Soberwolf

I'm really glad your with us x

Carlotta

How are you today?

Jeni26

Aww, I'm so sorry to read this.

There IS life after relapse. Whatever method or plan you choose, the hardest thing is coming back here and admitting it. I had a few years sober time too, and I'm going to get it back again.

Walking this path with you. Love and hugs ❤️

leviathan

Aellyce, Just read the news... No need for shame.

You do need to get right back in the saddle, though! Sorry about your bumpy ride. We need you around.

zjw

glad your back I tried to respond to your thread yest and my internet died.

I hope some others can chime in on how to get through tough stuff in life and remain sober. I dont want to OK a relapse but I can totally understand it with what your dealing with.

When my wife went through the same she ventured off to a few substances. She luckily doesnt have a problem so no biggie for her.

I even mentioned your situation to her and she can relate.

Hang in there I'm glad your back on the wagon.

Life can suck but one thing I like about life is it moves forward with or without me. thinks are gonna move forward things are gonna change get better etc... I always think thank god things are transient i couldnt imagine having to feel liek crap forever I know that since my feelings are transient sooner or later i'm gonna feel better etc..

I read in a book recently we cant count on ourselves or other people even but we can count on life. We can always count on life being what it is good and bad it is.

Hang in there!

Dee74

How are you going Aellyce?

D

Sudz No More

glad you found yourself before it went too far, it's not the end of the world. You have those two years and no one can take them back. just start building back on them. You'll be ok.

Gottalife

I am sorry to hear this news, sort of. For me, my last relapse gave me a new willingness to go to any lengths, and the sobriety I got after that was better than anything I ever experienced before, and it has stayesd that way.

No need for shame if you are an alcholic of my type. With my history, to "choose" to drink was an act of pure insanity. There can be no other explanation. usually there wasn't even any conscious thought involved. Sometimes I had sworn off in the morning and find myself on drink 3 before or even remembered. By then it was too late.

Why did the insanity keep coming back? Well that had something to do with choice. Me choosing not to do what I needed to do to get and stay sober.

AA didn't get me sober and doesn't keep me sober. But it showed me how to find and maintain the power I need to stay sober.

That power keeps me sober 24/7, no matter what life throws at me.

I hope you find the power.

Biff123

I too am coming off of a relapse after over 2 years sober. It is daunting to think of how long it will take to get back to where we were. But as someone said in an earlier post, that shouldn't be the focus right now. Now we need to just focus on getting though the challenges of early sobreity. We've done it before, we can do it again.

courage2

Dear Aellyce, you're a smart woman. Don't surrender responsibility for yourself to alcohol. Drinking will definitely ruin your life but you don't have to drink and you can have a good life without it.

I hope you decide to try.

strategery

So sorry to hear Aellyce. You're in my thoughts and prayers.
Why not just commit to today? Don't worry about counting days or what day is your sobriety date. Just work on continuing to move forward, figuring out where the holes were in your thinking or plan, and recommit. The longer you're out there drinking, the harder it is to come back.

Jeni26

for the first few weeks after my relapse, I found counting the days a bit counter-productive. It just reminded me of all the time I'd 'thrown away', and the task ahead seemed huge. I also found myself unwittingly looking at people who had started at the same time as me, some of whom are now hitting 4 years, and I felt completely hopeless.

None of that is important. We don't ever 'lose' our sober time because with every long stretch of sobriety we learn new things, new strategies, and we experience the benefits of a sustained sober life. That experience is invaluable and is never 'lost'.

Count days, or don't count days...it really doesn't matter. I've friends who do both, and they are equally as happy.

I think it was Gottalife who said his last relapse propelled him onto sobriety because he finally became willing to go to any lengths. That's how I feel about mine too. But first I had to do a little grieving and soul searching, look to myself to find out where I went wrong. I didn't have anywhere near the stress you did, but I've watched people cope with the most awful life experiences and move through them sober, so I know it can be done.

Don't get lost in that alcoholic hell Aellyce, I've been there and nothing good comes of it.

Be safe ❤️

Autumnlover19

Hi Aellyce,
I had 3.5 years of sobriety when I relapsed 2 yrs ago. Since then, I have been struggling. I have had periods of sobriety (when I was pregnant and a few other times of a month or two) and am currently at a few weeks of sobriety, but I am not counting days because that is depressing. I understand how you feel about "starting over."

Like others have pointed out, our sober time is not lost. Mine tells me that I can do this. In the last 6 years, I have been sober way more than not. And the times I was drinking were horrible. I don't want that for me anymore.

Regardless, I think it's safe to say that everyone here is taking it one day at a time.

Autumnlover19

I forgot to say, I am proud of you for coming here and picking up the pieces after two weeks. My relapse was going on for two years, with periods of sobriety.

Hugs.

Aellyce

Hi everyone,

I am here and alive... Yesterday I did not check in, I am sure you can guess why. But now I've decided no matter how hard right now, the drinking has to be over, and now! So this is my Day 1. It feels very weird to write that but I think I benefit from reminding myself every day of the significance of this relapse for a while at least.

Thanks so much for all the loving and insightful responses, I really appreciate it. To be honest, I am a bit astonished reading the responses, like I can't believe how people relate to me and my experience here in spite of seeing it all the time on SR. I need to allow myself to let it in instead of isolating, but it's a bit hard right now.

And yes, I definitely think that my relapse was a choice, my own deliberate conscious, destructive choice. No matter the circumstances and triggers, I decided to go back to drinking. I'm glad that I did not let myself get too lost in it and for this I must thank SR, because even when I was drunk recently, I kept thinking about many of the stories I read here over time, stories about relapses that ended at a worse place than before the first quit.

What I've experienced in this drinking spell: my reactions to alcohol did not change a bit, even my tolerance did not decrease, I could polish off a liter of vodka a day just like before I first quit. That's a lot for a woman my size. And then the same terrible hangovers (like today). It was also very similar in a sense that I did not really enjoy the drinking beyond maybe the first hour of it each time, being drunk made me very delusional and crazy with very extreme thoughts and emotions all over the map. And then the cravings... now I'll need to battle those again, that's the most difficult part for me. I never tend to crave alcohol on the first day after a binge, but as soon as I feel better, it's like all day is a giant craving.

I think I will need to do something differently this time in terms of recovery methods. The first time I mostly used SR, occasional AA meetings, and therapy later on. I want to have more f2f support this time and get involved in it more intensely than before because I seriously feel that my willpower is close to zero when those cravings hit. I think I will try SMART meetings and AA, see which ones I benefit more from, maybe do both. And will go back to the psychiatrist I found a few weeks ago and try his suggestions to hopefully make my mental state more stable, because right now it's everything but stable. And then therapy, which I never stopped and really love to do. In fact, I must be very grateful for my therapist because he has been very involved and helpful during this recent phase, talked to me, gave me suggestions, observations, encouragement etc even when I was drunk, I emailed him a lot drunk. Actually, one of his specialties is helping addicts but we never used this part of his skills very much in the past since I was doing well in terms of recovery. So now I'll see how he treats active addiction.

I definitely think that I have neglected my recovery in the last few months, and that was also a choice no matter how I was distracted by other life events. So if this relapse has provided any lesson, it is this lesson, now first hand, to never underestimate the power of this addiction and do not stop taking care of myself in this domain.

One main part of the relapse was seeing what I was doing to my husband, who has kept being supportive and trying to help any way he could. But then I would often ignore it/him. One thing I started doing, which I never did before with a partner, was hiding my drinking. Of course, how efficient can it be to hide it in a domestic relationship? Seeing him so sad and helpless was one of the worst parts of it. I found him yesterday crying alone in his room while I was in mine sneaking vodka. I can't even imagine how awful it must have been for him especially given that his first wife died of drug addiction many years ago. I'm glad that my relapse did not progress as far as not caring about his pain at all, but with the speed it has been progressing since I first picked up, I think I would get there soon.

Anyway, so yes the madness definitely needs to stop. It's not going to make it easier that the coming couple months will be a very stressful period at work with lots of important projects and deadlines, and I can't delegate a lot of it. But probably this is going to help retain a sense of responsibility. I definitely don't feel that I am in any sort of denial about my drinking or that I romanticize the binges. It's those hellish cravings that make it difficult to stay sober now and I anticipate it will last for a while. Well, I can apply my skills I developed first time to ride the cravings, I certainly has not been doing any of that recently.

Again, thanks so much for all the care and wonderful responses, I truly appreciate it!

thomas11

Hi Aellyce, obviously sorry to hear you experienced a relapse, but you sound very knowledgeable on what its going to take to climb that mountain again. I support you 100% and wish you the very best. Its a good reminder to people like myself how easy it is to fall.

Aellyce

So I've decided to try doing this with the self help I've described in the post above, but I think if I fail only just once, it will be rehab no matter how disruptive in terms of my work or anything. Even just the work, if I continue drinking, I will pull a whole bunch of others into the destruction, people that work with me and depend on me, that would be a much bigger disruption than taking a month or so off. My therapist has been trying to talk me out of rehab but I won't listen to him in this particular issue. He is sometimes against my using other kind of professional help than him, but I think that is coming from his own need (a bit jealous at times and he wants to be the one who makes the biggest difference) not mine. I told him this and he kinda admitted it. But if I get completely lost in active alcoholism, there would be no upside for anyone and he would eventually most likely lose his patient as well.

Aellyce

As for the choice, why I chose to pick up the first drink after over two years of sobriety? Well, first it was an impulse in response to a momentary emotional state, which I should have known would go away if I just waited a bit or maybe talked with someone about it. I had an intense desire to escape into that wasteland and acted it out. I think that was all about it. And then (as we all know well), once I had a bit of alcohol in me, there was no stopping. Being drunk for the first time after two years very much transformed my general thinking also in the sober moments (days) between binges. I was binging ~every other day, usually about 1.5 day at a time, then stop for a day, repeat. I've never been a maintenance drinker like those of us who drank smaller quantities spread throughout the day, everyday. For me when I start, it's a large amount within a short period of time until I pass out, the often I wake up and continue until I'm so sick I can't take any more of it for a day but of course feel terrible with the hangover. I think each time I drank recently, before I started, I craved that feeling of transient euphoria during the first hour of drinking. I also each time made myself think that I would not finish a bottle, would just have 2-3 drinks. It is truly insanity, how can we think that after all the evidence? There certainly has never been such as things as 2-3 drinks for me for many years now, I am definitely the kind of alcoholic with a completely broken switch in my head. And there was no social pressure or anything social in my drinking, that is never an issue for me and I don't react to social expectations. I decide to make these poor and self absorbed choices all by myself when I do it. I can't even say I drank to curb emotional pain, when I picked up it was actually on a great day when I just received some very good news work-wise, a promotion. Then what do I do, "reward" myself with drinking. That was also my most typical pattern in the past, not so much drinking my momentary pain away. It was a very bad reaction to an isolated unexpected good thing in a period mostly characterized by pain or stress directly, but I did not react to the pain, I did to the good thing that felt like a big contrast compared with its context.

Della1968

Well this sucks doesn't it?? I could have written the post directly above this. As much as I hate this happened I think it was good for me to read. I have been very meh lately and think I probably am not to far away from a relapse if I am not careful.

The thing that stands out to me any time you post is how wonderfully self aware you are. We live, we learn and we grow. You've got this.

Aellyce

Thanks, Della. I am glad if my story and the analysis of it helps anyone avoid the same experience. As for the self awareness -- ha!, tell my psychoanalyst that! He always says that I do have outstanding intellectual insight but that's not what can truly help us break repetitive patterns, it's being aware of what drives us emotionally and where that comes from. And I have a habit of actually avoiding my feelings, still after all this time, knowledge, experience. But then I react to an impulse. Anyhow, I'm done now and hope to stay this way.