RobbyRobot

Yeah, I hear you. I gotta say though that for myself, wanting sobriety was nothing of initial importance for me to be able to quit. Getting drunk, being drunk, and failing to get sober for a few years left me empty and used... and wanting to just die drunk. That really upped the ante for me. Die drunk? Well, that left me with no options. I was scared to death, you know?!

When I finally did quit after a few yrs of trying, I honestly didn't care what sobriety was or wasn't, and I didn't care if i ever could stay sober or not. In the final end, I simply really didn't want to die drunk. The full understanding that I was gonna die drunk if I KEPT DRINKING was what finally helped me to quit.

It was several weeks of quit time in before i actually started to look at sobriety as something I really cared enough to honestly want. Sobriety made some sense after I had some experience in it.

So, for me, I would have died drunk if I would have kept trying to "want sobriety" as a pre-condition so that I could successfully quit. For me, raw quitting came first, then wanting quality sobriety came later.

I think it is important to note that we all have reasons to be sober when we want to quit, and we all have reasons to stay sober after we quit, and none of us have reasons to go back to drinking after we quit. Plenty of excuses and no rational reasons -- how cool is that?!!

I would say we really have to hate being drunk more then we loved being drunk -- to quit drinking and be able to stay quit.

TrixMixer

Edited and bolded by TrixMixer:

This was very true for me also. I did not know what sobriety was so how could I want to stop drinking for it.

For me I did not want to end up dying as a drunk , my pride would not let me
But that could be a good thing or bad thing. It worked, so whatever!

I never thought of a sober future and what it meant. I just knew I had to stop drinking, get it out of my system.

......and I truly believed I would only get this ONE chance because This was MY time. So, with the help of an addiction specialist, I stopped. There was never any other choice for me it was now or never.

Delving in to what it meant to live a sober life came later.
Your last paragraph say's it all for me.

Fernaceman

I agree, but I will add further. You have to DO it. I "wanted" recovery for a long time. I just didn't want to put the work in to achieve it. It takes action and a lot harder work than I would have anticipated, but the benefits definitely outweigh the other option.

RobbyRobot

Honestly, it didn't take much of a stretch for me to understand that if I really wanted to be sober, I would have already gotten sober, and that would have included doing the work to get what I wanted. Being drunk was really where my twisted honesty brought me, nothing close to being sober.

Drinking blurred and distorted my everday reality enough to keep me tripping over myself. I was always in my own way. I simply would not stop drinking as long as drinking satisfied my deepest honest wants. Alcohol did not satisfy any of my personal needs, although I certainly wanted to believe I had so many needs, lol. Alcohol also did satisfy my addiction ambivalence desires - until it didn't.

Recovery for me was much easier then being drunk ever was. If recovery was tougher then being drunk, i would never have gotten sober, and that is the honest truth for me. I like to keep things simple and straightforward.

Being and staying recovered is even easier then getting into initial recovery.

I think change is a difficult thing of course, but that is true for its own sake, and not because I'm an alcoholic.

rPdopn

The holidays definitely bring out the best in your families, especially if all they have done is see you intoxicated for years in the past.Being in recovery myself, I have been nothing but offered drinks at every family event the past few days. As easy as it was to say "yes" now it is just as easy to say "no." I am finding it easier to wake up in the morning, feel better about not finding out how much of a _____ I was the night before. It seems like the down times are the hardest. I feel myself craving when nothing is going on then when I am busy avoiding it in the same room.