Starflyer

Many of us talk about romanticizing the drink. Alcohol is a dear friend that we enjoy spending time with. This is problematic, obviously. However, is there such a thing as an extreme polar opposite? Can an alcoholic ferociously hate the part of themselves that drinks? Can an alcoholic somehow create a negative emotional link between drinking instead of staying sober? Sort of a Clockwork Orange effect?

Upon first contemplation, I found this talk of logic to be dreadful. Who want's to live with so much hate, frustration, and anger? Then I spoke to a few individuals that have had a successful recovery and they said it was the tipping point to actively getting sober. They had to switch (mentally) how they thought about the booze and how it made them feel. If they relapsed they would wake up the next morning feeling so extremely disgusted with themselves that they would no longer drink.

Thoughts?

Dee74

well aversion therapy never worked with me

I found out that the problem wasn't actually alcohol for me...I was the problem...I had this void inside me nothing could fill...I had to find ways, not of filling the void, but healing it.

I never really found it necessary to hate alcohol or demonise it.
It was just the tool I used, not the problem?

D

MelindaFlowers

The part about waking up the next day and feeling so terrible you never drink again? The only problem is that the hangover ends and then there's that birthday party this weekend and that terrible day at work. The reasons to drink are never ending and daily for alcoholics.

It takes a long time to disconnect from alcohol. The drinking has to begone so bad that sobriety starts to look like the easier option. Alcoholics usually want the easier way, but doesn't everybody? Sobriety becomes the easier way. Boy was that a shock. I don't know how anyone stops when alcohol still kinda works. It worked for me for a long time. Have a good day, drink and relax at night and repeat the next day. But because I'm human the 12 or so happy drinks a night started damaging my health and psyche.

Oops. I just realized I misread the original post. I'll just post this anyways. Maybe there are some good parts in there.

thotful

I have certainly perceived the alcohol as analogous to a "friend". I partied with it/him/her and had such great times. Yet, at every instance, when I look at them honestly, I see my "friend" stabbing me in the back. I am given black-outs so I can't remember my "good" time. I break my own rules because the booze tells me they're dumb. Whispers in my ear that it's ok. I lose myself with this friend. I'm not me anymore. I am a slave to the booze. This friend often offers me headaches, vomiting, run ins with the law. This friend threatens every relationship I have. This friend put my wife's safety at risk. This friend hinders my driving and puts other people's lives at risk. This "friend" can't be trusted. I am completely powerless to it's suggestions (or demands, more like). I tried to be in charge - no, I'm only chilling with you on weekdays. Only when I am amongst other trusted friends. I will not seek you out just because I'm thirsty. Follow these rules and I'm fine and it's not in charge. Silly me. I even thought this friend brought me courage. That it brought me the hookups with the ladies. It didn't - i was given hollow and empty one-night stands or relationships that just weren't for me. This friend brings me pain. This friend brings me shame. This friend brings me sadness.

Moral of the story? This friend...is no friend at all. The only option I have left, accept defeat, that I will not conquer it and WALK THE HELL AWAY.

For me personally, when I am triggered, that's what I think about. I think about if I can trust alcohol again. The answer has been a resounding no every time. Working the 12 steps has helped tremendously in understanding who I am. I once asked my counselor how I avoid manipulation, and that is through KNOWING MYSELF. When I know myself well, I can be well aware that booze is BAD NEWS. I'll keep going to meetings like they're my weekly trip to the gym to keep myself in shape.

I flip booze off and tell it to get to steppin'. C YA!

Rob32u

Starflyer, this approach has helped me. I posted a thread about it a month or so ago. I view it as sort of hypnotizing myself. I started to focus on the negative aspects of drinking, so that whenever I thought of a drink the negative popped up in my mind. I cut my drinking nearly in half this way. Then a couple months ago I got sick with a stomach bug on a night when I was drinking. I started thinking of all the nausea and convinced myself it was the drink even though it wasn't. This enabled me to go 2 weeks without drinking at all which was the longest in maybe 20 years. Now, I drink maybe 3 to 6 drinks, 1 or 2 days a week. That's down from 5 per day on average every day of the week before I started this approach. I've found that the "aversion" effect wears off but in the meantime it helped me cut back, and that in turn makes it easier to not drink going forward. Every day you don't drink makes it a little easier to not drink the next day.

Lance40

My thoughts on this are that lasting sobriety is not based on thoughts, emotions or perceptions. I don't know how to put it into words, but sobriety is a state of being based on an unwavering, permanent decision to abstain from alcohol. Sobriety is indifferent to how alcohol makes you feel, thoughts about whether or not alcohol is good or bad, or reasons you should or shouldn't drink. None of that matters in sobriety. Thoughts, feelings or cravings can make for a difficult go of it, but they don't ever need to touch or threaten the core of your sobriety.

I didn't have that understanding in the earliest days of sobriety, so perhaps it's something that comes with time. The way to get there in the early days is to make sobriety fundamentally about not drinking. If bad memories and negative emotional linkages help toward that end, then that's good. The questions and curiosities are normal, natural and healthy; but lasting sobriety, in my experience, has been a journey of moving past all of that on a basis of nothing more and nothing less than "I do not drink alcohol" - full stop.

Rob32u

I agree Lance but at the beginning sometimes I think it helps if you have something more than just willpower and resolve not to drink. You need to find a way to actually want alcohol less, or not want it at all. In other words, your desire, not your will. For me that approach has made it easier for my will power to work. Once the desire to drink lessens, the will power can work more effectively. I feel I'm on the road to eventually quit. I can't believe how much less I drink now. My problem is that I think the amount of my drinking, even though a problem, was never so much that I hit rock bottom and forced me into a corner. Now it's even less. So now it's totally up to my will power alone to stop drinking on weekends. I think I'm using it as a psychological crutch for a while. At some point I will just "let it go". Right now I'm thinking "Will I drink this weekend?" Maybe I won't. Maybe this will be the weekend...

gaffo

I have a few friends who have quit over the years and I decided "I want what they have". The negative stuff helped sometimes in the beginning but I am a very positive person and I can't live that way. I like to concentrate on the good life that I get from sobriety. And I dig what Lance said--I don't drink FULL STOP. No matter what my crazy inner voices tell me, I will not take that first drink.