RufusACanal

Some folks here of late continue to torture themselves with repeated relapse. Letting go of beverage Alcohol and all of its glamour was killing me and until I learned some simple information I was unable to make the decision to end my drinking forever. Yes, you can end your drinking forever, but you cannot do it alone.

"I fell off the horse or wagon or cart." "I had a little slip." “I was drinking before I knew it”. “I had a couple.” “I didn’t swallow it and I just rinsed my mouth out and spit it out for the entire night.” “I didn’t drink anything”, as he is led off in handcuffs.

I realize that many are not convinced that their drinking has crossed the line. The question you might ask yourself is when is enough pain, enough.

So, why stop drinking if you are not convinced that it is a problem or if you consider your drinking a problem, but want to drink anyway, why stop and start, stop and start? Why not keep on drinking until you get completely full!

Getting full of booze and finding a Power Greater than you will begin the adventure of a lifetime. Why not try it if you are full!

Astro

That's the million dollar question. It was enough for me the day I walked into AA, no need to take a drink since then. Drinking had ceased to be an option and I knew I could never safely let another drink pass through my lips. To drink again would be to die.

Some good food for thought Rufus, thanks for posting!

Zanthos

Over the course of 27 years of alcoholic drinking, I stopped many times. I repeatedly went to AA meetings in the early 90s, and put together over 3 years of dry time in the mid-90s. I didn't get into "recovery" until 2004.

I stopped drinking many times because I was making myself sick with alcohol. I stopped because I didn't want to drink anymore.

I stopped because I couldn't keep drinking. I'd get too ill, physically and emotionally. I needed a break. But as soon as I started to feel better, I'd go back to drinking.

If I could have, I would have stopped drinking for good a long time ago. But I couldn't. I was very sick. I was so sick that I couldn't stop making myself sick. And nothing anyone else had to say was going to make a difference. Nothing penetrated to my core, to my "innermost self". Until I was completely shattered.

So based on my experience, it seems perfectly natural that people who want to stop drinking stop for a while and then resume. That they come into AA or show up on SR seeking a solution to their drinking problem, but end up drinking again after a while.

I need to remember that those of us in real recovery are the strange and deeply privileged winners of a cruel, upside-down, insane lottery. It was only when emotionally and spiritually I had nothing else to lose that I could stop clinging to my diseased ways of being and begin to learn, grow and change.

So thanks for raising this topic. It reminds me that I ought to be patient, compassionate, and non-judgmental towards those who are "in and out". Which will also help to heal the internal wounds that remain from being someone who was so lost and in so much pain for so long.

MNGirlyGirl

Maybe your suffering from wetbrain if you don't understand relapse. You're just darn lucky you haven't..... yet.

RufusACanal

Zanthos, good post. Here is the opportunity as we touch new people to say, "You know fella, you don't have to do as I did." the reason we give leads at Speaker Meetings, the reason we perform service, the reason we Sponsor is two fold. By doing all, we insure our repreive and we just might reach a newcomer.

Zanthos

I agree, Rufus. We have to keep carrying the message, every chance, all the time. If people in recovery didn't reach out to newcomers, I never would have had the chance I had to learn, grow, and change. A chance I finally took. A change I was finally ABLE to take.

What I have to remind myself, though, is to not be smug about where I'm at today. Or, even more so, that I had an opportunity to change at all. I didn't direct myself into recovery. I didn't really "make a choice". I stumbled blindly into recovery, as lost and clueless as I had ever been. But lucky. Or blessed.

The way my mind works, it's so easy for me to look at others and say to myself "Why don't they get it?" And to even get annoyed or irritated that so many people coming into the rooms of AA, for example, don't "get it" and leave to return to drinking.

So I really appreciate the opportunity this thread provides me to remember that I was one of those people who didn't get it for a long, long time. And if we can be patient with and compassionate towards those people, maybe, just maybe they won't be out in the cold as long as I was.

I need to remind myself of this frequently, and work on really learning it. Because it's easy for me to be lazy and smug and keep my distance from newcomers because I think they don't sound like they're ready yet. (Which is really arrogant and stupid of me.) The truth is, seeing the "old me" scares the poop out of me. I need to get past that.

Rimmy

I relapsed many many times because I was a "selfish" person. Not that I'm not a very giving person too, but I expected instant gratifacations in all aspects of my life. As a deep thinker, I can plot a path in my head as to how it's all "supposed" to go, and when things didn't go like I thought they should have, I'd have to fix it... I'd get frustrated and nutty. I guess I've learned to relax and that is the healing of the mind that I needed to stop. I am a part of the big world and not the center of it. By letting go of the control a bit, the stress and anxietys that yearn for that first drink went away a lot faster.

I know that's a part of why I couldn't stop drinking for so long.

Eroica

Many people who start drinking again after a long period of sobriety do so because they incorrectly think they can moderate. They think-"Oh..I've been sober so long, how can one drink hurt me?" They also begin romanticizing alcohol and before they know it they're back to their old drinking patterns.

-Eroica

CarolD

Hmm...my recipe for successful sobriety...

Relapse and Me....

I spent 5 years in AA before I earned a 1 year medallion.
I was in and out...up and down like a Yo-Yo.

Finally I read "Under The Influence" by Milam and Ketcham.

Eureka! I was not evil or under a hex...Damn! I was sick.
My brain and liver enzymes were not processing alcohol correctly.

I took that info...re connected to God and AA
and have never had another drink.

In order for me to continue solid recovery...
.I use God and the AA Steps daily.

Thanks for letting me share my miracle...

jstme

After drinking for 30+ yrs, I had only been able to put together 23 days in a row of not drinking. In and out of AA because of court, I just didn't want to stop. DUI's, losing my house, my bike, my family, my integrity, was not my "rock bottom". It was only after realizing that this was the way I was going to die and I did not want to enter heaven drunk! I went to detox, then Valley Hope for 28 days. I learned that for me, there is a differance between quitting drinking and being in recovery. Now I cherish every sober day and have managed to put enough of them together to equal 9 months. Between AA, CR, SR, and my faith in God, I can make it another day, then a year, then..... I only hope that the person struggling can put enough days together to have what we have and that sobriety becomes their life. It's working for me, one day at a time.

Remember the pain!

BP44

Great thread. Why return to drinking? The challenge I like to propose to myself on a regular basis. And one that needs light shined on it so that it will not have a chance to grow. That challenge is this....MAYBE I"M NOT AN ALCOHOLIC!!! I mean, suppose I've just been kidding myself and doing all this work for nothing. The Big Book gives me a number of exercises to work through this one. In fact, the Big Book gives us many opportunities for exercise and assignments throughout the first 164 pages. One is to try some controlled drinking. I am not a fan of this method. This particular test kills a lot of us. I prefer another test. First, let's find out what an alcoholic is and see if I fit the profile. The Big Book describes the moderate drinker, the one who can take it or leave it alone. I don't recognize that one at all, I know that's not me. Then, there's a certain type of hard drinker. He may be able to stop if given sufficient reason, like falling in love, warning from a doctor etc etc. I go back into my drinking and I ask myself was there ever a time when any sane rational person would have stopped drinking given the reasons I was experiencing? Of course!!! I drank long past consequences. I drank hard, but I am not a certain type of hard drinker. Then there's the real alcoholic. The one who loses all control once he starts to drink and cannot stay away from alcohol no matter how much the desire or the wish. This is how insane I am....I have to be convinced at the point of death that a spiritual remedy might help solve my problem. And even then, it's still a toss up. It is only then that I have an opportunity for meaningful sobriety. Otherwise, simply being separated from a drink is an unbearable existence, and either returning to drink or taking one's life are the only alternative. That realization for me was the jumping off point. Today, I do not take relapse lightly. I understand it because I've been there and I undrstand that everyone must have their turn. But I just don't have a cavalier attitude toward it. I must say that I get frustrated when I see people look at relapse as if it were a vacation from sobriety and this notion that "I'll just pick back up where I left off" business. Once you've buried some folks in this program AND you see your own truth....well it has an impact.

Dean62

I have gone to the liquor store and picked up a couple fifths of rum so I could get drunk after trying to quit drinking alcohol many times over many years. There has been a part of me that can see how hard my life has become and wants to stop but there also has always been a part of me that wants to drink no matter how bad life gets. It doesn't matter if it makes sense or not. It is what it is.

Today, at this moment the reason I would start drinking again is if:

I want to crush once and for all the only person who has stood by me through years of hell, my wife. I want my kids to know they are right, I only care about myself. Three hots and a cot. I want to die alone.

In other words I no longer have any good reason to drink. On the flip side none of those are reasons for me to stay sober anymore either. I'm an alcoholic.

I was told by a person in AA to pray every day asking only for the will to stay sober for that day. It took a long time of doing this but somewhere along the way I found my reason to stay sober.

Spiritual life is no longer a theory for me.

Zencat

I would like to get into the mind of others and see why they choose to drink. To see what beliefs they have, how their choices are corrupted by the dependence to the drug alcohol. What behavioral influences the alcohol dependent brain instructs the body to move as the mind watches in horror as the same behaviors repeat over and over. I guess thats why I choose to study addiction. To understand for myself why I can choose recovery and sobriety and why others have lost that ability to do the same. I find all this very...

Barto

I think the answer is simple “alcoholism.” We have a disease, and we have a treatment for that disease. Some know about this treatment (which is so much more than a stop-drinking fix) others do not “really know.” So, they come to check it out. They go back out because they are not yet convinced.

I look at this relapsing as necessary part of sobriety for anyone who has relapsed – a good thing, if you will. Like you said, if one has relapsed, that one obviously wasn’t done, and how else can one be done?

chip

Why start drinking again?

Because I'm an alcoholic, and that's what alcoholics do. My brain patterns will always lead me back to it, unless I change my thinking on a daily basis.

It isn't "normal" or "natural" for me to be sober. It's a miracle and a blessing that I strung together any amount of time without a drink.

My thought on relapse is it's the "usual" thing for an alcoholic to do. If you're an alcoholic like me, the odds are not in our favour.

This disease is brutaly efficient at ruining lives. Alcohol is a cunning and baffling substance. Look out, because it wants to kill...sometimes quickly sometimes slowly. It will always win, if we let it.

I don't think anyone ever is cured of alcoholism. Sobriety is a state of remission from a terminal illness. If we stop working at recovery, it will creep back into our lives. Look around, it happens all the time.

I don't want to sound too negative here, but the success rate is low. Am I doing everything I can to stay sober? Is my sobriety the #1 priority in my life? Do I depend on a higher power to restore me to sanity? Do I reach out for help? These are important questions for me. I've seen many people relapse since I started my recovery. Ive seen some people die as well. I don't want to die, so I won't take a drink today.
chip

BP44

Death can be a great motivator. Particularly an alcoholic death. Not a pretty sight. An alcoholic death is an ugly thing. It means that for some undetermined period of time I will have to live a very ugly life. Death in and of itself is not enough of a motivator. It is the existence prior to that death that motivates. And yes, today's success rates are very low. Compared to when the book was written. 50% stayed sober. Another 25% came in and went out and eventually came back ready to do the work to get sober. That's 75%!!!!! What's the difference? Could it be the approach? How often do you hear folks talk about permanent sobriety vs " don't drink one day at a time"? How often do you hear the message...."If you are an alcoholic, you don't EVER have to drink again. We do not offer you a pain free life, but you don't EVER have to experience the pain that brought you here EVER again?" This is the message that I finally got. It was a clear message that was intact and not watered down. I finally landed in a nest of Big Book thumpers who cared more about my life than my sissy ass little feelings.

Tazman53

I spent 5 straight years relapsing, my last relapse lasted 5 years, I drank every single day, no matter what, not that I wanted to, the thrill of drinking had been gone a very long time then, I had to drink to function.

I was given a moment of clarity, I saw the next year of my life in fast forward vivid detail if I continued to drink, in a years time everything dear to me in life was going to be gone and I was going to be left with me and my beer....... then a slow death from alcoholism.

When I had that moment of clarity I was in total shock!!! I had no idea how to quit and stay quit, hell I could not even go longer then 12-14 hours without having to drink! I was lost, all of my answers had failed, I was unable to stop, I was scared to death I was going to die!!!!

I remembered a number on the back of my insurance card, it was the Drug & Alcohol Abuse hotline......... I was finally able to admit to my self......... I NEED HELP, I CAN NOT DO THIS ALONE!!!!

Doctor-Detox-AA-Steps-HP-LIFE!!!!!!!

bugsworth

Rufus I have learned many things from this site....The one thing that stands apart from the rest was the first time I read "are you full yet?" It was many months ago but it made a deep impression on me...I will always be grateful to you for the wisdom. I am full...I drank a lifetime of booze in 15 years...there is no more room in my life for alcohol.

I too have been dismayed at the amount of people that continue to torture themselves over and over with alcohol and the thoughts that "this time it will be different" Bottom line remains people do not quit until they are ready...until they are full...not one second before.

I remember at Christmas I was sober 7 months and went to a party...the host asked did I want a drink...I replied "no, I have had enough." LOL No words ever spoken had been more true for me.

While no two people follow the exact path towards a sober life one must be full in order to take the first step towards freedom. As always, thank you for the post.

ROFL

This is a very timely topic for me. I have just spent four months (mostly) sober, but just this past week "relapsed". I am working the steps (sort of). I KNOW I am full, as you say. I WANT to be sober all the time. I LOVE being sober. So why did I do it? Why did I allow myself to pick up a drink.

I don't know. Because I'm an alcoholic I guess.

I know, though, that I am back here today with my resolve in tact. I will pray to my Higher Power to help me. Today I won't drink.

Tazman53

ROFL if you are like me "(sort of)" ain't going to cut the mustard, I always keep in mind "Half measures availed us nothing." I stood at that turning point they speak of in the BB, if I turned back to the bottle it was the abyss, I knew that for this alcoholic half measures just were not going to cut it, alcohol had me by the short hairs, it was going to take a lot more then my simple will power to keep me sober.