GunnyL

I understand and I am glad you found something that works for you.

I'm not being dishonest with myself if it is that to which you allude. I asked a question, and now I'm beating it to death from all sides in my head. I'm good at that. I scrounged around on the calendar and put my latest sobriety date on here when I joined. It's meaningless to me. I made it through yesterday and I'm working on today.

What means something to me is progress. I learned more about myself and my problem from my last 3 slip-ups than I learned in the previous 53 years of living under mostly military, perfectionist rule, blindly following orders because I was told that's the way it is. I wouldn't give those last 3 slip-ups back for all the tea in China because I learned from them WHY I go for a coping mechanism. I can move on from there. Without the "why", I'd just continue to repeat the cycle. At some point, hopelessness sets in under those circumstances and people don't come back.

"Willingly" is a subjective term. I haven't willingly taken a drink in a year. Dovetailing with the previous paragraph, I didn't know what I was fighting. I was fighting the physical presence of alcohol. I wasn't addressing the reason I was reaching for it.

I don't quit. That's my problem. I don't quit. My one saving grace. If I have to beat the topic and the problem down in my brain to the last neuron I will.

I can't change the past. I CAN change today.

GunnyL

Who said anything about quitting? Just regrouping a little and consolidating my forces.

My enemy is within.

If I sound like a fruit loop at times I'm okay with it. I got past what other people think when I found myself hooked up to tubes and bottles in a nightgown with no back on it. It isn't that I don't appreciate others opinions. I read each and every one. But I know I'm all over the place at different times. That's why I've tried to keep it to mostly one thread instead of spraying new threads all over the board each time I have a thought. I used to run a message board and found that rather annoying.

I'm an emotional cripple and I don't think the chemical changes in my brain from not drinking are are helping out a whole bunch. Until that gets rewired I'll just have to be Gunny Emotional Fruit Loop.