robgt350

thanks! i plan to get some new pics soon!



i meet a guy once who said he was glad to go to prison for a year because he was an out of control alcoholic and was involved in a car wreck. he said he used that time to get sober and clean. he told me that was the only way he cold get sober. it worked!

i also meet a gal who just stopped cold turkey. it worked!!

so you are right, what ever works stick to it.

robgt350

but for the most part i think it is a personal choice to drink.

but some people become addicted, and find them selfs a very difficult time to stop. for them i think it might be what they will lost if they do not stop.


so ask your selfs these questions

would you stop drinking if a judge said you will get 1 year in prison if you have another drink? would you have a beer or two after work?

would you stop if your doctor said you live has sever damage and you die in less than one to two years if you do not stop? would you have a drink tonight?

if your spouse or child gave you a choice; alcohol or them? would you continue to drink

would you risk loosing your career for a drink?

i saw these choices about to come to me. so i stopped. i stopped cold pretty much cold turkey. yea i know the risks involved in that. but in my view, the risks of continue drinking far out weigh anything.

i also think the more you start to lose things that mean the most to you,, the stronger you will be to over come your addiction, at least for me it was

dSober

I've stopped cold turkey quite a few times. Several of those landed me in the hospital; sometimes due to seizures.

But still, I did it again, over and over.

Everyone has a different bottom. For some like me it was pretty low. I think AA's main goal is to raise the bottom so at least some others don't have to suffer so much before they reach theirs.

SoulSister

Gracie Lou...What your sponsor told you is not consistent with what our program teaches. I am sorry to hear she taught you this. It is wrong and now you believe it.

ru12

Wow.

robgt350

yea stopping cold turkey is or can be dangerous for ones health. i did my research on it and accepted the risks and dangers in it. not smart, but to me, i was willing to take it. i am glad i did.

dSober

Yeah, not smart but I am too. Probably tougher for it homey :-)

Weaver

Who made the choice for you ?

JTBIV

I've read every reply and it gives me some hope. You've all been there and beat it. Sometimes I wonder how I got to be this person. It's like, I have a version in my head of who I think I am. And then one day I realized, maybe I'm not that. Even though I think I'm really kind, smart, and good at heart. Really I'm just the sum total of a ****** past, a bunch of bad decisions and stupid behavior. That's where I'm at right now. I wan't to stop. I'm here. I can't stop. I need help. I'm in the choiceless middle where I'm telling you but not the people that can really hold me accountable.

Gottalife

"so ask your selfs these questions"

As a real alcoholic I can give you the actual answers i gave to these questions:

"would you stop drinking if a judge said you will get 1 year in prison if you have another drink? would you have a beer or two after work?"

"A judge gave me a suspended sentence and a prohibition order. I was in the bar celebrating within hours

"would you stop if your doctor said you live has sever damage and you die in less than one to two years if you do not stop? would you have a drink tonight?"

"A doctor told me I had malnutrition and would die if I continued to drink. It scared me so much I needed a drink to settle my nerves

"if your spouse or child gave you a choice; alcohol or them? would you continue to drink"

"Drink won evrytime. They were so unreasonable. In the end I lost them all. Man I needed a drink when that happened"

would you risk loosing your career for a drink?

"Many times. Got fired one night when the boss said if I did not stop drinking when I was supposed to be working, and I took a drink right in front of him, just to show him!

i saw these choices about to come to me. so i stopped. i stopped cold pretty much cold turkey. yea i know the risks involved in that. but in my view, the risks of continue drinking far out weigh anything."

You made logical sane choices, which the hard drinker can do. I made crazy insane choices, because that's what alcohlics do.

JTBIV

I'd like to think I'd stop if any one of those scenarios happened to me. I don't want it to come to that. I hope it doesn't. It might.

BradJustBrad

One recurring theme I see on this forum is that with continued drinking, things invariably get worse, not better.

You don't have to wait for one of the above-mentioned scenarios. If you want to stop drinking for good, make a commitment and get a support plan -- whether it's friends and family, AA, SMART, RR/AVRT, posting here... whatever works for you.

You can do it.

BradJustBrad

Wow. This is really well expressed. As I am only sober since the new year, this hits close to home - and I'm working through a lot of those feelings.

Although chances are you really are kind, smart, and good at heart, and it's the alcohol with all of its concomitant depression and anger that is saying those things.

For me, the only way to move forward was to stop drinking and start to rediscover that person that I still am inside.

Kingtarquin

I know man, I can't stop either. I have said I was done 3 different times in 12 months and only managed to stay sober 6 of those 12 months. I've got to stop but then I find a way to convince myself it's cool to have. I'm like a freaking broken record. I nearly gave up on this sight because I was worried everybody was sick of hearing the same old song and dance from me. Oh well it's another attempt for me to see the light permanently. Good luck everyone

GracieLou

You know I really did not want to get into this. I would rather be happy then right. I am happy with my program and my sponsor BUT because this is a message board and others will come along that will read and perhaps gain insight into alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous I feel the burning desire.

Bill W wrote "Freedom Under God: The Choice is Ours

In this he talks about the choices we have. The quest for freedom and to obtain this freedom we have a choice.

Here are two extracted statements from that paper.

"In the quest for freedom we are given three choices. A rebellious refusal to work upon our glaring defects can be a ticket to destruction...."

"For most of us this last choice is really ours; we must never be blinded by the futile philosophy that we are just hapless victims of our inheritance, our life experiences and our surroundings - that these are the sole forces that make our decisions for us. This is not the road to freedom. We have to believe that we really can choose."

The BB says, Page 53 "God either is or he isn't, What was our choice to be?" I choose to believe he is. This is a choice

The BB stays, Page 44, "To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face." This a choice.

I have a choice, I can follow the path of sobriety using the AA program as my guide with my HP in the driver seat along with all the tools and people that have been gifts to me with a feeling of gratitude for every one of them. I can use all the gifts to give back as I was given with service work in my HG and reaching out to the newcomer.

If I consistently do all these things, if I am painstaking, I will never have to drink again.

Or

I can choose not to. It is really that simple, at least for me it is. I like simple.

LadyBlue0527

Truthfully speaking it is a choice but using those words is a blatant display of ignorance when it comes to addiction. If I wanted to travel 3000 miles across the country and I don't have the money for airfare I could always just walk, right?

I've learned a lot about addiction this past year. Another interesting thing is how 100 people can practice recovery and all of them might not go about it the same way but they all can be happy and successful. Under that circumstance what right is it of any one person to question another person's thinking?

We all travel the same path and encounter the same rocks and potholes. You might choose to walk around an obstacle and I might jump over it. If we are both happy and content that we made it around does it really matter which way we did it?

RobbyRobot

Its unreal how some people decide for themselves what is best for others based on their own opinions of their own measure of success and failure. As if what they are challenged with is equal to what challenges a chronic alcoholic drinker, even though they don't claim themselves to be alcoholic or addicted.

Its pure hilarity when guys say they are not powerless and yet the back story to their lives plays out they can't drink anyways and before things get worse, they decide its time to quit. Absolute genius. And it took them years of drinking to come to that conclusion? Seriously? Oh ya! U got da power!! And always had it too!!

Not.

For most drinkers, they just need to have a good reason to quit. For some there is no good reason to quit. For most drinkers, consequences force the issues and quitting becomes the right thing to do. For some, consequences mean very little, and the drinking gets worse at any cost save dying. And even then for some death-by-drinking is the final worth of their lives...

Most drinkers who quit are not claiming to be alcoholic. Most drinkers don't quit for everyday of their lives, they really just don't want trouble and so drinking socially remains attractive and desired. They say they want it, but they can't do it right... and they still claim to not be addicted alcoholically...

Most humans who ever drink alcohol will not die directly because of their drinking. Most will not struggle with socially drinking. Most will never be on a recovery forum sharing experiences they have never had. Most have nothing with alcohol to recover from.

It is for me such a joke how many guys want to share on a recovery forum how they quit finally drinking as if they are the examples to follow for those who fail at quitting time and time again because they are addicted alcoholics, and not because they simply haven't yet heard all the great advice, lol.

Yeah, people need to share what they got, since we can't give away what we don't have, but this doesn't mean people have all been down the same road with alcohol with all of us learning the same things. It also doesn't mean we're all walking down the same road with sobriety ether - and that's okay. Being ourselves is everything. We give what we got unless we believe we got nothing to give... not many drinkers got nothing to give. Still, just believing we got nothing to give can destroy a life just as easily enough.

What we believe in and what we don't believe in for ourselves makes the real difference in why and how we quit drinking, stay quit, and get on with living.

RobbyRobot

Drinking is a behavior, and so it naturally requires choices be made both to drink or not to drink. This doesn't speak to what motivates those choices though, what sustains those choices, and what deconstructs those choices.

Suicide is a choice too. Do we really want to believe those who off themselves have made a free choice?

I didn't think so.

nomis

Kevin Mccauley's rebuttal of the choice argument:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Hz6-2NwRzE

dSober

I think I get your point. I am making it by not drinking, one day at a time. But I needed, and still need, God's help.