MsCooterBrown

Recognize when I am future-tripping and try to focus on one day at a time

This is the root of any anxiety I have ever had..worrying about all the things that MIGHT happen..it is what makes your mind NOT shut down when you try to sleep..never heard this described accurately..You nailed it GG!!!

TwelveSteps

Thanks, it's common AA advice, I can't take credit

GG

Fandy

for me, I know that alcohol exacerbated my depression and when I was feeling depressed (the kind of depression that made me lay in bed all day staring at the wall and the old reruns on tv in a dark room) i just drank more...it was a vicious cycle for me.

NOT drinking doesn't make everything perfect, but it allows me to think clearly and use the tools I know work for me...( i was under doctor's care for over 3 years for depression, yes it was a psychologist that was covered by my insurance).

I am able to cope with what I consider just a deficiency of certain "brain chemicals" that i feel am "missing"...by using ST.JohnsWort, SAM-e and getting out and exercising, walking my dog and going to the gym...as opposed to 3 different scrips of ant-depressants...i did not do well wth certain side-effects.

if your doctor doesn't click with your personality, try another one. I had found i was more comfortable with a woman therapist.

DayTrader

Maybe you need a different brand of recovery? I found myself being driven to AA, and believe me - I didn't go willingly.....lol. Life had gotten to the point where, for me, the second half of step 1 (...that our lives were unmanageable) was kicking my butt sooo hard......and nothing I'd tried to relieve it was working.......that I figured I might as well give "those dumb meetings and those goofy steps" a shot.

Pretty quickly I was taught that the word "sober" means a LOT more than just not drinking / not wanting to drink. "Sober" originally meant: have sound judgment, right mind, sensible, sound judgment, sound mind.
Now-a-days, we tend to associate "sobriety" just with drinking or not drinking........but we're selling ourselves short. --maybe we'd be better off if we substituted "recovered" in for "sober" more often? There were lonnnng time periods early on for me (and occasionally still are times) where I was "not drinking" and considered myself "sober" but I was farrrrrr from "recovered" and I knew it.


Back when I was drinking I could just delude myself into believing everything was great when it wasn't even close..... I thought it was a great "skill" to have too!


That's great, for now....but my experience has been that when I'm feeling "bad enough," long enough.......and deeply enough.....there WILL come a day where I'll forget allllllll about how bad my last drinking episode was and I'll go pick up my next glass/bottle/can of "relief" --all the while believing it'll be different this time.

I've learned that while "not drinking and no desire to drink" is great - it only goes so far and unless I get real willing to make some additional changes to my lifestyle and my recovery, the odds are that I'm headed back to that old lifestyle for sure.

Working on the quality of my recovery HAS to be an ongoing thing. Many many ppl with far more experience in recovery than I have continually caution us that "alcoholism" never goes away and over any appreciable time period it gets worse - never better. It morphs and adapts and continually looks for the next path to get me to pick up my next first drink. If my recovery isn't constantly growing, changing and evolving and adapting as well.....my alcoholism is sure to win the battle......and I can't live like that again.

Simply, I'd ask you to consider if perhaps what you're feeling is just a shot across the bow - a warning.... an indication that there's more work for you to do than you're currently doing. Give that some thought and see where it takes you.