Wondering If I really want to do this...
 

Hey All,

I've been away from here for a little while. Busy with school more or less, holidays, etc.

Its been about a month since I "quit". I wish I could say that was my last drink. I havent been "drunk" since then, but I have had a drink here and there. Same old players, same old game. Not being able to have just one, but being able to stop before getting too far away. I hate the feeling of being drunk nowadays. I hate the haziness, and hate the guilt. Yet, I still have that urge. Nowadays, I'm able to fight most of the urges, but some still get away.


I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm losing motivation. I've been away from my AA group, and really wanna get back when I head up to school. That really helped me stay motivated, seeing everyone, hearing stories.

Totally sober writing this, but had a couple of drinks earlier today. Tomorrow is the new day one, I guess :)

Thanks for listening.

I too had false starts before I finally quit.
Yes...my AA group always said.....
Welcome back....:)

Hesitation exists for just about everyone at first, and even long into sobriety. Some people go through enough trauma that they lose all doubt, but not all do. I myself do not 100% want to not drink ever, but I've learned to manage such feelings into sobriety.

The opposite side of "do I really want to stop drinking?" is "do I want my life filled with all these negative consequences?" It is very normal in addiction to believe that the second question can somehow be put aside, that somehow addiction can be made into something that is always pleasant. It's normal, but it also makes no sense.

Like if I could hear someone say "isn't there someway I can smoke two packs of cigarettes a day and not wind up with lung cancer?" my reaction would be to call that insane, but when it comes to my own drug use (alcohol) I have a harder time seeing how pointless it really is to want to separate all the good from all the bad.

Carol is right that it often takes a lot of false starts, I had many, but in enough time you do start winning the battles and sobriety takes on a sort of momentum where it gets easier to keep it going day after day.

Day ones are always better than day nones. You can do it. :)

You could easily be me. I found that I was still going for drinks and not getting drunk but also feeling the guilt during the drinking and the low feeling setting in in the evening rather than the next day. I thought in my head that was me slowing down gradually before completely quitting but then on xmas day i drank way to much. Like Isaiah I find the idea of quitting forever scary but for now im trying to eliminate it completely because I need a clean sober head to make the right choices. Im happier, healthier and more productive without it, its just remebering that sometimes.

I did the exact same thing. People talk about hitting the bottle much harder during relapse but that was not my experience. Once I did my first sober stint (3 weeks in March) I kind of half assed drank for months afterwards but never with the same enjoyment/intensity as I used to. I was trying to moderate, I guess and doing a better job of it than I had before but realizing that it was not REALLY possible and definitely not enjoyable.

My sponsor passed this on to me: " Being involved in the recovery community is like being in a river. One can swim upstream, downstream, cross-stream or simply float -- in all cases the river inevitably carries one along it's course. Standing on the bank watching the river does not offer the same result."

If you want to drink, that's your business. If you want to stop, AA can help.

I had lots of false starts but then something major or "rock bottom" happened to me that forced me to take sobriety seriously or I was certain to die sooner than later with the lifestyle I was living.

Seems like your losing motivation because your away from your AA group. There isn't an AA group that you can go to while your not at school???

The poster before me got to it before I could- - Certainly there's an AA group nearby? I'm in a fairly remote location but have meetings within 5 miles to choose from between 7am and 8pm.

Anything and everything you put before your recovery is in danger of being lost, sometimes forever.

You want to be sober, but you simply don't know how. ...but you know AA is a solution.

You can make up ANY excuse, ANY reason to not go to a meeting, to not work the steps, to not get sober. ...but there is only one reason to go.

This is an easy one my friend b/c you already know the answer.

Kjell