about to embark on a new chapter in my life and have no idea what is going to happen. I do have a framework of a plan, and it starts Monday. I've talked about it before. Starting Monday morning, I will roll out of bed at 6:30AM, put on a pot of coffee and brush my teeth. I will go down stairs and exercise for 1 hour (no shower prior, just get moving). I will start light, but I have to get in some type of good physical condition, I will start building my resume, I see my GP to taper meds, I am meeting with a business coach. All these things need to start happening, and it starts Monday. Where it takes me, I don't know. I know one thing for sure, I can't sit here at my computer the rest of my life.
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