dru1085

Hello guys ,

Just got back from California and now back home in Texas. No place like home even though Cali is GORGEOUS and I had a blast with my family. It's a little too fast paced for my liking, being from the south it seems a lot slower which I missed...
Anyways the wedding some amazzzing and as far as my 20 ish sober days I ended up on my Brother in law's boat in California Bay.
I had 5 beers on the all day long trip.
Yes I gave in I couldn't resist but ! The good news is for the remainder of the trip I kept it under control and didn't have an benders or black outs. I did feel a little disappointed that I drank for the trip but I came back and haven't had a drink since.

Hopefully I didn't let any of you guys down and I def missed you guys. I need your help to still keep me on track from going down that dark path of letting it spiral out of control.

Overall the trip was amazing and I was proud of myself on a positive note, I didn't go crazy. I did drink and it was pretty nervy. But I don't want to make a big habit of it again. The urges came back 10 times stronger after my first drink. But I didn't let it grab full control.
Anyways.. I hope all of you are doing well and I will keep posting my sobriety.

I did rewind the clock.

So begins day 4.

Cheers Dru -


PS thanks for the post earlier Kal for checking up on me, really meant a lot and helped me upon my return to stay sober.

ScottFromWI

Welcome back dru, sorry to hear that you drank. Do you have any plans as to what you might do different to "keep on track" as you say?

doggonecarl

Any time I rationalized the "good" part of a relapse, I was just handing my addiction the justification to drink again.

Holds1325

Welcome back Dru, glad you had fun over there other than the slip

We all make mistakes here and there. Glad you stopped before it got worse.

Hawkeye13

glad you're back dru

I found Cali a little fast-paced myself.
Be strong and stay sober. . . it's worth it

sleepie

Dru it's good to hear you are on day 4.
Now you know it's dangerous to take those steps back.
I am concerned because counting not blacking out as a good thing is a dangerous place to be.
Stay with us ok?

advbike

Look man, you gotta be smart about this if you're serious about quitting alcohol. In early sobriety you just can't go off on adventures and expect to resist the temptation of a drink. Our AV, or ego, just loves to associate excitement and fun with the need for a drink. Ask me how I know, lol.

Now that the fun is over, make a plan - if you're serious about it. Stay home, go to meetings, live a boring life for 3-6 months until you have worked some recovery and get this thing under control. It becomes a lot easier with time. Once you do that you can have all the adventures you want. Cheers.

Hevyn

Glad to hear from you, dru. It sounds like a great trip. You said the urges came back 10x stronger after the first drink. That's the way it was for me too. I hope you'll be careful.

tomsteve

getting sober is hard.
staying sober is quite easy.
no possible way i could have gotten to the point of it being easy if i didnt get serious about the seriousness of alcoholism.
in fact, i wasnt serious for a long time. at one point rationalizing after many drunks," the good news is i didnt hurt anyone. "
until i was responsible for the death of another human.

dru, you set yourself up to get drink. you went into it knowing of the alcohol and now it seems like ya feel it was no big deal because ya kept it under control.
rationalization-giving a socially acceptable reason for socially unacceptable behavior, and socially unacceptable behavior is a form of insanity."

i hope ya decide to stop playing russian roullette.

dru1085

Yeah I guess I wasn't as strong as I thought I was. I want to give up binge and heavy drinking but I eventually want to be able to crack open a cpl of beers for a football game or special event. Is that impossible? I guess I just need to give it more time. I almost went a month dry, time to set a new goal.. Thanks for replies all.

dru1085

going to go out and enjoy the nice texas cool weather and play some basketball.

Tc4ever

Glad you had a good time dru. Hopefully you can get back on track now....
Peace.....

Dee74

Welcome back Dru.

Dang - I'm sorry that you're holding on to the dream of normal drinking.

I wasted 20 years that way, man.

Get smart.

D

Gottalife

It might be possible if you are not an alcoholic of my type. AA talks about the hard drinker as someone who can stop or moderate if they have a good enough reason... health, love, work etc. Do you have a good enough reason? What is your experience, have you been able to stop or moderate in the past?

My experience was that I really wanted to be a hard drinker, and I almost died in my attempts to prove I could do it, that I wasn't alcoholic.

Gotta be careful what you wish for though. Health consequences for hard drinkers are not much different than those for alcoholics. I had some hard drinking friends. They never had quite the level of problem that I did. But thirty five years later I am still sober and having a ball and most of them died in their fifties.

Before you can decide on what the solution is, you need to know exactly what the problem is. Sound like you learnt something about the problem on your last trip.

Soberwolf

5000% agree with D's post so glad you made it back Dru a lot don't

advbike

Me too. What a waste. I've learned so much and changed in so many ways since I got sober. At age 58. I wish I'd just stayed sober when I first did it in my 30's, not gone back out and messed around for 25 more years. I knew early on it was a problem but I also had the dream of being able to handle it. Lol.

Carver

Got a lot of good friends here telling you something you probably don't want to hear, dru. But they're speaking from a lot of personal experience.

I don't know how bad a drinker you were, so I don't know if you can go back to just having a few. I know I can't, and I don't want to. It's too much of a waste of my potential. Quitting is actually easy, when you remove the possibility of drinking again.

I'm not saying I don't struggle sometimes though. I'm not superman

You're the only one who really knows. Good luck to ya

changingman

Dru, my wife brought me some cider home last night. 4 cans, they didn't last an hour, I have a problem, I wanted more and tonight my body is screaming for a couple of beers. If you can control it, I say great, however I feel you will soon lapse into bad ways.

Carver

I hope you can resist the AV, changingman

thomas11

With the exception of meetings, this is what worked for me.