tammy711

I've been strong in my sobriety. I have been able to keep my thoughts in check. For some reason today, I keep thinking, maybe my drinking wasn't abnormal. Maybe I am a normal drinker. I just drink a lot.

I want to argue with myself (chuckle), but my booze brain is hard at work trying to convince me I am going to be miserable without wine. I can't stop hearing, "just drink, Tammy! just have that glass of wine, why not?! you know you're going to eventually anyway - stop being so miserable and just have a glass!"

Anyone have a good response when you're fighting with yourself? I want to just yell back in response about all the pain and misery drinking too much causes, but right now those things are hard to see.

It's like trying to get out of a bad relationship when you're young. You know you should leave, but a couple weeks without the person all you can do is think about the good things - none of the bad.

Help?

OneLessLonely

When I start the mental back and forth thing, I remember someone posted hee that they say to the addictive voice, "blah blah blah. Shut the h*ll up." Because you cannot reason with the addictive voice. If you entertain it by talking back, you give it validation that it has power, which keeps it going. Once you decide to not drink, do not try to reason one way or the other. The decision has been made. Good luck.

candi7

Say "Stop It" out loud like you would to a pet dog that's going through the trash.. you say it and mean it! Or put an elastic band on your wrist and pop it when you think this way.

And you may need to figure what's actually going on with you to make you think about picking up..

I think about

H.A.L.T. acronym

Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired: Fix these situations before you make any decisions.

Sally1009

To paraphrase the Big Book of AA : The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed. We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking'. Chapter 3 - it says it far better than I can. All I know is that my mind plays tricks with me, making me forget how bad it was, and that I can drink again. My alcoholic mind is horribly clever.

doggonecarl

Normal drinkers don't argue with themselves about drinking. Or not drinking.

Jimuk

4 days sober and the voice is in my head already even though i had an awfull weekend with drink, why do we forget or think it will be ok to take a drink after a few days and forget the pain we cause to ourselves and families? Jeez i think i must be a crazy weak person.

Not going to give in today anyhow and hopefully not tomorrow.

Mark75

There is a 12 step response... where, If I have admitted that I am powerless and I turn my will over to God... It's not up to me anymore...

The AVRT approach, as I understand it... Is that I don't engage in that kind of internal dialog... I do not fight the AV anymore... It is stronger than me and it wants me to drink and will tell me things.

Or a combination of the two... They are kinda similar, bottom line is I don't have that option anymore, to drink.

CarolD

i kept a recovery journal for a long time
I used it to gage my progress and to see where
I needed to ramp up my AA program....

Sooo..I suggest writing down all the pro's and con's
of your drinking on pages 1 and 2.
Then when these negetive thoughts pop up....read them
and make a new entry re firming your choice for sobriety.

You could also keep a smaller notebook with you when your
not at home..jotting down positive things as they occur.


All my best as you move forward

tomsteve

or drink a lot.

ebshot

But how? I too am struggling with thinking that I can drink like a 'normal' person. I logically know I cannot and I know I am an alcoholic but yet when the cravings pop up I think that perhaps I might be able to moderate. How can I accept that this is not the case?

Jimuk

Its hard to accept but If you don't accept it there will be many day 1's as i have proved over and over again to myself.

What worries me is one day time will run out and there will not be another chance for day 1

NewBeginning010

Hi Tammy,

I hope your feeling better. You seemed pretty sure your drinking was abnormal when you first joined this site... you not only admitted to it being abnormal but being an alcoholic (good for you that's a big step).

Here is your first post here & all of the best in your recovery

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ml#post2364532

freshstart57

While some programs may be great at developing deeper spiritual relationships and addressing guilt and shame through a personal confession, they do not teach tools that we need to get sober. Carol mentions a tool that is widely used in SMART, called a cost benefit analysis. This is part of a rational approach to sobriety which uses your capacity to reason and plan, and is often used as part of cognitive behavioral therapy as part of addiction counselling.

Tammy and Ebshot, you are asking about another tool to help resist that voice that tells us to drink:
A tool which addresses this directly is called Addictive Voice Recognition Technique. It involves identifying the voice of our addiction, a skill which you understand already. It involves separating from that voice by saying that my logical mind knows better than to drink, and what I hear is just my alcohol thirst speaking up, and what's more, I don't have to do what it says if I don't want to, and I don't. It also considers the possibility that you can quit drinking: what if you believe that you can quit, what things can happen next?

If either of these tools make sense and interest you, there is a lot more discussion of them in SR's Secular Connections forum. Just like this forum, you will find a lot of support there too.

BackToSquareOne

It's not something that needs to be accepted it just is. Like hot is hot and cold is cold.

doggonecarl

I would suggest an honest assessment of your drinking. Write down your drinking behaviors, frequencies, amounts, and so forth. Anything you can that would identify what kind of drinker you are so you can go back through the list and ask, "Do normal drinkers do this?"

Here's an example from my drinking:

I can't hardly balance my checkbook with a calculator. But I could walk into a store, go to the beer aisle and instantly calculate in my head which one would give me the most alcohol by volume for the cheapest price. That is where I was at at the end of my drinking, seeking the most bang for the buck.

At the end, the most "bang" turned out to be malt liquor in the 24 oz can or the 32 and 40 oz bottles. These are not single-serving containers. And yet I was drinking a bunch of them.

Normal? Of course not. And I really didn't want to be a normal drinker. I wanted to be a get-drunk-all-the-time drinker.

Once I realized I wasn't a normal drinker, wasn't ever going to be a normal drinker, then the idea of never drinking didn't seem like such a obstacle.

ReadyAndAble

As freshstart said, AVRT is focused entirely on addressing that very issue. Check out the discussions we have going on the Secular Connections forums. It might be exactly the tool you're hoping to find.

john44

I find the word "NO" pretty effective. Praying for strength helps me too.

DayTrader

For me, "fighting it" never worked. Well, that's not true...it worked sometimes. It just wasn't reliable. I could know it was my 'ism talking the whole time.... but sooner or later, I'd either submit to it OR, and this was the scariest one, I'd just "catch" myself halfway through a big glass of vodka. Didn't even remember pouring it in the first place. It was like waking up out of blackout....only I wouldn't even be buzzed yet. How do you fight it when you never even get the chance, right?

What worked for me was NOT fighting it. Admitting that I'd given it my best shot for quite a while, tried a lot of things and nothing was delivering the results I needed.

And I shouldn't leave this off - even when I COULD rack up some dry time, I sure didn't enjoy myself. I went about 6 or 8 months one time. Not that I wanted to drink the whole time because I didn't. What did happen was, day by day, I'd get reminder after reminder of why drinking would be good, or fun, or OK to try again. Constant reminders that my MAIN problem is that I don't like sobriety. LOL Well, sobriety without recovery, I mean. At it's best, "not drinking" was very mundane......boring. At it worst, heh......hell, i'd just drink again.

Joining the last group I EVER wanted to be part of helped me immensely - saved my life actually - AA. And boy oh boy, did I NOT want to be an AA member at first. There was, however, NO denying.....here's this maaaassive group of ppl who drank like me, feel like me and seem to even think like me. Somehow they found a way to not drink AND be happy almost all the time.

Heck, the only time I was really happy was when I was half in the bag or within 15 minutes of some extra special life-event being tossed my way - like a great day on the golf course, getting laid, having a big day at work, getting promoted, meeting a new girl who was into me, etc. Most of those things made me happy for a while but the effect was fleeting.

It started occurring to me, these AA nuts had something different, it wasn't just happiness. I've come to find out it IS different......it's joy and serenity - and both can be had even when the situations in your life suck. That seemed like the coolest thing ever to me: go through life, bad things happen......and you're still peaceful.....you're still joyful. I had no experience with that at all.....prior to AA.

Dee74

posting here helped me a lot - I found it hard to argue I wasn't that bad when I had the proof written down before me.

I wanted to change - I knew drinking led me nowhere.

Any thought I had that drinking was a good idea, or that I could manage it now, was a lie. It still is.

I had 20 years of 'evidence' that proved otherwise.

The more I built the kind of life I wanted sober, the less these thoughts tormented me Tammi

D

isaiah28

I was having the same thoughts today but then I remembered why i had to quit and pushed it aside.