Timmy1028

Anyone know when this lets up? The world that used to escape with alcohol is a live all around me - it's a good one, but I find myself dealing with repressed emotions, etc. that are at times almost 20 years old. This is kind of nuts… Thoughts?

Gottalife

It is normal enough for alcoholics like me. While drinking I seem to have supressed all emotion. I wouldn't have known a genuine emotion if I fell over it. When I stopped drinking I started getting these "feelings". Sometimes they were very strong, and I didn't always know what they were. I hated it when someone came up and asked "how are you feeling". I didn't have a clue how to answer that.

Thankfully this stuff levelled off as I progressed in recovery, and personal growth. I think my growth stopped when I started to drink so essentially I had to go through adolescence in my 20s. I made plenty of mistakes, but eventually managed to grow up and react in a more balanced way to life.

Timmy1028

The real b***h of it all is that I am having these emotions about people, places and things that go back to about age 22-23. I'm 42 now.

I'm only hoping that this all levels out, because the emotion causes regret. Quite frankly, the things I'm dwelling on are impossible to go back and change.

Either this calms down, or I guess I have to just find an incredible sense of acceptance.

Lance40

I second what Gottalife posted. In many ways I'm still learning to navigate the emotional past and present realities of facing life sober, but it was the first 3 to 5 months that were especially chaotic. At times I related it to feeling like a rubber ball that was shot at high speed into a concrete room where I bounced up, down and every which way possible.

Thumpalumpacus

Coming to grips with the issues that made us see intoxication as a refuge is a difficult -- it sure has been for me. For years I anesthetized myself emotionally, but those feelings didn't go away.

For me, I've found that writing about them helps a lot. My swings come less often, and with less amplitude, than they did at the beginning of my recovery. It's a slow process, but we do have to put the past to bed and learn to live in the now.

Mags1

Hi Timmy. I think a journal is a good idea, sometimes just writing things down gets them out of our system. I was told that when we drink our mind doesn't grow, so issues we buried are still there in the cold light of day. The recovery part is dealing with life without turning to booze.

ScottFromWI

It takes time Timmy...that' the last thing we want to hear as addicts....we demand instant gratification by our nature. And when we take alcohol out of the equation it simply takes a while for our brains to "re-wire". A therapist once told me that it can take up to 5 years for your brain to fully recover from heavy alcohol abuse. I drank daily for nearly all of my adult life so I really don't even know what "normal" is. I am finding though that just not drinking didn't solve all my problems. I suppressed anxiety for decades and I'm learning how to deal with it through therapy and several tools like meditation, mindfulness, etc.

So kudos on 2 months...and time will definitely help. But don't rule out that you'll need to do some work above and beyond simply quitting the alcohol to get into good mental health.

fantail

Oh yes, this happened to me. I went through a whole new grieving process (albeit far less intense than the original!) over the end of an important relationship from 10 years ago. And then a death from 3 years ago that I hadn't really dealt with. And random things; old friendships, embarrassing or hurtful things I've done that I hadn't thought about in years, choices I made or didn't make.

It's getting better (I'm at 7.5 months). The anniversary of the death was just a couple weeks ago and it really threw me for a loop, so I can't say I'm done walking around my ghost town. But as I'm getting more grounded in my progress towards the future, I'm looking less to the past. I can feel that I'm shifting in that direction. I have a real palpable feeling that I'm about to start living in the present again for the first time in years. Maybe I won't be there always, but I feel like it's starting.

I think it'll happen for you too.