alphaomega

What have been your greatest challenges, greatest benefits in your first month of sobriety. I'll go first.

Benefits
* NO MORE ANXIETY !!! Ya hooey !!!
Blood pressure is normal
Strange body jerks and spasms have almost ceased completely
No more anxiety
Eyelids no longer twitch
Ears no longer ring
I sleep like the dead
I wake up not hungover
No more heart palpitations
No more anxiety
Skin stopped itching
Numbness and tingling in my extremities has stopped
I don't gag when I brush my teeth
My daughter actually loves being around me
Did I mention no more anxiety ? That alone is worth the price of admission
Haven't taken a benzo in a month.
Haven't smoked a coffin nail in a month.
I no longer feel faint whenever I ....well... Whenever I do anything
I meditate every day.
I am remembering that I have hobbies and passions that I long ago gave up
I'm actually setting goals


CHALLENGES
I'm breaking out like a prepubescent teenager.
Periodically my 3 times a day brushed mouth smells like moth balls. Blech.
I go through moments of nausea, overwhelming fatigue, mood swings, crying spells, (wait, maybe this IS a second go at puberty)
I have all but eaten the grocery store out of cake mix. Like a slice every day.
I refuse to get on the scale because nothing is going to de-rail me, but seriously. I need to get the sugar shiz under control. Stat.
Feeling like everything I do sober, I'm doing for the first time.

Month twos goal is to get my rear moving, radically cut down the processed sugar and meditate in the evenings as well.

Wait until you see what I got planned for month 3...

Be well.

jaynie04

Oh no......I have been craving something all night, and I couldn't figure out what, you just reminded me I have a box of cake mix up in the cupboard. OH WHY??????!!!!!! NOOOOO!

Bender

Month two/three are hardest for me as that's when the pink cloud rolls in and starts playing with my emotions. I'm gonna keep my adventures to a minimum for a while and try and toe the line.

Kathleen41

Challenge: Having sober sex!!! Did I actually like it like that when I was drunk? I dunno, I could never remember the next day anyway!!

Benefit: Being able to remember the next day!!

That post is hysterical AlphaOmega!!

Croissant

I want what Kathleen's having. Lol.

Benefits
- I go out at nighttime
- Actually looking forward to going to the movies and not getting fidgety 10 minutes in
- More choices on activities as I'm not restricted on when I need to get home to get properly wasted
- The potential of growing old as the healthiest me possible
- Having 'real' conversations with my children and remembering them
- Crying, realising that you had a good life after all, but it was you who were the problem (yes, it's a benefit, even though I'd love to avoid it!)
- not craving greasy, fatty foods
- Money
- Plans
- New friends you haven't met yet

Challenges

- you realise how annoying people are when they are drunk
- most events are centred around drinking... Ie; at a work event recently, there were only 2 non alcoholic choices and both were sugary sodas.
- Crying
- Regret
- Dreaming of people you've hurt with no way to change the past

Soberpotamus

Challenges were taking stock and seeing where I was in life vs where I had hoped I'd be. Also grief over mom and grandmom's deaths and old emotions coming to surface. Dealing with my relationship with my husband newly sober... We were basically still newlyweds. Dealing with issues of body image and appearance... I think I might have had a bit of body dysmorphic disorder going on. Anger towards family and old friends and past employers resurfaced.

Benefits... Felt great physically, skin and hair perked up, got deep sleep fairly soon, got around others in group therapy and meetings and that boosted my confidence socially, my husband and I began to repair some hurt feelings and establish trust, my dad and grandad and close friends were happy for me and that felt good to know I was no longer worrying them, I started meditating, and now I'm journaling and doing volunteer work at a women's shelter.

Sent from my iPhone using SoberRecovery

trent333

Benefits:

-regular bowels
-$1000 a month raise and I didn't even have to ask for it. It just started showing up in my account it was sweet
-I became human again I could feel things I haven't felt in years.
-genuine rem sleep.

Cons:

- regular bowels is initially a con
- the $1000 a month raise gets spent responsibly
- I felt things I haven't felt in years
- genuine crystal clear nightmares.

Honestly the pros are countless and I can really only just sum it up as I feel better in almost every way than I did.

silentrun

Yeah Alpha.
You quit smoking too! Impressive.

ersatzmatriarch

bad skin: check.
wicked sugar intake: check
episodes of intense fatigue: check

but... the good stuff is way better!
nightsweats: gone!
nightmares: gone!
rotting guts: gone! (bonus... cleaning toilets less! woot!!)
shakes: gone!
massive full-body hangovers: gone, without having to drink booze to eliminate them!
constant lying: gone!
screaming at my kids all day for no reason: gone!
blacking out: gone!
continuing to drink after a blackout: gone!
passing out after continuing to drink after a blackout: gone!
taking a few more swigs after waking up from passing out on the couch after continuing to drink after a blackout: gone!!

yeah, this sober living is good stuff! think i'll stick with it!!

Ptcapote

Good on you, AO! The improvements will keep coming. Honestly, I really can't think of very many things that haven't improved since I quit drinking. Well, maybe the fact that I gained weight instead of losing it because I was living on cake/ice cream/cookies/chocolate and had set up a lawn chair in the bulk foods aisle at the grocery store but that evened out after about the third month. The lack of gut rot and the lack of anxiety attacks are my favorite, physically. I can actually drive now...by myself! And not lose my sh!t every ten minutes (in all senses). And I don't drink bottles of Maalox on a daily basis and walk around with the ever-so-sexy Maalox mustache anymore...

Mentally it took a little bit longer but, then again, I pretty much had drank myself stupid by the time I stopped. But even that is coming back online and I find that I can remember things much more clearly (not being blacked out is helpful in this regard) and am also more detail-oriented.

Anyway, another lovely post by you and looking forward to more!!

xoxoxo

DylanS

Thanks for the thread, AO - great idea.

What I'm free of:

• Drugged, broken sleep
• Dread, foreboding
• DUI - possibility of death or killing someone
• Guilt, hiding, lying - integrity degraded
• Bloat, weight gain
• No energy to do anything
• Compromised ability to make any changes, address any problems effectively
• Unreasonable anger and bizarre grudges
• Feeling lost, fuzzy, blurry, confused
• Chained to substances I don't want to be dependent on
• High BP, high cholesterol, low energy
• Unremitting depression - hopelessness
• Inability to stop the downward spiral
• Disconnection with others, the Spiritual, authentic self/light side (living in my 'dark side')
• Inability to help myself or others - be of any benefit
• Locked, circular thinking
• Feeling like a slave to what I don't want to do
• Tools almost completely ineffective
• Emotional and mental lability, instability
• Inability to trust my mental states or emotions as authentic - they changed depending on how much alcohol or oxy/Vic I had in my system
• Memory going to hell
• Lost nights - hell, lost weekends
• Spending days recovering from a bad drinking/oxy binge
• Postponing living until I feel better.
• Postponing anything I possibly can until I feel better
• Marking time, just getting through, until the next drink, the next pill
• Life passing me by while I go through days planning to drink/drug, recovering from drinking/drugging, or lost in my mind of "will I or won't I today"
• Extreme reactivity
• And, something I just realized last night: I was slowly eroding, becoming hollow, empty, a shell, how I was slowly sacrificing all the things that make being a human being a gift, everything good and worthwhile and important. Not the house, the job, the material things. But the real things - the ability to care, to love, to relate and connect meaningfully to people, to God, to the natural world even, and to myself. I was trading all of that potential connection and giving all of that to alc/drugs, everything to connect only with alcohol/drugs.

Challenges:

• No quick relief - almost instant - from my "ism': that jagged, ragged, almost unrelenting unhappiness that is the underlying 'spiritual malady' for me. Facing that, head-on, floundering around trying to find the trailhead out of the 'Lost City' (description of said city in the list above, heh)
• Dealing with the knee-jerk reaction of my brain to any problem - the 'one size fits all' solution (drink/drug) to any and every thing.
• The first 2 weeks I felt like I'd aged 20 years (w/d from oxy/hydro I guess) - everything hurt.
• Sleep, especially the first 2 weeks, was hard to come by.

Thanks again for the thread, AlphaO, and to all who posted. I think it'd be cool to have a month-by-month thread; it'd probably be a big help to new folks....just a thought.

ersatzmatriarch

PT, AO... you two make me laugh out loud on an almost daily basis. thanks for that! love ya both!!

alphaomega

Ersatz and Ptc - right back atcha buddy. I don't know what I'd do without you broads.

I can't wait to drive again. I'm almost there. Soooooo close to the brain being Almost healed enough. That's the goal for next month. And ohhhh baby. When I do. I'm going to rent a GD convertible Corvette, and blast Kid Rocks COWBOY !!! Or maybe ACDC Thunderstruck...hmmm....decisions....

XO AO