Mags1

Hi dreamr , don't feel stupid. I read that book too, unfortunately I wasn't ready to give up at that time. I've stopped now but my husband is like yours, not a problem for him, or so it seems.
Whereas I drank until I passed out just about but wished I could've been a normal drinker, but I can't, so no booze for me. Which, perish the thought, was an horrendous thing to do, until I have done it.
Now it is normal not to drink, though I get pangs for it occasionally I'm sure it will pass.

Threshold

Dreamr you make perfect sense to me...it's normal to not drink. I was abnormal when I was in active alcoholism, the way I drank was WAY not normal.

And I did find that when I realized the sense in that, and removed a LOT of the drama out of quitting...by realizing I was doing a normal thing, it helped my perspective a TON.

No more...oh poor me, will I make it, won't I make it? will the world give me a big golden trophy for all my hard work...on and on..and I finally said "ya know...drinking is bad for me. I'm going to stop" and then the rest of the pieces of recovery started to fall into place.

I can't eat many foods I enjoyed when younger...and some of them it was hard to give up, others were a mere shrug. The one's hardest to give up were the ones I had emotional/psychological attachments to!

When I realized that I was in some way attaching my identity, security to them, it allowed me to release them..ya know what I can still enjoy the fair without eating onion rings, Christmas is still Christmas without rum balls, and I can still remember my Grandmother and holidays at her house even though I won't eat her peach blintzes again.

Same with drinking. There is life without booze, if I am able to accept that fact and be willing to be open to the 9 trillion other wonderful things life has to offer.

That perspective, that it was normal to not do things that harmed me, was one of the most freeing perspectives of all.

dreamr

I agree with everything you said, I just have to get the rest of my brain to agree too!

Doug39

Believe me, I hope that day comes when I no longer think or care about drinking.

One of the main problems is that my wife is still a heavy drinker and we hang around with drinkers and do things and go places that involve drinking.

I feel guilty not letting my wife live her life and do what she enjoys so I go along, stay sober and get through it in misery.

dreamr

Thank you! My husband barely drinks at all really, so I think he would be 100 years old before he made it all the way down into the trap, lol. Now that I'm sober, I'd say he probably won't even drink at all unless he's at a Navy event without me, and he stops at one or two.

dreamr

Thank you! That's exactly the type of thing I was thinking about, and that if I let that perspective sink in fully, it will make sobriety so much easier. That's why I posted, in case it gave a new perspective to someone else and helped them.

LadyBlue0527

I gotcha on the first post dreamr We must speak the same language.

You're psyching yourself to think in the manner that a normal drinker would if they weren't drinking which is...............they just don't care.

Hey, if it works for you that's fantastic! Who knows, it might help someone else here too and that's what this place is alllllllllllll about.

It's amazing what the mind can do. Just like me, I don't have a choice, I can't drink. Realistically I absolutely do have a choice and I choose not to drink. However, by psyching myself into believe that I DON'T have the choice it's worked for me.

As long as it doesn't hurt anyone I see no wrong way and no bad way to get sober and maintain being sober

dreamr

I agree 100%!

Just talking about this with you guys has lifted my mood so much, I didn't even imagine that it would do that for me. I've isolated myself for 3 years because we moved and I didn't look for friends. The only people I see are my husband and kids, and now I'm realizing that that is a HUGE factor in my depression. I'm usually highly unmotivated because of depression, and I was so happy after posting here that I got up and did some laundry, lol. Thank you to everyone who posted!

tate9685

I understood what you were saying and totally get and like that train of thought. Whatever works for you I say!

DoubleDragons

Something that really helped was being on an all-the-way around "health kick". Before I had even quit drinking, I had started doing yoga regularly, I quit drinking Diet Cokes (which was huge for me), I stopped eating red meat, I started studying different supplements to take, I started drinking greens and protein shakes every morning, etc. I felt so good and I started losing weight. I felt hypocritical about still drinking because I was really excited about being and feeling healthy again. I had cut my drinking back to only drinking on the weekends over the summer, but it is when I completely quit drinking that I felt the major impact of my health and beauty improving, even with all of the other changes I had made. Quitting drinking made the biggest difference in more weight loss (and bloat loss), much better sleep patterns, my stomach ulcers quit hurting (maybe they're gone?!?), and no more digestive issues. That just goes to show how much drinking does affect your health because during the summer, I really hadn't been drinking all that much. Most people wouldn't say I was drinking "alcoholically." You can do this and there will come a time, that you will only wish you had done it sooner!!!

dreamr

Thank you!

dreamr

That's actually what I was doing last time I quit, then my anniversary came up and I hadn't yet fully accepted that I couldn't drink. That was in September, I sort of moderated for about a month then went back to bad habits right before I quit this time. I'm aiming to do it now too, but if I get a bad hankering for something I'm going to eat it because I don't want to feel deprived. Although I did that last night at McDonald's and boy, did I regret it! It does make it so much easier when your diet is in check and you exercise. Thanks for the tip!

karate

Something I learned here " normal " drinkers sure don't put the thought into drinking -or not drinking like we do .

I know I put a lot of thought into counting how many I drink ,when I do drink a few , then estimate how long I should wait before drinking again so I don't become addacited again .

We obsess about it -imo

dreamr

I agree, even when I moderated, I thought about drinking way too often.