JamesSquire

After failing the January class after 52 days, then joining another class and failed the same day, I've decided now I'm not going to join a class till I've achieved a 7 day sober period.
This morning I woke up sober. I was going to start and stay sober FOREVER. Had some anxiety. Did some breathing exercises and it all went away. Had to go to the shops to get some stuff to cook dinner tonight.
Cut a long story short, got dinner and ended up picking up a 6 pack of beer and drinking it while cooking dinner.
What happened? I can't believe I did that. Was I sleep walking? How did it happen without a concious thought? I not off my face right now and going to bed soon but how about tommorow ... Will I repeat this endless cycle of doom?
Usually the 6 pack leads to a bottle of scotch as well.
I just needed to vent. Still confused as what happened and how I lost all thought.
JS

Mountainmanbob

I remember all so well, thinking about not drinking and then finding yet another drink in my hand. For most it takes a lot of support and a firm decision must be made not to drink no matter what.

In early sobriety (most) don't buy booze and they don't keep booze in the house.

MM

trachemys

BTDT. After months of sober, I just stopped one day and bought a bottle of bourbon. One day binge. WTF? That was a little while back. You get up, dust yourself off(change clothes if it was really nasty) and go on. Progress, not perfection.

toqa

its a sudle disease and sneaks up on us.

IOAA2

"Still confused as what happened and how I lost all thought."


Hi.
Alcohol = POWERFUL, CUNNING, BAFFLING and PROGRESSIVE!

My undisciplined nature needed to be modified a lot as my mental processing was bent toward drinking.
I surrendered to the professionals who were recovering in AA and would answer my questions with “just keep coming your mind will follow.” Probably too harsh for many of today’s sensitive newcomers.

Many years later I’m grateful for their concerns and help.

IT WORKS IF WE WORK IT!

BE WELL

Dee74

I've been there too James. I called it autopilot.

I needed a better recovery plan than the one I had, which was basically hoping for the best and having some vague notion of dealing with things as they came up....

D

Soberwolf

Hi James whats your plan ?

saoutchik

Hi James,

Like Dee says maybe could tweak something in your plan. Seems like you are really close to sober take off and just need a little bit more runway.

You will get there James I'm sure of it

Bluebird1927

Mate I've done that loads of times, wake up and literally feel like you had no control over it when you really did have. At some point you mate the conscious decision to drink. Just got to recognise the triggers and nip them in the bud. Good luck with your sobriety.

GracieLou

"The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink."

Page 24 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

"They had said that though I did raise a defense, it would one day give way before some trivial reason for having a drink. "

Page 42 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

"Once more: The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink"

Page 43 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I think that describes it!

Weaver

It happened because you wanted to drink more than you didn't want to drink. No you were not sleep walking and you were very much concious. A lot of thought went into it if you really think about it... You probably thought about it a couple hours before hand, you thought about it on the way to the store, you thought about it in the check out line and then again on the way home. Finally you thought about it when you opened up the first bottle.
I did it all the time. We are all alcoholics. We all do it. We obsesses about drinking.

After the fact, I would play it off...or tell myself "I cannot believe I did that! What the heck just happened?" But looking back, I knew darn good and well what was happening. I just chose to ignore my better judgement and drink because at the time I wanted to drink more than I didn't want to drink.
Once I realized that in fact, I do indeed have the "power" it got better. I think you need to realize that it was indeed you and not some unconscious sleep walk induced decision ya know?

The quicker you can honestly admit that, the better and the quicker you can begin your road to recovery. I went down that path, and personally I feel like it is dangerous territory. It is taking the blame... and the action away from you. As if some other entity caused you to drink...by doing that, it is deflecting personal responsibility. It separates the two. It separates your conscious choice to choose NOT to drink instead.

For years I chose to drink, to get drunk, to stop and get booze when I told myself I was done, to drink at work, to be a crappy father and husband...so on and so forth. It wasn't until I looked at myself in the mirror (literally) (and accepted it all, accepted the truth that it was ME who was making these choices), that I finally "got better"

What is your plan from here? What can you do differently today? Or tomorrow? Next time to not make this same mistake?

Be well

JamesSquire

Weaver ... Thanks, the truth is painfully accepted. I thought the earlier AV was dealt with but he snuck in again subtlely and I gave in.

SB ... My plan today is eat well, drink lots of water, exercise and sleep well. When I hear AV calling, I'll try my mindful breathing and find a job that I've put off to do.

Saoutchik ... Nice to 'hear' your voice.

Thanks everyone ... I be visiting here more often today as well. I'll check into the 24 hour section.

JS

Gottalife

Thank goodness someone pointed this out

This was me exactly. Another passage is "there was a complete failure of the kind of defense that stops one putting ones hand on a hot stove". And I think somehwhere else "Neither he (the alcoholic) nor anyone else can provide such a defense".

So the big question is how to find a defense. It needs to be 24/7 which pretty much rules out other people unless we want to be locked up or have 24 hour body guards, and we dont seem to be able to do it on our own.

I found it in AA. Certainly the AA book describes exactly your experience. Maybe it would have other useful material you can relate to. Perhaps that would be a good place to start.

Weaver

Awesome avatar btw

All those things are awesome ideas. Especially the exercise and drinking well! Really...those two things are under appreciated.

MissMar

Thank you!

buk1000

Great post. Thank you.

Gottalife

James,
In some of the earlier posts you have been told that it is simply a matter of choice. Just man up and make the right decision next time. That might be true for them, it might even be true for you, but it is absolutely untrue for alcoholics of my type.

If it were true for us, we wouldn't need rehabs, and AA would never have had any customers, and we wouldnt lose so many alcoholics to this disease. We would all just decide to stop and everything would be fine.

Maybe you are one of those (we call them hard drinkers) who can stop or moderate given a good enough reason. Good for you if you can.

But if you try and try and repeatedly fail, please know that it is not because you are bad or weak or stupid or wrongheaded. A bunch of us, several million in fact, arrived at just such a point where, though we desperatley wanted to, we just could not quit. Yet we found a way out.

So if you find at some future point that you feel like you have run out of options, that nothing has worked, that you are one of those hopeless cases like I was, where I believed that nothing couldsave me, there is a solution.

Kris47

God did for me what I could not do for myself.

May you find him now.

JimdiGriz

I've had this experience several times.. In a lighter mood i call it the alco-robot.

However i also found it quite disturbing.. I wonder if there is a point here that just as drinking alcohol will cause a bypass in short term memory and cognition, maybe the AV is continuing to anaethetise our normal judgements.. Perhaps this is going on perpetually..

JamesSquire

Well Day 1 is nearly done. It's 9:15 pm, cup of tea then bed.
Thanks everyone !