Dee74

Welcome to SR BabyKangaroo

D

wheresthefun

I just want to say, this is one of the best threads since I started coming around last July (I know, I didn't join until August, but I've been here since July).

Terminally Unique

My thoughts exactly, Keith.

Sapling

AA for me...It was truly a miracle for me to have the obsession to drink lifted from me...I was a pretty hopeless case. I didn't have faith in myself...Let alone, anything else. I needed a major change in my life...Those 12 steps provided both. Having had the alcohol removed I needed to work on the ism....I...Self and Me. That's what this program does...When worked properly. I went from damn near walking dead to aquiring power...peace...happiness and a sense of direction in life. Completely changed the way I live...The friends I have....The way I treat other people. I don't know....I hear a lot of people say it didn't work for them...You get out of it what you put into it. Im just glad I was desperate enough to try it...Best thing that ever happened to me.

Peta

Thanks for everyone's responses

First off I want to say I totally respect anyone's personal choice in how they get sober

I know for me that my drinking problem has been the scariest, most depressing and gut wrenching challenge i've ever had to face so when you find what works if it's working for you then GREAT

The reason I started with this thread was because after 14 months in AA (and yes my number of meetings had dwindled) I began to doubt whether i was a REAL alcoholic because my drinking hadnt been THAT bad compared with most other people in the rooms. I understand that it was classic textbook relapse stuff. For the last three months i've been drinking on and off.

And yeah I feel like crap. Sick, sad, deflated.

But see in the last two months I HAVE been going to meetings again, talking to my sponsor even doing some step work and its just like I get 4 days sober or a week sober or 2 days sober and then RR would call it my AV kicks off and EVEN though I've accepted I'm powerless have asked God for help I give IN to my AV.

In the last 24 hours i've been talking to other women in the fellowship. Some who never picked up again after their first meeting OTHERS who like me have gone in and out of the rooms but have now managed to keep a good amount of sober time up. When I ask them HOW DO YOU stop that obsession when it kicks in there is really no answer. Keep going to meetings, keep praying to God, Wait for the miracle to happen.

So in the last 24 hours i've also been on here and on the RR recovery site. I've ordered the book Rational Recovery: The New Cure for Substance Addiction" by Jack Trimpey AND done the crash course on the website.

What I do relate to with this whole Beast concept is that is exactly what it has felt like for me. I can go to a meeting, speak to anotehr alcoholic, pray to God to relieve me of my alcoholism (all the things that are meant to give me a daily reprieve) and once i've got that Beasty going i try and fight him and usually give into him.

When I look back to the 18 months of sobriety I had outside of AA when there were times where the 'idea' to drink cropped up I did kind of visualise myself being separate from the 'idea' and then it passed which is exactly what Trimpey says people who just stop drinking end up doing and successfully become non drinkers.

I dont know - I dont have all the answers... but I'm searching and I dont ever want to drink again

Thanks everyone

Peta

Thanks for everyone's responses

First off I want to say I totally respect anyone's personal choice in how they get sober

I know for me that my drinking problem has been the scariest, most depressing and gut wrenching challenge i've ever had to face so when you find what works if it's working for you then GREAT

The reason I started with this thread was because after 14 months in AA (and yes my number of meetings had dwindled) I began to doubt whether i was a REAL alcoholic because my drinking hadnt been THAT bad compared with most other people in the rooms. I understand that it was classic textbook relapse stuff. For the last three months i've been drinking on and off.

And yeah I feel like crap. Sick, sad, deflated.

But see in the last two months I HAVE been going to meetings again, talking to my sponsor even doing some step work and its just like I get 4 days sober or a week sober or 2 days sober and then RR would call it my AV kicks off and EVEN though I've accepted I'm powerless have asked God for help I give IN to my AV.

In the last 24 hours i've been talking to other women in the fellowship. Some who never picked up again after their first meeting OTHERS who like me have gone in and out of the rooms but have now managed to keep a good amount of sober time up. When I ask them HOW DO YOU stop that obsession when it kicks in there is really no answer. Keep going to meetings, keep praying to God, Wait for the miracle to happen.

So in the last 24 hours i've also been on here and on the RR recovery site. I've ordered the book Rational Recovery: The New Cure for Substance Addiction" by Jack Trimpey AND done the crash course on the website.

What I do relate to with this whole Beast concept is that is exactly what it has felt like for me. I can go to a meeting, speak to anotehr alcoholic, pray to God to relieve me of my alcoholism (all the things that are meant to give me a daily reprieve) and once i've got that Beasty going i try and fight him and usually give into him.

When I look back to the 18 months of sobriety I had outside of AA when there were times where the 'idea' to drink cropped up I did kind of visualise myself being separate from the 'idea' and then it passed which is exactly what Trimpey says people who just stop drinking end up doing and successfully become non drinkers.

I dont know - I dont have all the answers... but I'm searching and I dont ever want to drink again

Thanks everyone

2granddaughters

Probably you just haven't hit bottom yet.

You remind me of me and I hear your (our) story regularly at the meetings. I hope you don't have to ride the garbage truck all the way to the dump.
The very nature of the disease makes the simple truth unpalatable and virtually impossible to accept (until I hit bottom).
Good luck in your quest.

mattparadise

Lots of people have different experiences recovering. There are even more options out there besides AA and RR. In the end, you have to find what works for you. I think you'll see some people even post about SMART as another alternative.

I found AA to be too cult like for my taste and even a bit unhealthy after really trying it for 8 months. As for the "disease" concept. I've learned you can't take the terminology too seriously. Alcoholism isn't really a disease. Some people just call it that. You can use whatever words you like to describe it... Illness, predisposition to enjoying EtOH more than other people, poor choices related to alcohol, etc...

I wish you the best. Hope you find what you are looking for.

Terminally Unique

Some people will never hit that magic bottom until they are six feet under. What to do for those unfortunates who are constitutionally incapable, as Chapter 5 calls them?

BHF

Unfortunately, the vast majority of alcoholics will never have long term sobriety. Some are never introduced to any recovery program, many suffer from undiagnosed or untreated mental illness, others simply don't have the desire to stop... who knows what is going on in the minds of others?

Therefore, if anyone finds a way to maintain their sobriety on their own, through AA, with AVRT, religion, etc... I call it a win. As long as I can stay sober, I've got the opportunity to improve in other aspects of my life.

Terminally Unique

I think we can safely assume that Peta has been introduced to a recovery program, and that she does have a desire to stop drinking. To simply tell someone that they haven't hit bottom yet is too easy. We all know that the alcohol will inevitably bring them to their knees one way or another.

keithj

I had to do the whole deal, Peta. Accepting I was powerless over alcohol and asking God for help just didn't cut it for me. That's like doing part of Step 1 and a little of Step 2. 'even doing some Step work' wasn't good enough for me. I had to do it all with a really good sponsor that understood the hopelessness of Step 1. How many times does the BB warn us about half-measures.

It's not just about accepting that I'm powerless. It's knowing to my deepest core that I am really and truly screwed here. In that state, Step 2 takes on a different tone, and is full of desperation to take the other Steps. Asking God to keep me sober is not the same as doing the rest of the Steps that remove from me the things that our blocking me off from that power.

Try the whole deal, taking all the Steps from start to finish. Or, try something else.

keithj

I hate hearing newcomers told this. More than likely, she just hasn't been given the solution we have found because she is surrounded by people that don't need that solution and don't engage in that solution. People that were able to walk into a meeting, make some friends, talk about their 'issues', and just quit drinking.

How much more of a bottom does somebody need? They are a walking example of the their own powerlessness over booze, and they walk into an AA meeting looking for an answer. They don't need more bottom; they need more solution. Somebody to sit down with them and look at their experience in the context of the BB, and show them the directions for how to recover.

onlythetruth

IMHO the idea the idea of "hitting bottom" is one of the most dangerous, deadly concepts out there about addiction. I wish it could be entirely deleted from our vocabulary because it is so unhelpful and damaging.

The only real bottom is death. Since none of us writing on this forum are dead, it is safe to say that none of us hit bottom.

What we DID do is decide that things were bad enough that we were willing to change. We've approached our addictions from different angles and used different approaches and philosophies to recover, and our stories are all different too, but that's one thing we all have in common. We were willing to say "enough is enough" and follow through.

DayTrader

Agreed Keith!
My path was slightly different in that the obsession to drink was removed "suddenly" from me very early on. Heck, it went away before I really even wanted it to go away (figure that one out...lol). Like any good alkie can do though, I took that blessing and turned it into a handicap. Since I wasn't drinking......and was reasonably certain I wouldn't drink again........I really dragged my feet in working the steps. I mean, why should I go any faster or dig any deeper? - The heat of drinking is gone......I can take my time.....so I thought.

Perhaps that was just the best I could do at the time.....but I half-measured the program with the best of 'em. Then around a year / year and a half......I found myself in a nasty mess. Here I was, not drinking, going to meetings, I even "liked" the program and had really bought into it mentally.......but I was slacking in a lot of areas. I'd really stalled after doing step 5, didn't practice 6 or 7 much. Never WROTE my 8th step list, made some amends but hadn't become willing to make amends to them ALL and, therefore, didn't make amends to them all, only knew step 10 (and most of the steps, really) out of those yellow 12-Step booklets, kinda practiced 11 but very incompletely and NOTHING like the BB suggests we practice 11 but I liked 12 - which, to me, was "go to meetings and carry MY message of how to not drink and feel better." Lol..... I was taking what I liked from the program, leaving the rest, and successfully half-measured myself into a living hell........again!

Long story short, I didn't pick up a drink (and I don't recall doing much thinking about a drink at all) but my life was slowly turning to crap again - and I wasn't drinking. I don't have any experience with relapsing after really wanting to be sober for good.....but I do have experience with being a dry-drunk.....totally miserable......full of fear and more self-hatred than I'd even experienced back when I WAS drinking......all from within the supposed safe and cozy confines of "AA."

That's when I learned that "being in AA" doesn't guarantee us anything - sobriety, happiness, peacefulness, joy, friendship, etc. Thanks to my ass being on fire......big time.....I got a whole lot more serious about working the program - the WHOLE program. I too had to go back and re-check my work....find where I'd skimped, where I cut corners (which was alllllll over the place).

Like one of my friends recently posted in another thread, I don't like that I seem to need to be, "crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade," before I'm willing to go to that next level with my sobriety and with my practice of the AA program. I also don't like that half-measures avail me nothing. And I really don't like that my sobriety is more dependent upon the actions I take rather than the things I know...... - but that doesn't detract from my reality that this is precisely how it's gone.

** as for "hitting bottom" - I too think it's a poorly used AA-one-liner. Most newcomers interpret it to mean they have to dig deeper into alcoholism before they can recover. This, of course, runs contrary to what even the Big Book tells us - which is that we can recover now.....today. I've hit many bottoms, some prior to getting sober but several more IN recovery in different areas of my life.

onlythetruth

For me, the key was (1) a commitment not to drink, no matter what, and (2) a plan.

It strikes me that this is something we all have in common, no matter what approach we use. We absolutely differ on the details and the way we conceptualize what we're doing, but I will say this: I don't know a single person who has recovered from an addiction who did so by accident.

Anyway, for me, dealing with the obsession required me to ride it out. Learn its ways. Notice when it attacked (dinnertime) and when it tended to be more quiet (morning). That's how I developed my plan--I figured out what helped and then I did it. There were a lot of practical things, like keeping my blood sugar levels steady, and exercise. Was there some white-knucking? Sure, but I think that has kind of a bad rap. It's hard to quit drinking, and sometimes we do just have to gut it out at the start.

However, the obsession DOES go away. Sooner or later, it does.

Peta

Thanks for all your thoughtful replies - I have found much of the information useful and more direct than when I asked the sober AA'rs in my 'real life'! (no criticism intended to them, I know they want to see me sober)

Sober and really enjoying reading about how people have got sober, not just in AA but total respect to those who have done it in AA too

NYCDoglvr

I got sober through AA because I couldn't get sober on my own. I needed the support of the fellowship. I need to be reminded that I'm an alcoholic (because this is the disease of denial). I need to hear how other people did it and how they stay sober through the tough times. Most of all I need to give back to a newcomer by talking about my experience, strength and hope.

I hope you pick the right path for you, whatever that is.

freethinking

Ugh, no offense, but I absolutely abhor this saying.

Anyway, I like SMART and RR - but only bits and pieces of each. I will say this, if you want my opinion (that someone had explained to me a while back) on the main difference between AA and stuff like AVRT, RR, SMART: People operate differently. Some people heal better or get better when they look outward for their solutions whether it be to God, a group of people in AA meetings several times a week, or follow a regimented step-by-step plan to get them healthy. Other people do better when they look inward (which I feel is more what SMART, RR, AVRT is). I think AA is for more "outward" looking people and the other programs I mentioned are more for people who do better when they turn inward to solve their problems. However obviously there is a little bit of inward and outward in all of it, but I'm just generalizing to keep it simple.

mfanch

The parts of the programs that I DO use are not in opposition to one another. They are all CBT to me. I use AA for the fellowship as I like to hang around addicts who are sober. They get me. I don't fully buy into any of these programs as a stand-alone. Again, this is just talking about ME. FWIW, this dope shooter is happy and free and hasn't needed to get high for 2.5 years, ODAAT, so something's working.....