TallGuyUK

After experiencing what sobriety was like (for 16 days) and enjoying it, I for some reason went back to drinking last week. I drunk 5 days out of 6, two of which heavy.

I would like to try again. I just don't know how when it's so easy to grab a bottle of wine from the shop round the corner, or have a beer or 5 with friends. I have no reason to drink this week or even the weekend. I know I will feel more positive about my life and my job if I don't drink. But I cant help myself! I feel bad by saying I really don't want to go to AA. I want to try without, then go there if I really, really can't stop.

Anyway I didn't drink today so I am hopefully going to start again....

I just cannot help wanting a drink after a long, tough day at work with customers and staff nagging me - I just want to come home, unwind and forget everything. But when I drink, I'll want say a bottle of wine. Then the next day I will feel tired, depressed and have anxiety. Anybody else have a good way to unwind that doesn't involve heavy exercise (that doesn't really do it for me)?

doggonecarl

So you are seeing that it's tough, quitting.

I'm not going to say you should go or not go to AA. That's your call. But when you say that you want to wait until you really, really can't stop, what are you saying? One more relapse? Two? Ten? You came here with every intent of stopping, and couldn't. From my experience of quitting and failing, over and over, it was pretty clear the FIRST time I failed that I had a problem and I really couldn't stop. It took me ten years to get the message, though.

As for unwinding when you come home from work, is that really why you drink? I called my drinking "relaxing" too, but the truth was, I was long past drinking for that reason. I drank because I needed to drink. And if I didn't drink, I was withdrawing from alcohol. It was easy to call that holding off of the W/Ds as relaxing, but it wasn't the case.

Unwinding, as you call it, is going to be tough until you get the alcohol out of your system and you've been sober for a while. As long as you aren't drinking but thinking about it, you are going to feel pretty tense.

Spinach

Brilliant on 16 days . Now do it again, but this time keep going. You now know you can.
John.
When your going to fail think about how your going to face day one again.

pipparina

Why are you waiting to go to an AA meeting? There are different ways to stop and stay stopped. AA worked for me. I felt so much relief in those meeting rooms, listening to others share how they got sober. I met some great people and never had to feel alone again.

freshstart57

Regardless of how you quit drinking, you won't stop until you draw a line in the sand and say no more. Trying to quit sounds a lot like drinking to me.

I thought I was drinking to relax, but just as you are starting to realize, it actually made my stress worse. It got me from both directions, physically and psychologically. That constant fuzz head hangover impaired my thinking ability to the point that I was always playing mental catch-up, creating stress. And psychologically, I was disappointing myself and everyone around me, and that created stress too.

That need to get numb after a day at work and all the nagging that goes with it will go away once you withdraw from alcohol completely. I heartily recommend it.

Hexipuff

Get outside support TallGuy

Try AA first. Meetings are often in the evening. I found AA gave the foundations for sobriety. Also in the early days (or anytime) you will meet people you can relate to, who will support you
Certainly when I was starting out I found it gave me a purpose in the evenings too. It may not seem like an ideal way to unwind but I felt a great burden was lifted off my shoulder when I walked into AA. I had an anchor in the choppy sea of recovery

Good luck with your journey

TallGuyUK

Thanks all. Freshstart and doggone, are you saying the feeling of needing to numb everything at the end of the day is nothing to do with my job being stressful etc, it's actually my addiction calling? I have never thought of it that way. The problem is I regularly have bad days...but maybe this is part of the slippery slope and vicious cycle of drinking. I think what you say is stop altogether and I will probably have less bad days therefore feeling the need to drink goes away. In the meantime I Guess the tough part is getting completely out of the cycle. I suppose after 16 days I didn't feel all that different and having a few drinks wouldn't do any harm...but guess what I am miserable again! I hear what you say about AA.

MrsKing

I used alcohol to escape and relax, too. I truly believed at the time that I was having fun and letting go and that I deserved to have my time out from the world.

What it really did: made me so depressed I didn't want to get out of bed, made me anxious, made me hate myself, made me an angry, unsociable person (at the time I thought I was a happy drunk - I was so deluded), it caused problems in my relationships, with work, made me feel guilty, sick of myself, and caused me to not want to do anything, at all, really.

It took me being sober for a good period of time to really realise this. For a long time even after I got sober I didn't realise that all the things that were negative in my life basically came from alcohol, and if they didn't come from alcohol directly, my thinking and behaviour because of alcohol or hangovers (withdrawals, more thank likely) was destroying my life.

When I come home after an awful day, or when I'm stressed, I now properly relax... I have learnt how to truly unwind, and now that I'm sober, those awful days really aren't as awful as they were anyway, and stress does happen but isn't as all consuming as it was back then, either.

There are far more beneficial ways to relax... reading, listening to music, taking up hobbies, and though you say you're not into heavy exercise, walking can be very de-stressing and make our bodies and minds feel good.

There are always temptations - alcohol is everywhere. There will always be things that could bring the 'oh I need a glass of wine' thoughts into your mind. The only thing that stops this being a struggle is truly accepting that those thoughts and situations will not have power over you or influence your decision to be sober.

You can help yourself.

Wishing you all the best. You can do this.

freshstart57

TallGuy, I regularly had bad days too. There have been improvements in my situation since I quit drinking, but I believe the changes in my perception have been more important. I feel as though things just don't get me down as they did before. And there is this to consider too - is it possible that my new outlook is actually changing the things around me?