jamdls

During my last drunk I overdosed on prescription sleeping pills and pain killers, I spent a week in the hospital with a hole in my liver. 2 days before I was discharged I was told that my liver was failing (they exaggerated) and that I would likely die a very slow and very painful death. Within 12 hours the meds started working and I was recovering. The next day everyone kept asking me "what is your plan for recovery" "you must have a plan” I just wanted to go home. After a week or 2 I went to an AA meeting and there I was told "you have to come every day, 90 in 90", "you have to have a sponsor" I didn't see any reason to go every day, and didn't see any reason for sponsor, I don't like being told what to do that doesn’t work with me. I went to about 6-10 meetings in the first month then I stopped but I read the AA literature and all kinds of other literature about alcohol problems. The 1 thing that really stuck with me and enabled me to not only drink but to not even have any desire to drink is accepting that "I'm allergic to alcohol", I accepted that during the first few weeks of sobriety. I feel it's no different than if I was told I was allergic to shellfish or peanuts, or whatever, obviously I wouldn't eat those things nor want to eat them; I'm allergic to alcohol. Even today 4 years after I quit drinking the thought of drinking makes me cringe and I think if I even smelled it I would get nauseated. Other than coming to SR I don’t really even think much about sobriety, and I don’t seem to have any need to do anything to maintain my sobriety; I am grateful for my sobriety and I thank God daily. I’m a non-drinker now period.

Zencat

When I first entered recovery I discovered that I needed to find another viable way to recover than AA (now I use the lifesaving philosophy 'take what you need and leave the rest') alone. As a person of no faith, some of the steps had no meaning to me personally. So I looked into what options there were that were meaningful. Because I wasn't going to do meanness things in recovery as I did in active addiction.

Fortunately I found that there is no one way to recover from addiction that works for everybody. That many others before me had recovered by using a great variety ways. At that moment I started to have hope for myself, that I can treat my addiction with 'recovery tools' that have proved useful for others.

I'm thankful that in the early days of recovery that I wasn't week minded. I knew what I needed and I was resourceful enough to get it. I used the same determination that keep me using drugs in active addiction into a iron will to get well 'no matter what'.

As in life so as it is in recovery: one mans meat is another mans poison. There is more that one way to treat addiction and I'm I ever so grateful that I found out that truth...or I would be dead.

CarolD

When I came on line in '92 I was already a sucessful AA sober woman.
I've not found it necessary to try to convince anyone of much of anything.
My program and choices need no defences.

What interest me is helping others find their way into a sober healthy future.....that gives me much joy and purpose....

How often I have shared.....there is no wrong way to quit and stay quit.

Instead of putting down other members or programs...I find it more useful to type of my positive expereinces..in the deep hope one person can find that beneficial.

Forward we go...side by side

BackToSquareOne

I never liked the "it's my way or the highway" approach to anything, once you close your mind and believe there's only one way of doing things you stop learning and often end up living a life based on outmoded ideologies. Life is all about change which is constant, nothing stays the same, new and better technologies replace the old, new discoveries replace old ideas in medicine and every other profession. Why then is dealing with the issue of alcoholism any different?

Lets face facts, there is a lot of great information out there on dealing with alcoholism so why not learn from all of it. Bruce Lee, the martial artist who died in the 70's said that his approach was to take what works and leave the rest in developing his style. He drew on all the fighting methods and figured out what worked best for him. Nothing is written in stone, life is a journey so take what works best for you and leave the rest!

Image101

Holy sh*t JJK I thought I was the only one who did the 'pee in the bottles and forget which ones were booze and which were pee'! Did that on more than one occassion...I don't know which tasted better, the pee or the booze . I know which one was better FOR me

JJK

life is always in change! how can you close anything at all at the top? it even says in the big book something about all the changes taking place in the world and the old doesnt work anymore.. its time for the new..

zen, i was hoping youd chime in.. but i thought youd be more like "i dont draw any lines" or something really zen where im not there right now! but youre right.. i think whatever one does.. they gotta hit it just like they did the bottle..

anyway, day 4 for me.. people knowing my latest ordeal.. not one phone call.. thats a good thing.. im done taking that route.. but its a little scary.. guess i gotta really look deep inside me today to see what jives and what doesnt..

JJK

image, hahahaha! id put it down as soon as i realized what it was.. but then id stare at it wishing it was full of booze..

BackToSquareOne

It's even worse if you pee in a half full bottle of vodka, now you have a new dilema, especially if that's all you have left.

JJK

lol thats pretty sad to say.. but if i were alone.. id know what id do..

Image101

With a little orange juice I doubt you'd even taste it...sadly, that would be enough rationalization for me.

HuskyPup

I did a lot of experimenting before I experienced the sense of merriment that keeps me sober today. At first I thought it would be safest to use one single method to stay sober. I tried AA briefly, then SMART. It made a lot of sense to me at the time. I was not an alcoholic of the hopeless variety, but I knew a problem was afoot. It was easier to deny, because I did not drink daily, but on average two nights a week, but on those nights, often to horrible excess.

The end result was I was stuck in a relapse cycle that lasted for years and remained the same, instead of changing. In the end I had to cobble together various aspects of a number of approaches, from SMART to aspects of the spiritual. I had to take an honest look at my life, and use my own will power, not just the instructions of somebody else.

~

Recently, I have returned to reading Emerson, much involved in the early Unitarian Church, that current bastion of liberal, mixed spiritual beliefs, community and understanding.

What has helped also is not to let what others think get to me, as I have no control over what they think, in any event; I can only control how I think, and at best make attempts to manipulate their thoughts and actions, which often prove futile. It is thus that I consider self-reliance itself to be a spiritual endeavor, and I think this is also the sentiment of Emerson in his famous essay, ‘Self Reliance’:

“And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!

“It is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner…

“So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”

One can meld a reliance on the self to the spiritual; the idea that the two are mutually exclusive is merely a popular opinion, no immutable law, code, edict, or dictum demands that it must be otherwise; only people do.



Oh...and a big congratulations on day4! These are usually some of the toughest. Keep on keeping on, here.

JJK

thanks, pup.. i remember getting into emerson and new thought after being sober for a while.. then attending tibetan buddhist services.. and practicing zen on my own.. was at my happiest, w/ my recovery atleast, then..

sounds weird.. but really what set everything off and in motion for me was when a friend gave me the book "into the wild"..

freshstart57

I made a decision to abstain at 9:30 one morning after being presented with the short list of obvious options that remained regarding my family, my job, my health, my life, and my plan for future use of alcohol. Immediately, I felt a sense of relief that I would eventually return to the person I had been, someone that I used to like.

I decided at that moment that the thought and then the urge to drink were against my better judgement. I decided also at that time to laugh, smile, and ridicule any thought of taking another drink. I knew that I had to distance myself, somehow, from that habit of mine that was many years old.

I hit the interwebs immediately and started to make this my number one project, to find out how I was going to make this work permanently. I went to three AA meetings that first week, while getting some support from online forums including SR. That was when I read about SMART, CBT, and most importantly, AVRT and RR. I had some fundamental problems with AA that were not wholly based on the spiritual nature of AA. It was the recognition of my highly internal locus of control that was behind my issues with AA.

I looked into AVRT a little further, and found that I had been using it from the beginning by instinct, I guess. Research into RR only formalized my approach and strengthened it. I am now sober for over a month, with no end in sight.

I continue to learn about other topics related to addiction and self knowledge. These include mindfullness, and REBT. I just started to read Allen Carr's book and I am sure that it will form part of my understanding too.

Thanks for starting a great thread, JKK. Congratulations to all of us who have found a path forward to their own personal sobriety.

Supercrew

Sorry, but I draw the line as using urine as a mixer.

I guess I could have used clorox or some other poison, but urine makes me want to gag when I think about it. For it to work for me I need my imagination to spark a physical response, like almost dry heaving.

It's just a tool in my bag that helped me sit with other drinkers in a drinking environment and not want to drink.

Boleo

LOL! Now that's what I would call a "Double Bind". I would have probably looked into the different boiling points or freezing temperatures for each. I sure as he11 would never have thrown it out.

Boleo

I see you are a fast learner. All good artists steal a little from other artists. Great artists steal a lot from other artists.

HuskyPup

I wondered if you'd notice that!

One thing I have noted, as time goes on: You make me feel like Bugs Bunny, which is a good feeling!

Zencat

It is my cat that has the high exalted position of being my guru..hence my avatar name, my cats name. As anything I have heard, experienced and practiced in traditional recovery...My cat knows more than the so called 'old timers'....blessed be.

Some think their way into the bottle...so they can think their way out...bless them.

Others like myself have experiences where 'I was not thinking' adout what I was going to perpetuate my alcoholism. Other times I was confused about my thinking. I 'didn't know what I was thinking'. Sometimes I didn't 'think it through' and got drunk. The worst drunks were from 'not thinking at all what would happen' when I drank those two fifths of 65% rum.

I had many times of; 'I didn't think of what I was doing' or 'shod have through it through' or' what was I thinking' because I wasn't thinking in the first place.

Just goes to show you, many of us experience a common illness of alcoholism. Yet ones interpretations, beliefs and experience can differ wildly. There a few camps of recovery modalities that do not see eye to eye. Not hat one way is right and the other wrong. Its just a case of being willing to agree to disagree. Live and let live is best under theirs circumstances.

Threshold

I got (get) sober by not using anymore. That gives me the chance to decide if I want to stay sober. I used because I didn't like life and felt overwhelmed by it and terrified of it and PO'd that after the childhood I had, I now was expected to navigate adulthood as well.

So, the first thing was to decide if I wanted to bother living at all, that question needs to be answered over and over again, I have issues with life.

I decided that I'd be willing to put some effort into life if I had a reason to believe it was worth the payoff. I did have some experiences, etc that I felt were worth the effort sooooo....I did some talking to recovering addicts, reading, meditating, and hours upon hours of arguing, debating, and sitting with myself, and decided that trying to improve my life was worth a shot.

I had already done that reading, and being someone interested in religion, spirituality and philosophy had done a LOT of reading over the decades..and it seemed that pretty much humanity agrees on the basic recipe for a satisfying life.

I now put more effort into creating a satisfying life, healthy relationships, good health and stable finances than I do into whining about, panicking about and wishing I had a life different than I did.

I use many methods and tools to do so. The amazing thing is NONE of them conflict. To me that is key, if it's part of that basic human recipe...which spiritual leaders and happy people have been sharing for milennia..there is NEVER a conflict. If something doesn't seem to "fit" the basic recipe, I toss it out.

the single most important thing in my getting sober, staying sober and making sobriety worth while was my truly accepting that I am human. That everything that I've experienced and felt...is human. That I am no more or less valuable than any other human, and that like any other human in my condition, the same things that helped them are likely to help me. I used to be so darned attached to the idea that out of all history I was unique. Allowing myself to be fully human is the only thing that has offered me any hope or happiness. I was so lonely and hopeless before.

TheEnd

You said a mouth full!!!