Windancer

So I drank this past weekend. I avoided SR because I was ashamed and only barely checked in on my last thread.

I was (and am) so very dedicated to getting and staying sober. I have been attending AA, have come up with a pretty good Recovery Plan (still in the works) and I still drank. I thank my lucky stars that I didn't get ridiculously wasted at all. But I still picked up. So I need to tweak my plan. I even reached out for support on here and with some AA friends.

I get these moments where I seem to impulsively decide I'm going to drink, and hide it. I think they happen most when I am alone and isolated (which I am for much of the time... I live in the country with no license). I want to be 110% honest with myself and tweak my plan for success. But my biggest worry is one of my AA friends. He said that if I drink again he is giving up on me. So I haven't told him (or anyone else in AA).

So I patted myself on the back for trying to reach out here, and with AA members. That is new and hard for me. But obviously it wasn't quite enough. I think I need to take that a few steps farther and say, "Ok, I'm really struggling and seriously thinking about buying booze". My AA friend would tell me that I am not "serious enough", or "ready", to quit drinking. Well, what's it going to take then? Ending up in jail? I suffer from PTSD, BPD, GAD and major depression, and my #1 priority lately is staying sober. I guess looking back I did lose momentum with that a few days ago. But also, I am only on Step One. I'm confused because Step One is the problem... getting to Step Two is the solution. So I can sort of see that I know what the problem is but don't have the solution yet. So I guess I'm white-knuckling it.

And yes, I do have moments where my AV (I call her Dralca) tries to convince me I can still drink. I don't think that means I am not serious though. I am not every single thought that comes into my head. And I have only been going back to AA for about a week ... it is early days. I'm looking for a sponsor who would be a good fit as well.

I do know one thing. I am not going to give up. I AM on the road to Recovery, and I am going to stay on that road no matter if I have had my last day 1 now or if I have a million false starts.

Thanks for reading.
Any suggestions are quite welcome.

Mountainmanbob

When I found a good moral sponsor it helped me a lot.
Don't be afraid to ask someone to be your temporary sponsor
so as to hold you over for now.

You state that you are not giving up -- good decision made on your part.

Good luck,
M-Bob

FBL

As long as you keep on trying, there's always a chance for recovery.

Bottom line is you've got to want to stay sober more than you want to drink. The more you ignore that AV, the weaker it'll get.

Windancer

Great quote. I wrote it down. Thank you. Most of the time I want to stay sober. I've got to gain an awareness and get tougher with myself in the moments where I feel otherwise.

Dee74

Hi windancer

a good recovery plan is all about not drinking...so maybe your plans not as good as it could be?

The other thing I think is crucial is reaching out - if you don;t reach out you won't get any help...and help & support is what most of us desperately need in those early days.

I had to take a hard line - I was prepared to do whatever it took not to drink again.

I think that was the difference between my last attempt at being sober and all the other ones before that.

D

Bird615

My relapse lasted 4 and a half years, where I would either be trying to control my drinking or stopping for periods of time. When I was attempting to stop, I kept thinking what's it going to take? It was real despair every time I went back out after I thought I was finally finished--so bad, I wished I would just die.

Then I woke up one more awful remorse-filled hangover morning and something inside me clicked. I knew I was done. The pain of staying sober finally looked a lot less painful than the pain of continuing to keep on drinking. I was finally, finally willing to suffer through those early cravings and discomfort. What helped me a lot was to always play the tape forward and never forget how horrible it was.

But until that happened, I never gave up trying.

Windancer

I think you are right. I've been so good at coming up with ideas and plans for my Recovery Plan that I haven't implemented many of the things in it yet. I should have listened to your advice in the first place, which was to keep my plan simple.

Windancer

I have felt "click" lately too. I do feel like I'm taking my Recovery more seriously than I used to.

And playing the tape all the way through helps me a lot too when I'm having thoughts or a craving.

doggonecarl

Our addiction can be sneaky and it makes us sneaky. When I last gave in to my addiction, it was like I was that 12-year-old troublemaker who was always getting into mischief, except this mischief was using drugs. I used. I hide it. I didn't come to SR to intervene. With that relapse, I had lost sight of the integrity it takes to recover. To recover, one can't sneak and lie and cheat on our commitment to sobriety. I'm not 12 and I'm not going to let my addiction make me act like a sneaky little boy.

If you are committed to recovery, you'll stand up to your sneaky addiction.

Gottalife

Hi Windancer,

Just want you to know that your friend who says he will give up on you if you drink does not have a very good understanding of the real alcoholic. It is not AA to give up on you. The program says we ought to keeping working with you to see where you might be going wrong.
Keeping it to yourself would be understandable, but remember it is a program that requires rigorous honesty.

Your original plan of working the steps is a good one, it is well proven. It is just about time to get connected with a sponsor or a recovered alky to help you make a start on step four. Once you get into the meat of the program with honesty and willingness, great things are apt to happen.

Windancer

Thank you very much for your response. I didn't think it that my friend's response was the, ah, most appropriate. At any rate, I'm not going to give up on myself. I hope and am working toward no slips or relapses. But no matter what, I am not going to give up. I'll learn from my mistakes (and successes) and keep going.

August252015

^ This. Full stop.

As Yoda says, there is no try, only do.

Try cannot be in your vocabulary. Those of us in recovery simple do not drink.

Good luck. You don't have to have a million day ones. Really. You don't.

gaffo

By all means use every trick and resource available to you, especially early on. However, the most important thing for me to get five years of sobriety has been to make myself responsible for me. I can't sneak off and hide my drinking from myself! In the beginning this is easier said than done and it made me feel like I was cracking up at times but it gets easier, have faith, especially as your life gets better as a verifiable consequence of not drinking one drop ever.

soberclover

Don't ever give up Winddancer; I'm glad you are here

JeffreyAK

There's a start, you know what happens when you've chosen to relapse! Can you minimize those situations? You say you live alone, but when you get an urge to relapse, can you leave the house and do something else? Stay plugged in to this site whenever you're home? Sometimes it's not the alone part, it's being alone in the same old environment where we used to drink, so can you change that environment? Just re-arranging the furniture can help break the pattern. Distractions are huge too - if you get a craving and start fixating on it, you're done, so what can you do to immediately (right now) re-direct your thinking?

It comes down to having and following a plan, really, so if your plan hasn't worked, might be time to change it around and make it more effective.

Darwinia

I have been white-knuckling it for 99 days now. It is tough, but sometimes we just have to do tough. No matter how difficult, I absolutely refuse to drink. My plan is simple. Do not drink no matter what. So far it is working. Good luck to you, I hope you find the plan that sticks, I really do.

August252015

This is the essence of getting well. When we drink, we ultimately hide from ourselves and hurt ourselves first and utmost. Hide from the world, other people, bosses, whatever, but the crux of the matter is hiding from ourselves- we must stop doing that and indeed, rigorous honesty to examine ALL ways we hide (not just drinking) has to happen to stay sober.

Today, my devotional ended with the "action for the day" to ask three people to tell me my blind spots. I will be interested to see where I am perhaps hiding.

Che

It's all habit. No need to be ashamed. Just keep trying. Right now it's so automatic to drink, you can tell yourself no and then ten minutes later be asking yourself if you'd like a drink again, maybe even already looking for a bottle.

Habits take time to decay. Do your best.

Windancer

Thanks everyone.
I got some great suggestions on how to tweak my Recovery Plan for the better.
And yes indeed, I do need to minimize the time I am alone and do something there to minimize the alcohol cravings.

So, do you all think I should tell my fellow friends at AA about this?

nonblonde

It's been over a year since I've wanted to be sober. I know that desire is key and I also know that sometimes I am a slave to my incredibly poor impulse control. I'm no stranger to "sneaky decisions" either....
I gave up smoking a few months back and I honestly don't know how I've managed not to start smoking in the rather frequent drunken stupor I've been living in but not so long ago whilst fighting a craving I thought to myself "sometimes you just have to say no to yourself". I chuckled at the simplicity. So simple...yet so hard hey? I know Nancy Reagan got a lot of flack for the oversimplification of the "Just Say No" campaign...but truly, it's given me a bit of inspiration lately..

I'm going to want to do things that are bad for me..it's my penchant actually...but I really do have to learn to just say no. I'm not a two year old. I can't have everything I want just because I want it. It's kind of how I've been living my life though.