karate

Been busy .

Got a TOUGH exam coming up .

I still drink a little bit , on occasion

So not totally quit , but don't have time to drink much .

ScottFromWI

Thanks for checking in Karate. Hope you can find the resolve to get back to sobriety and join us some day. You know exactly what "drinking a little bit, on occasion" will lead to.

jdooner

You definitely like the hard road man. I am sure you will get there just might have to climb through the Himalayas a few times. There is a much easier path but you know this already.

KateL

Nice to hear from you, Karate. Best of luck with your exam xxxxx

karate

That's how I live my life ,to admit im powerless over drinking - well I just wont do that ever .

Its just my personality . Is it a fault ? I do think it is .

Do I think there is a God ?, yes I do .

Without going into details ,I was raised by the hardest ,toughest man I ever knew ,and that carried over into my personality .

I came to live on the farm at 11 ,to help out and be raised by a man over 70 years old when I got here .

Ill be darned if a can of beer can whip me ,I just wont allow it .I cant .

alphaomega

[QUOTE=karate;4502800

Ill be darned if a can of beer can whip me ,I just wont allow it .I cant .[/QUOTE]

But it is Karate. It's owning you because you can't stop drinking. I don't mean this condescending, I just want you to realize that you are justifying your drinking via a tough guy exterior.

Every time you pick up a beer, it has beaten you.

Want to be really tough ? Put it down. For good.

fini

hm.
yeah, see, i wasn't ever powerless over alcohol either, so of course there was no way to admit being that way.

luckily for me, i had a moment of clarity one morning and clearly knew i was a drunk.
grasping that my own experience with repeated returns to drinking in spite of commitments not to meant that i was indeed powerless...took a while.

nothing has been as liberating as 'admitting' (your word) and accepting(my word) that what is, is really so.

Jade1224

I feel this way too but it's an illusion. It's your pride getting in the way.

We think we can handle it because we can handle anything but sometimes we have to ask for help or admit we have a problem.

matt4x4

Perhaps your a social drinker.
Keep coming back.
It works if you work it.
Hear here.

Coldfusion

I hope you're doing good too, Karate.

Service to others is the Twelfth Step...

Dee74

I still say the best test of strength, courage, manliness, whatever you want to call it, is to put the bottle down and never pick it up again Karate.

As long as I tried to control my addiction, my addiction had me right where it wanted.

It played me like a puppet, and I didn't even realise it.

D

afloatsober

I'm pretty tough too. Survived things that should have killed me a few times over. Also hospitals, treatment centres, homeless the whole nine yards. Survived drinking long after the medics had expected me dead. Toughest and smartest think i ever did was surrender and leave the cork in the bottle'.
That's tough if you are alcoholic my friend....

DoubleBarrel

Man you sound just like me, before I started having really bad health issues from drinking.

I don't care how tough you are, I've seen it take down better men than me.

Johno1967

Hi Karate,
Good luck with the exam.
Just don't have 4 Pints before you go in as I once did and then spent three hours wanting to Pee and filling the exam booklet with some incoherent garbage.
It must've been inspired because I got a High Distinction for that subject.
The BB has lots of stories like yours. You are drinking a little, have no time to drink because at the moment you are focused on blitzing your exams. We drunks are perfectionists. I used to multi-task at University, that is, I would buy a 5L cask of cheap wine, a bag of tobacco and spend the next 48 hours at a computer writing a term paper, drinking and smoking as I went. Only getting up to go to the toilet, eat some junk or empty the ashtray.
Once you finish your exams and you have nothing to do where will your powerlessness lead you?

Johno1967

Doublebarrel, I gotta ask:
Do you look like the bloke in the Avatar?

RobbyRobot

Same old same old. Nothing changes if nothing changes. I've been where you are now, Karate. It was always easy to be falsely brave with a brew in hand. Eventually drinking didn't work either. Eventually alcoholism beat me stupid. Down and out. I lost every fight I ever had with my drinking.

Quitting drinking saved me. Gave me a chance to do things right. Gave me opportunity to be brave without that drink. Quitting was the gateway on through to the other side. A chance to change from old to new. From lost to found. From lousy deal to best deal I got going is being sober today and forevermore. Quit. Change. Service. Success. Happy life.

The real tough guys quit. And they change and move on. And they get even tougher. And they stay quit.

Its all on you, Karate. Do or don't either way its your call.

doggonecarl

Then prove it. Quit. No more justifying the drinking, no more bluster. Just quit and stay quit.

soberlicious

Drinking alcohol is not some separate entity that you can literally take on and spar and aggressively beat into submission. You can't make alcohol your b*tch no matter how loudly you say it. In fact, all this energy toward it only goes to prove that you are not mastering your mind, your mind is mastering you.

But that's the nature of addiction. Creating the illusion that you have some modicum of control only serves to allow the addiction to continue.

Would any sane person set themselves on fire repeatedly, loudly proclaiming that "I will not let this fire beat me. I will master the art of being on fire, but not burning my skin."? Yeah...no. A truly together confident person of strong will and strong character understands reality.

Stop tilting at windmills.

silentrun

Hi Karate. Hope you continue to check in with us. I get the feeling of not wanting to say you are powerless over alcohol. How about saying you are powerless against it? You are not powerless to walk away from a fight you can't win. Have a good day Karate and give em hell on that exam.

tomsteve

Russian roulette.