NewDay79

I have been sober for 828 days. I feel accomplished. I feel in control. I feel capable. I feel strong. My weight is back to normal. Lots of good things happening in my life that I can solely contribute to not drinking.

When I did drink, it was bad. Hiding how many wine bottles went out in the trash, being so hung over at work I had to try my best to avoid people, completely alienating my husband and family, etc.

I am sane. I have red the big book.

So, why on earth do I still miss it? Why do I get wistful when I see someone enjoying a glass of wine on TV? Why do I try and convince myself that I can drink normally again? Why do I day dream about how I could hide the fact that I consumed a bottle of wine from my husband?

Sucks.

Venecia

Hi, NewDay,

I don't know how to answer your question. The easiest answer -- and it may seem simplistic -- is that you never stopped romancing alcohol. So stop it now.

The more layered response is to ask you to contemplate what's changed in your life now that you're not drinking. Dig deeper about being more accomplished, more capable, stronger. Sane.

Last night, I was talking with a friend in recovery and said "I cannot describe it, but I am a different person." Since then, I have been doing a lot of reflection on what's changed in me. It's helpful. It's also challenging.

In the immediate term, it's good that you're reaching out. When your mind goes far enough as to be thinking about how to hide a bottle, it's time to ask for help. Others will offer feedback, too, I'm sure.

One of the most helpful observations on relapse came from David Carr, who died earlier this year. If you're not familiar with him, he was a New York Times writer who achieved much, all after rebuilding his life from the depths of addiction. Nevertheless, in the midst of amazing success (some would say it was amazing he was even alive and I'd tend to agree, having read his autobiography, "The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own), Carr relapsed. He wrote:

"In various programs of recovery, adherents will talk about 'slips'; but the collapse into drinking and drugging can take a very long time. In that process, the prospect of getting high or drunk, unimpeded by obeisance to a higher power or a program of daily living, is rolled around in the mouth absently, surreptitiously, long before it is actually swallowed, to see how it might taste. That's how I finally found myself in my kitchen with that disgusting drink.

"When I really think about it, somewhere in the late nineties and into 2000, I stopped identifying myself as an alcoholic and an addict and began thinking of myself as someone who just didn't drink or do drugs. It took about four years to make that nasty drink in my kitchen, four years of not gong to meetings, four years of not speaking honestly with people in recovery, four years of a long conversation in my head, before the thought became the deed."

In your case, the thought is there. The powerful news is that you have the ability to keep it from becoming the deed.

Take care. Keep reaching out. There are many good people here willing to help.

Gottalife

I read the big book too, like a novel at first. Then I studied the book and began putting its suggestions (the steps) into practice. I followed the directions quite closely and by 90 days the obsession you descibe had been removed.

The tenth step promises come to mind "And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone - even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality - safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition."

These came to me first through the steps, and then has been maintained through sponsoring others. All this has made me very happy to be sober.

Yet you don't seem happy in your sobriety. Maybe you are not getting the rewards I get. Why would that be?

sugarbear1

have you worked those steps yet? started working with a newcomer? meet with your sponsor regularly to enlarge your spiritual world?

sobriety is action, daily, consistently, a work in progress......

Hugs and Love to you!

Dee74

thats the insanity of addiction right there.

We KNOW where it really leads - but still that ideal of normal drinking beguiles us.

for me, building a new sober life that I love meant there was nothing to escape from and nothing to romance me.

is there something ion your life you'd like to escape? what other healthy positives things could you implement to help you with that?

D

IOAA2

Hi.
The simple answer to your wondering is that we are alcoholics addicted to alcohol and it’s natural for us in the beginning to desire and or think about what we are addicted to.

I like Mike have needed to study the BB for years and go through the changes required to remain recovered. Often many of us remark “I never saw that in past readings” after reading the same paragraph for a lot of years.

This recovery process is time consuming but so rewarding one day at a time in a row!

BE WELL

dwtbd

I ascribe that 'missing' as beast talk or AV , the voice of addiction. As that part of our thinking that sees alcohol consumption in a positive light.
The AV is tugging at your emotional response at a seeming deprivation of the pleasure of intoxication.
Take the TV drinking , rationally you know that 99.9% of television is fiction , it is not you consuming alcohol in a 'normal' nondestuctive way, heck the actor is probably consuming na grape juice. But part of your thought process sees this and projects possible actions on your part , ie enjoying a single glass of wine, mixes in the remembered emotional response to the deep , but unhealthy, pleasure of experiencing intoxication , dangles the(fictional?) possibility of future moderation , and leaves us feeling deprived of the fiction. Sometimes the experience of the feeling of missing can't be avoided, but coming at it from a different can help it from happening in the first place.
Do you think you would ever be in the position of misssing being unaccomplished, being out of control, not being healthy, being incapable?
I felt I was missing drinking, up until the point that I realized that drinking always brings the negative outcomes with it , for me the way I drank the negative is inseparable from any pleasure I received from the intoxication. If missing starts to creep in I answer it in my head by thinking that what I am missing is a fiction, the fiction of consequenceless consumption. I drank to get drunk, me as a drunk wasn't working, so I decided to not be a drunk anymore, the consequence of that decision means I don't drink anymore, since I never want to be a drunk again, I won't drink ever again. That perspective change , changed the missing too.
Being a drunk sucks, the AV toying with my emotions about it sucks too. But taking the possibility of any future consumption off the table forever, not even allow some fanciful delusion of moderation drinking once this is sorted out, has pretty much put the AV in its place and removed any legs for its arguments to stand on.
Congrats on being over two years into your quit, hope you can see our way to be happier with it,

NewDay79

Thanks for all your responses. I am considering going back to AA. I got to around the 7th step with a sponsor the last time.

For personal reasons, I am still very much in the closet about my alcoholism. Only my husband knows. AA was such a public admission so it was hard for me to attend meetings. So when I would tell my sponsor that I had an urge to drink and her response was "You need to get to a meeting immediately", that did not really help me as I was very planful about which meetings to go to.

I need to find a way to work the steps and get support in a more private way.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

Music

Just because you haven't had a drink in 828 days, doesn't mean the disease isn't there. That's why the disease is called "Alcoholism" not "Alcoholwasm". There's a place in the Big Book where it says alcohol is cunning, baffling and powerful! There are times when the sweat running down the side of a beer bottle makes me thirsty for a beer but I just smile and remember, I can't have just one beer. If I could have just one beer, I wouldn't need to be in AA.

Soberwolf

I think 828 days is seriously awesome

Littlebear

Newday hi. I've relapsed recently and back on day 1 and struggling generally. So unfortunately don't have any thing much to offer you right now...Other than to say I am in the same place as you in wanting to attend AA but can't publicly (and wont publicly) at least not anywhere near where I live and work. So I am struggling to find somewhere I can gain the benefits of an AA community but not in my own back yard. But am still trying to work this dilemma out. So I will watch your thread with interest to see if there's anything I can learn...at least you know there's someone else out here with a similar problem - other than the alcohol. lB

Johnston

Because you like how it makes you feel? At least at first?

dwtbd

One little letter, I should have been more careful in typing. I mean that I hope you can see "your" way to being happier.
In early sobriety , obviously, starving the AV out by not consuming alcohol is paramount. But, I think, just as important after the drinking has stopped, the AV needs to be starved of its mental fuel. A "No matter what clause " is the starving action going forward, for me .

NewDay79

Hi Littlebear,

A close friend of mine requested these:

1) Addiction, Alcoholism - In The Rooms - Drug Addiction Treatment has video chat meetings you can listen to and you can talk back without showing your face if you want

2) AAOnline.net--Realtime Open AA Meetings on the Internet has meetings that are typing

NewDay79

[QUOTE=Venecia;5441003]

"When I really think about it, somewhere in the late nineties and into 2000, I stopped identifying myself as an alcoholic and an addict and began thinking of myself as someone who just didn't drink or do drugs. It took about four years to make that nasty drink in my kitchen, four years of not gong to meetings, four years of not speaking honestly with people in recovery, four years of a long conversation in my head, before the thought became the deed."
QUOTE]

This is a very insightful quote, thanks for sharing.

NewDay79

Hi guys, thanks for taking the time to respond. Reading your comments have been helpful.

Littlebear

Ohhh...much appreciated Newday. Didn't know about these. I will try. Hope you do too? LB

Gottalife

A couple of things jumped out at me from your post. Firstly, we get sober through the steps we take, not the meetings we make. Hopefully, what your sponsor meant was you need to be working with another alcoholic who you will most likely find at a meeting.

Secondly, private steps? mmmm. You got to step 7. Up to this point, all steps are taken with the help of an understanding and supportive sponsor, God, and no one else. In particular, the impact of step 5 on me was so profound, it appeared to be the absolute proof that this program works. I had no great difficulty in moving on to step nine within a few days.

Step 9 calls for us to go out and repair the damage we did. Hardly private facing and making amends to those people, yet essential that we get those demons off our back if we want permanent recovery.

I didn't want a life where I had to avoid certain people, living in fear of that tap on the shoulder "hey, remember me, what you did to me?", always wondering when something was going to come back and bite me. That was a sure recipe for more drinking.

In my experience each step prpares us for the next, if we are thorough. I don't think it is coincidence that you want a private approach, and you stopped before step nine.

I suggest reading the last paragraph on page 75, reviewing progress up to this point. The previous paragraph is the fifth step promises, how do you feel about them? They really set the stage for the next steps. If you are honest with yourself, it will soon become apparent what you need to do next.