Thread: Ugh why?
View Single Post
Old 05-13-2016, 03:27 AM
  # 2 (permalink)  
ChiefBromden
Member
 
ChiefBromden's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Europe
Posts: 291
Maybe we have to accept that there is something like a post traumatic shock in addiction too. As much as sobriety is the way forward, feeling hunky dory is absolutely not a given, and - in my experience - the first year can be downright hard. I was all over the place, and was sure I had some horrible diseases lurking beneath it all, despite tests telling me otherwise.

Probably said it before, but for me it took 9 months before I started feeling a bit better. I don't know if it's because, like you, I also was detoxing from benzos, but I believe it's logical that this played a role with me. Now I'm a 6'7 guy, which is a tad different, but I still felt like a truck had ran over me for the better part of the first year sober.

If you take a step back: our brains had adjusted over the years to a constant flow of alcohol and benzodiazepines. This does not mean there is permanent damage - no harm in trusting those test results - but it does mean that our brain isn't very happy with the massive change in chemistry.

My real breakthrough came after I really started looking at my diet. In my second year sober I lost 75 pounds without ever going hungry. This did loads for my self esteem as well as my health. I didn't go crazy, but I tried to focus on fresh products, with the basic idea: if it a) comes in a box or b) my grandma wouldn't recognize it as food, I didn't eat it. If it made any claims about health, I didn't eat it. Simple, but effective.

I'm not saying that you should do the same; it's just an option, but what you don't need is more stress still.

In short: try to not despair - for some of us it just takes time (it certainly did for me), and although sober, we still need to deal with the stuff that made drinking and drugging a rather good idea at the time.
ChiefBromden is offline