pyjamarama

Yep - 6 months without a drink.

So where do I go from here? When I began this project I had no ultimate aim in mind, I just knew that the amount of booze that I was consuming was far too much.

Have I benefitted from abstinence? In some ways yes- I have more money (about £2K I reckon), I can eat food now (I used to starve myself to control my weight), I can give members of the family a lift in the car after 7 pm and I dont embarras myself in front of friends and neighbours anymore.

On the down side, life has become remarkably boring - most of the things I used to do for fun just arent fun anymore. I dont just miss booze, I miss everything associated with it. Bit like a film in black and white rather than colour. Christmas was a pointless exercise.

Everyone has their own deal with alcohol. I read on here that some people are thankful for every day they are clean - thats not my experience.

So I can make the decision to begin drinking again - just a couple of beers on a Friday night etc. But a couple of beers arent enough are they, actually a couple of beers are just the same as no beers at all. So I make the decision to have as much as I want on a Friday night - maybe a couple of bottles of wine as well as a few beers. Then I'm happy - until the Saturday night ....and so on...

So if I start again, I will soon be back to where I was...of course I knew that anyway. But I know I can give up now......

Aems

You're only six months sober. Start living your life.......that's what you do now. You find a new path and follow it. What are your dreams and aspiration? What have you always longed to do? Do that thing? Find ways to meet new people......buy a camera and join a how to club. What do you love to do? Think about it.

MIRecovery

You are grappling with the differance between abstinance and recovery. You simply are not drinking. Recovery is building a full rich life that is not defined by alcohol.

I lead a wonderful life that is better than my drinking life ever was but it did not happen by accident. It required action on my part to aquire sorber friends and realize there is a whole other world out there by trying new things and not being stuck in old behaviors.

robgt350

i think that would be a risky step. i thought the same things many times, but i only be sober for 35 days. i know i cannot do it now. i used to like to ride atvs and off road cars when i was drinking but i lost contact with my friends who do. so i get bored at times. bu ti do not want to get back to drinking to fill the boredom.

Flyin2BFree

are you freaking crazy!!!!

I ahd 11 years, and decided to have one beer after I did the Ironman in 2008.
It felt to me that I had really got ahold of life. WELL, I am divorced, see my kids once in a while, and I have not drawn 100 sober days since then.

It's 2013 and I am on day 1.

Use your rational. Please don't be an idiot like me and 5 years from now be trying to encourage a person to keep their GOLDEN 6 MONTHS.

sincerely,
Todd

hamabi

Hey, be careful of harming innocents out there if this is your plan.

You did remind me of the line in the "Days of Wine and Roses" where the temporarily sober but miserable drinker says that she always drinks again because after a while sober the world looks grey to her.

The husband (also an alcoholic in the movie) has found an answer that allows him to be comfortably sober and the world looks wonderful through his eyes.

Guess it's all about perceptions.

Flyin2BFree

p.s. that really fires me up. Think of your first days, remember "what it was like"

Steelers76

Hi there.. New here but related to this post in some ways. I drank because I was unhappy with myself. I didn't hurt people with my drinking, other than myself of course. I covered up so many feelings... I'm 14 days sober by my own choice and my goal isn't to stay sober for life. Its to stay sober until I can learn to love myself sober. I will stay clean for a few months until I can work out the issues with myself on why I drank so much in the first place. I don't want to have alcohol run me so this is my journey. I want to like myself enough that I don't have to use alcohol to feel comfortable or confident. But for me, for my personal choice, this isn't a lifetime decision. I want to be able to have a drink if I want like a normal non-alcoholic, not because I'm escaping something, burying something, or trying to cover something up. I might catch hell for this, but its my personal opinion.

pyjamarama

The difference between abstinence and recovery - I think you may have made a good point there - has made me think...

Pixy1

I gave up for 6mths! I felt the same. Bored and wanted to have my life back, simple things like a pub meal in the sunshine with a glass or two of wine, it was spring.....almost summer!! I'd gone a whole six months, felt great. I figured that I'd given up all that time I could do it again! Fast-forward 3years later.....I struggle with the odd sober week here and there! I cannot emphasise enough that each comeback gets harder and harder and one day you may not come back!

hamabi

"I want to be able to have a drink if I want like a normal non-alcoholic"

If there is any one thought universal among alcoholics throughout the history of man it is this, imo. Just having it is sufficient qualification for anyone to join the crowd that no one ever wants to join.

Welcome.

Steelers76

I agree... and I know this community is about support and everyone here is only trying to look out for the other because most have been there and done it, and don't want others to go through the same ******** they did. I hope that everyone takes the advice of their peers who have been in this situation and really think about it.

But, in another sense, its also like being a teenager. Your mom telling you not to date that boy because she can tell he's no good.. What do you do? Marry the SOB, he winds up hitting you, and then your divorced. And your over here thinking DAMNIT why didn't I listen to her? Sometimes people have to learn on their own. I'd like to think we are older and wiser now that we can pu more consideration into the advice others give us, but.. we'll see...

hypochondriac

My experience is that I have to practice being thankful for being sober. If I don't I'm a stompy small child who just whinges about stuff. Mainly 'why isn't everything perfect now I'm sober... I've stopped drinking, what more do you want!' It used to grate on me how people would say in AA 'haven't had a drink today' and I would think, 'well of course you haven't, you've been sober for 20 years', but once someone said to me 'sometimes that's all you can ask for'...

I don't know your story, but it took me years to stop drinking and there's no reason I shouldn't be thankful for my sobriety every day. It's easy to take it for granted and to expect too much out of being sober. I think I was around 6 months sober when I realised that not drinking wasn't going to change my entire life, and I was surprisingly thankful for that, because there were many aspects of my life that I liked. But I also realised that I had endless possibilities ahead of me now that the obstacle of drinking had been removed and that it was my choice to do whatever I wanted/needed.

Well done on 6 months btw, that's something to be proud of!

sugarbear1

Give it 6 more months. You are still healing, things get boring before we learn how to live happily in true sobriety.

I bet it took you longer than just 6 months of drinking to get to where you wanted sobriety more than drinking....

Pixy1

Steelers, we must all walk our own path. What works for one , does not work for another. Hence why AA works for some, RR for others and sheer will power for others etc. I think the key is to take the best resonating advice from everyone we meet and do what we can to make it work for ourselves. We may all be heading in the same direction but we need to get there after working it out in our own minds, on our own paths.

paul99

If you take a bone away from a dog, you better replace it with a steak. You've removed the booze from your life, and now what? That's the dilemma. Sitting there thinking about the what if's and the fantasy and romance that our alcoholism likes to attach to booze is of course going to make us feel grey. I had to break free of those attachments. Alcohol was attached to everything in my life. There wasn't anything that it didn't touch. So if I had simply abstained, I would have gone nuts. I had to break free of old ideas and plans and AA was what did it. Being free of the obsession of the mind regarding alcohol left me available for anything and everything else in life that I missed through a drunk haze.

Abstaining is just the start. There is a whole world out there that extends past the couch and the wild lurking notions and fantasies we left behind in the bottles.

Dee74

I wanted to be that normal no worries drinker too - but no amount of sober time ever reset me.

If you're a drinker like me, I think we have to come to grips with the fact our relationship with alcohol is toxic - always was always will be...it will never change.

I have 20 years of experience for myself to back up that belief, but even if I didn't I know people with far more sober time than me who went out and found that that relationship hadn't changed a bit.

Congratultions on 6 months pyjamarama- I wonder what you feel you're missing tho?
Whats so wrong with not drinking?

D

LadyinBC

Yes, you will be back to where you were and if you really can give it up you wouldn't be contemplating starting up again. Obviously you are having problems giving it up. And that's okay. I also sometimes miss it, but I can't go back. I have come so far.

At the end of the day you are an adult and have choices. But congrats on 6 months!

DarkDays

Do you really want to be like all the brainwashed people still trapped in the bubble poisoning themselves ? Or do you want to be liberated and free from alcoHELL/ hangovers and obsession?

Plus if you start drinking again , do you want do drink forever ? I mean otherwise if you decide to quit again you will have to go through all the early days again etc .

Dee74

Don't count on that either.
I went out drinking 'for one night' after a break.

I didn't stop again for 2 and a half years.

it gets harder to quit.

D