Changes
 

Despite my Slip last Wednesday, I have been clean and sober for 33 days. I have noticed monumental improvements both mentally and physicall. Mentally, I am more relaxed, short-term memory has improved, more articulate verbally, to name a few. Physically, I just feel better. Overall, I feel stronger. My legs don't feel like they are made of cement, my stomach/digestive tract are pain free (all day) and most of all, my skin has improved. Wow, what a number alcohol does on your skin. I guess it pays dividends to be properly-hydrated and eating a fairly consistently healthy diet.

What changes have you noticed?

I feel stronger, my memory is coming back, my eyes are clear, my face isn't swollen, I feel rested, I don't shake anymore, I'm a better father and husband, my back doesn't hurt, I've dropped a few pounds and I just feel a overall since of calm. It's great I'm so glad I made the choice to quit.

I'm glad you're both feeling positive about your recovery!

I have...<gasp>....moods!

One change I noticed when I stopped drinking is that my wallet got a little fatter.

My changes did not happen overnight...but when I look at where I am today 9+ months in...healthy, good skin, happy, able to deal with life's ups and Downs, exercising...I could go on for pages:)

My mind works right (most of the time;)) and my memory is getting better. I love waking up feeling good, what a bonus.:) I feel better overall. :)

I'm confused by this statement, so it's hard for me to comment.

Seems straightforward to me. I had 1-slip in 33 days.

Just dealing with everything life has to throw at you, including the curve balls, from a completely sober perspective was my biggest change. Life still has its ups and downs but seeing things as they are and not through the lens of an alcohol induced haze is an empowering feeling.

Great job the last 33 days Ethos! I think I have read Frothy write regarding sober time, "it's not quantity, it's quality". So don't take it the wrong way.

The noticable differences I have seen are both mental and physical. I am in the best shape I have been in since I was 25 years old, my mind is working again, and I am growing as a person daily. It feels like I have matured 27 years in the course of 10 months, and my depression that I have had for the last 15 years is gone. My finances are in order, and my marriage is stronger than it has ever been. I feel reborn!

I only know how to count time from my last drink. That gives me a clear point from which I embarked on something. When I drank, and Lord knows I relapsed alot, it was always a reset.

Why is this important? Because if I had said "1 slip in 33 days," I was setting myself up for "3 slips in 54 days" and then "I only drank 12 times in the past year." Which is not sobriety, it's controlled drinking. Which is certainly a great goal to have, but for the chronic alcoholic in my experience, it doesn't work.

I can certainly applaud you for your "1 slip in 33 days" but I try to be honest about the insanity of alcoholism when I think I see it.

I understood what you meant Jay, but at the same time we all are different in our recoveries and our programs. Sometimes depending on lifes circumstances we make mistakes, and if we can ultimately catch them before they get out of hand, who am I or you to discount this sober time, especially because the longer time we can claim the better we feel about ourselves. Ethos explain on the forum that he had a "slip" but caught it before he had a "slide". I did something similar during my recovery process, but I had a full blwn slide that cost me 118 days of sobriety, but I am glad I did because it ultimately made my final decision for life long sobriety an easy decision for me to make. It was a learning experience that I needed. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but it helped me. So I basically have 10 months sober, aside from 5 days of some testing, and a about a 10 day slip up/slide. It is the longest sober time I have had in about 10 years since I was court ordered to remain sober for a year. If I was picking up chips, then I agree with you, you start from scratch, but my program isn't about counting days, it's about quality sober time for me and personal growth. I am sober now and plan to continue forever, and that is all that really matters to me.

If you drink, you should start your sobriety from your last drink.

This thread reminds me of a line my mom used to have about alcoholics, and she would know, she lost about everyone close to her to alcohol related problems. She would say "it's easy to pick out an alcoholic, their life is at a stand still while their bodies and minds get rapidly older." True words in my experience.

So true. I was running at about $40 a day, yeah I was drinking a lot but I also lived by "life is too short to drink cheap alcohol." Kind of comical in hindsight, life was on it's way to being really short!

LOL. I did the same thing.

I noticed that a few of the posts on this thread have gotten a bit off track from the original question I posed. I certainly understand the need to take sobriety seriously, but I think the more important thing is to focus on your "wins" rather than your "losses." Sure, you could tally up the days at the end of the year and say, I allowed myself to drink X number of days. What is truly important is the fact that we learn from our mistakes. If we do, we are moving in the right direction and at the end of the day our wins wil far outnumber our losses. If I simply restarted the clock, I would personally feel that the previous sober-days were somehow gone. That is one thing that got me to where I was when I decided to quit. I focused on the negative. The negative needs to be focused on long enough for us to learn from it, and thats all.

I know that when I posted about my slip-up, there was some degree of concern as to whether we, as humans, have the abilty to simply slip up. I know that certain academics take the position that there is no such thing as a slip up. I think that makes as much sense as certain theories in finance/economics, where we say that X holds true, ceteris paribus, which is the latin for "all else being equal."

Sorry for my rant. I am of the mind that given real world conditions, yes, a mistake can take place. If none of us made mistakes in our recovery, these forums would not exist and recovery would be a piece of cake. When a mistake does occur, we need to take advantage of it because it is is a source where we can gain a great degree of knowledge about ourselves.

If I never wanted to make a mistake in my recovery, I would have never vowed to get sober.

Ethos23....we all know how difficult early sobriety is
good to know of your progress...:yup:

The only date of sobriety I'm certain of is my own
:)

Ethos23, I do not miss your message. But for he alcoholic who is staying sober, who knows that to take a drink could be fatal, you bet I take my sobriety seriously. To say I am sober for x amount of days and not count the slip is just not right.

YES I can soooo relate....used to say to my friends who drank the cheap stuff,
"if I'm gonna drink, I'm gonna drink what I like" and to those that smoked generic cigarettes, "if I'm gonna smoke, I'll smoke what I like! I drink and smoke because I enjoy it, not because I have to."

Boy what a pompus hypocrite I was, but since quitting both these bad habits, I have saved roughly $125 week or more. YAY :c031: