Talkinandwalkin

So I went by a restaurant on the way home tonight to pick up take out. I finally came up with a good avatar out of it! Back in my drinking days I would go by here and order a plate of calamari and sit at the bar and down several grey goose before going home while waiting on my take out to be ready. I thought about sitting at a table some distance away from the bar to avoid any temptation. Then I thought **** you this is over and I won. I will sit anywhere in the ******restaurant waiting for my dinner as you have no control over me. My avatar was my view tonight of the 18 year old glen livet and the grey goose with the rest of the citizens of the top shelf. Yes that is my Pelegrino on the bar. I actually gave them the middle finger walking out the door with my take out lol! It felt goooooooooood!

MIRecovery

I choose to nuture my sobriety not challenge it because every time I went toe to toe with alcohol I got the snot beat out of me

silentrun

mmmmmm....calamari

hellrzr

"Then I thought **** you this is over and I won."

So you believe you've won something over alcohol? That tells me that you don't understand that alcohol isn't your problem, at least not if your an alcoholic. If I ever say that I'm hoping I have enough sense to get on the phone with my sponsor and get to a meeting fast! Good luck.

Soberwolf

Good job protecting your sobriety remember you don't have to test yourself your doing great keep updating your journey bud

Jsbodhi

Glad you're feeling strong xoxo
I hate be a spoil sport, but the avatar might be a bit of a trigger for some people

SoberinSyracuse

Hi, Talkin. I also have no problem in bars or restaurants. I waited at a bar for a carry-out order just today in fact. Not a problem.

And I do not fear alcohol any more. Never will again. The reason I kept drinking and drinking was that I mistakenly believed it had some weird supernatural kind of power over me. As soon as that notion was proven wrong, and the physical dependency had been addressed, I was free.

MIRecovery

We each follow our own path but going on 7 years sober I am terrified of alcohol and always will be. It always did and always will have a supernatural effect on me. I know for positive I will never be free but I have developed some very effective treatment options

hellrzr

Thanks MRIrecovery. I like reading the advice from folks who have a good amount of sobriety and have had life hit them hard and still go out of their way to help others.

Being around AA, you learn that many people who drink again, and go back into that pit, are the ones who think they've won some battle and they no longer have a problem.

MIRecovery

We deal with dangerous and deadly stuff. At this mornings meeting somebody shared about coming home to a dead roommate who had 6 months sobriety. Not sure if it was drugs or alcohol but it does not make a difference dead is dead and addiction did it.

I have seen far too many underestimate this foe and they are no longer here

silentrun

Uh oh. I kind of feel that way. I feel like I was handed a get out of jail free card and I used it. It was for one time only and nobody can make me go back to alcohell again, not even me. I feel that way about sugar right now too. It took me about 6 months with the alcohol to feel like it was over and about 6 seconds with the sugar. I completely identify with SIS. I do feel like I have solved the drinking part of the equation and moved completely into self healing and personal best mode.

I have no idea were the OP is at. I did go into a bar about 5 months sober to pick up a pizza and the smell nauseated me. He very well may have moved up a level and has the right to relish it. Then again, he might be getting over confident. I sure can't tell.

So what actually are the statements that people who relapse make?

Andante

Well, we have the gamut of emotive extremes expressed towards alcohol here: from belligerent defiance to cowering terror.

What's working for me is to defuse all emotional associations with alcohol. It cannot harm me and it has no power over me unless I drink it, so I focus my energies on living a life in which drinking alcohol has no place. My emotional investment in alcohol, once overpowering, is gradually being starved away. As long as I never take a drink, and I do what is required on an ongoing basis to prevent my getting so off-kilter as to make taking a drink seem like a good idea, I need not fear or loathe or conquer or defy alcohol. It just is.

Maybe that’s part of what they call "serenity?"

esinger

To me living in fear is no way to live at all. I have a whole bar of booze. Haven't touched it since coming back from my "vacation" a few years back other than to pour someone else a drink. I have no desire to drink it anymore than I have a desire to drink the paint thinner in the work shop. It would have the same consequence ultimately. To me it only has the power over me that I give it and I choose to give it none. Alcohol was just a bad remedy for other unresolved issues in my life and I became physically addicted.
That being said we are all different and I wouldn't recommend an indifferent attitude for everyone. Just the way it is for me.

MIRecovery

My respect for alcohol and how fragile my sobriety is took on a whole different light when my daughter died.

It is easy to be confident in your sobriety when things are going well but when things are going worse than you can possibly imagine all of a sudden 20 years of learned behavior come roaring back with a vengeance.

When all you want day after day, month after month, is to not be in so much pain alcohol becomes an option that it wasn't before. Did I drink? Nope. Did I commit suicide, obviously not. Did I give careful consideration to both? Yup.

We just don't know what life is going to throw at us so I choose to give alcohol the respect it deserves

Talkinandwalkin

Please remember more than one way to sobriety exists. The only avenues I pursued when getting sober were the lord and my family. I have no desire to drink. Along the path I have had enlightenment including what led me to drink to start with. That was the final piece of the puzzle. I regret nothing of my above statement with the exception of not thanking the lord for the help and strength. It can be easy to forget more than one path to sobriety exists with the vocal AA crowd. Every once in a while it feels good to tilt against windmills or Goliath for that matter. By the way the head I am holding up for the world to see belongs to alcoholism and the battle was brought by the lord!

hellrzr

Talkinandwalkin, it looks like you have almost 11 months of sobriety. That is awesome! Sounds like we have a couple things in common. I also have no desire to drink and haven't since working a 4th step in AA. I give credit for that to the good Lord and those in AA who have given me amazing advice a ton of knowledge on Alcoholism and it effects us. Those same men also advised me of the dangers of taking this stuff lightly or thinking that we have anything beaten just because we aren't drinking now. The further out you get from your sobriety date the more this danger becomes and the more important it is to be vigilante. I have absolutely no fear of drinking and left to my own I don't think about it. That's a problem and why I go to meetings and look at this website everyday. Those things remind me of what I can go back to if I think I'm free of Alcoholism.

silentrun, people who I've heard from usually are doing great in life and have things back on track and have some months or even a couple or more years of sobriety. They get away from AA and stop thinking about all that and just want to be "normal". Eventually that leads to thinking a drink at a wedding is fine or maybe a drink with the folks from work is a good idea. Then it seems to always lead them right back to daily drinking. Some come back around then to start back on track but some don't and start to lose things again like jobs and family.

I'm nervous because this is where I'm at. My life it pretty great right now I go to 1 or 2 meetings a week and I keep telling myself that I'm fine and that's enough. Even as I type this I'm telling myself that I'm different than those people and I will never drink again! It's the crazy thinking we have. Hopefully the good Lord will keep helping me out and keeping me on the path he wants me to go down.

SoberinSyracuse

And some of us don't. The key to not drinking again...is not drinking again. As long as I never touch it again, it has no power over me. I wish every problem in life were that simple.

BTW, I get a fair amount of negative messaging, prophesying (or maybe hoping?) for my relapse here, but I make my own destiny, and I choose permanent sobriety and freedom. And this I can do, through Christ who strengthens me.

MIRecovery

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

May the Lord make his face to shine upon you,
and be gracious to you.

May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you,
and give you peace.

Happy Easter

Jsbodhi

Lots of roads to recovery.

I do think there is a danger in thinking you've got it mastered though.
It seems like every time I'm confident I have it mastered, I've hit a relapse.
I'm not afraid of alcohol, but I am extremely wary of it and I respect my need to remain cautious.

I'm also careful to remember that life ebbs and flows- it is fluid and yielding- always.
Just because we feel one way today, is no guarantee that we will feel the same way next week, month, year.
So I would warn against being overconfident, you may feel that way now...

It's like smoking, I quit for a few months, felt great, was sure I had conquered the beast; if you asked me then if I would ever smoke again- I would reply NEVER, I was done with it, cured, saved, free.
Do I smoke currently? Yuuuuup.
Got me again a few months later, I was too cocky about it.


Like the OP, I can sit in a bar and be totally fine.
A relapse will hit me on a slow tues when I thought I was done with it.

Many roads to recovery and many thoughts about it, as long as we're sober that's what counts xo

Delfin

I've been on SR for a while, SIS, and I can assure you that nobody here hopes that someone else will relapse. People just share where they went wrong or where they struggled because they don't want others to make the same mistake. Many have been where you are multiple times...I learned from my first failed attempt about 3 years ago that I wanted to seriously consider *everyone's* feedback, even people whose approach and personality is clearly different from my own. I think doing this has made all the difference for me this time around.

Delfin