Soberwolf

By the end i wasnt organised at all

MelindaFlowers

We get used to doing or not doing anything as substantial amounts of time pass. I am not USED to drinking anymore. It's not my default thought after work. You develop new norms but it takes a long time, like months.

Fly N Buy

Clean-o-holic, yes!
That level of self justification kept me drinking for a very long time as well.

Turns out a little sober mess is better than a clean drunk one

4:45pm - on the dot, That was the bewitching hour most daze. Changing routines that become habit is indeed part of the key. After not too long - 30-60 days, never really thought about it.

Glad you're here, keep posting!

brynn

I hid behind the facade of organization...perfectionism, daily lists checked off....meanwhile I was falling apart inside and, in reality, my world was crumbling. I was delusional!
It never occurred to me that the only reason I could even start drinking at 2 is because I lost my job! Duh! Hello!!
Y'all, I'm just waking up to the depths of my denial and just how ridiculous my life had become. I'm sure there will be many more lovely revelations in the days and weeks to come.
Glad to have a place to share where people get it.

biminiblue

You kept your house clean?



I drank after 4, then before 4, then from 4 till 4.

It gets easier, soon.

sugarbear1

sounds like a lot of manipulating and managing life around drinking

bunnezjp

An organized alcoholic. What in crikey-hell is an organized alcoholic?? I never knew such an entity existed.

Bunnez

erin8

Damn. . . for a long time I'd start drinking AFTER I got my son in bed. That changed about a year ago. I thought that if I started drinking earlier then maybe I wouldn't miss so many days from being hungover. I'd have time to sober up... right? No. Of course it doesn't work that way. I usually feel that tug whenever I get off work.

My house is still a mess but I do have a clean bathroom now. PROGRESS, yes?

GracieLou

I can relate. While I was not overly organized or extending cleaning beyond laundry, dishes and blowing dust off the TV, I did have a routine of getting it done and then drinking.

At the end I did not have that anymore. I was not capable. During the week all I did was work, got to the liquor store, eat and sleep. On the weekends I drank from morning until night and I barley got the above mentioned chores done, most of the time the dishes sat and the dust collected.

I still have a hard time relaxing if all items on my chore list are not done. I don't have any desire to drink but finishing all of the tasks still weights on me. I also continue to do them piece meal. I never go from one thing to the next. I do one thing and relax, do another thing and relax. It was how I got through before but because of it I am stressed all day long getting things done because I can't relax until they are all done.

I am working on this. I am no longer making a list. If they get done they get done. I take less breaks and try to flow from one chore to another without stopping to "rest".

I am also doing more small things during the week so I don't have a large "to do" list in my head come Saturday morning. I have discovered the washer and dryer work on the Tuesday and I am capable of doing dishes on Wednesday!

Since I have started mixing it up a bit I don't feel the weight of getting it all done which also eliminated the mental reward finish line for getting it all done.

gaffo

I've been thinking about this thread and it occurs to me that many of the habits we're talking about here translate to a better sober life. For example, writing out lists so I would know what to do when I was drunk or stoned is a habit that has served me well since I quit as a way to keep me organized and moving forward. And there is nothing wrong with making it to work on time every day. It's awesome without the hangover! I guess I've always been a super motivated neat freak and being able to just let it fly without it being some kind of cover up is liberating...

brynn

Gaffo....I hadn't really thought about it like that, but I can see how that ultra-organized part of me actually might have made it 'easier' (?) in some ways for me to function in my alcoholism and it certainly helped fuel my denial and downright delusion that I was functioning 'normally'!!
And yep...so liberating! Cover-ups are exhausting!!

GracieLou

I have thought about this many times as I always referred to myself as a functioning alcoholic for most of my drinking career.

I realize now that what I did was maintain the unmanageability. When it got to bad I lowered the bar. All of a sudden the dishes washed was not so important. The laundry done every weekend was not so important. Paying the entire electric or gas bill was not so important. I changed my view of what was allowable as my alcoholism progressed.

For a person that did her dishes everyday it went to once a week at best and I was okay with that because I was still trying to maintain the unmanageability. I was still doing them, so it was okay. I did this with everything. Everything in my life slide down along with me until it slide right over top of me.

At the end, emotionally I could barely work much less do housework. The list was not even written anymore, it was to painful to write knowing I would never do any of the chores and at some point, I said that was okay too. I had to maintain the amount I drank at the pace I drank and dishes or laundry got in the way of that.

This did not happen over a week, a month or even year. It slide slowly, but it did slide. The bar was lowered and lowered until I could no longer move the bar anymore because I was at my bottom.

Functioning alcoholism is a phase of alcoholism. My phase just lasted longer than some but when I started to slide, I slide fast. I drank for 25 years, 23 as a "functioning alcoholic". The last two were swift and painful.

The part that was hard for me to accept when I got sober was the damage I did to others, specifically my children, was over the 23 years, not the last two.

Turtle82

Yeh, I did. It was when I got home from work which is when I would normally hit the bottle.... such incompetent idiots! Thank God there was always a meeting to go to instead.

walkbeformakrun

My start time was when I got home from work. With my job the time would vary greatly but whatever time it was, I'd go in through the garage and there is a fridge in the garage that was full of beer. As soon as I pulled in the drive way I'd have one or more beers, right away. It wasn't just a ritual it was an addictive habit. I still feel a pain as I look at that fridge when I get home from work even now. If only it was just the one or two beers. It never ended there though. I'd share wine with my wife and go back for more beers. On weekends I'd start drinking as soon as I woke up. If it were not that I loved my job and could not do it drunk, I'd probably have been drinking all day everyday. One reason I want to make sobriety work is I realize at some point I'm either going to lose my job or retire. I'm afraid I might just end up drunk all day everyday. One thing I do now is eat diner as soon as I get home. My wife is a great cook and it sure is a good feeling to eat as much as I want of her cooking. Without the calories from the beer and wine I'm eating huge amounts of food and not gaining weight.

GracieLou

Move the fridge!

Soberpotamus

I see my past alcoholic "organization" behaviors and tendencies as a manifestation of "control freak" or "damage control" or "saving face"

Carlotta

I can relate to you. When I was drinking I was absolutely obsessed with having a spotless bathroom, by spotless I mean being almost able to use the bathtub enamel as a mirror.
It sounds completely crazy to me now but I knew that I was an alcoholic but as long as the bathroom was shiny my life was not completely unmanageable because we all know of course that only low bottom alcoholics have nasty toilets!

Yes, I was still in control!!!

Unfortunately, my sober self is not as fascinated with sparklingless and has better things to do but hey: sobriety is worth a sometimes messy bathroom.

Carlotta

I d suggest you apply a little bit of CBT. Since you are conditioned to think "drinking" at 2 pm because you did so for so long (a bit like Pavlov's dog drooling in anticipation of its food whether it is coming or not).
Rewire your thinking and start a very pleasurable activities at approximately the same time that you can do every single day.
After a few days, 2pm will signal: yoga class or dog walking or whatever else

brynn

Reading y'alls posts got me thinking about how totally arbitrary these 'standards' were...and yes...they slipped over time...way too hard to maintain but also now that I think about it I began to let other things slip too...mainly dr visits and dentist visits. My routine couldn't be interrupted for anything. I panicked if I couldn't start drinking On time. And yep, I was trying to manage the unmanageable. A losing battle every time.

My 'organization' merely gave me the illusion of functionality.

And yes, about the spotless bathroom...I didn't have a drinking problem if my home was in order! Alcoholics don't have spotless homes! So there!! Never mind everything else...relationships, my career, my family was falling to pieces!

It makes me exhausted just thinking of the lengths I went to for booze! Makes my head hurt just thinking about it!

LBrain

yep, I was proud when I waited until 5 PM, then 2 PM, then noon, then 'It's five o'clock somewhere', then I'm awake.

But it was the struggling with the time of day when I finally just gave up. I kept adjusting the time back until the clock didn't need an adjustment any longer.