WeekendShadow

Drank from Saturday afternoon straight through to early this morning.



I'm determined to stop completely... but I've been determined before.

I haven't been anything approaching vigilant. I'm going to change that, and make coming here a daily habit.

Anyway. Thank you so much for this site, for all of you, and for listening to my warbling.

Vivien

Been there. Done that. It feels bad, huh? Feels like failure?

I don't have any words of wisdom, I'm struggling too. I just know what you're going through. I feel guilty as hell.

WeekendShadow

Yup. Pretty much. Sucks. I let my guard down, and recent events knocked me down far enough that I said "eff it." I try to remind myself to stay strong, and realize that there will always be an excuse to drink if I want one. I need to get out of my own darn way.

I know we can both do it. This is doable.

biminiblue

Yep. You absolutely can do it.

Go to bed sober tonight. I put a little notepad by my bed and before I go to bed, write down three things I'm grateful for.

Keep talking to us.

Why do you think you are having trouble? Or I guess I should ask, why do you feel your trouble is worse than every other sober alcoholic?

I know there is no life event that alcohol can't make 10,000% worse. That is my truth. The alcohol magnifies all the bad feelings once that first couple euphoric hours are over. It shuts up my brain for a little while, but in the long run it created a vicious loop I couldn't escape and a feeling of doom whenever I wasn't drinking. I'm happy to have left that behind. It does get better with continuous sober time, but you have to get it continuously, not now and then.

ScottFromWI

Welcome back WeekendShadow. I think you may be on to something here. Although I think what you need to focus on more is getting out of your addiction's way. You have what it takes to be sober inside you already, we all do. Sometimes we do need to bring in help from the outside though - whether that's through posting here more often, going to meetings, seeing a counselor, reading, etc. It has to be a proactive process where you commit time each and every day to work on being sober, not just waiting until an excuse or a craving pops up...it's usually too late when that happens.

WeekendShadow

Agreed, biminiblue and ScottFromWI.

I don't think I have it worse than anyone. I think I'm having trouble for a number of reasons. I haven't been dealing with aging very well, and feel awfully alone and alien. I want to escape.

I know I feel better when I don't drink. And yet I know the weekend will come again, and I'll think "to heck with it." I need to short circuit that nonsense.

Leaving myself a video message reminder, among other things. I can't keep going like this.

ScottFromWI

Make a concrete plan then. You know exactly when the weekend is going to arrive, right? So write it down or put it in your phone or tape it on the fridge. Write: "On friday at X time I will do X to further my recovery" And then do the same for Saturday, and Sunday. I am a very calculated person in my work and have a very defined workday schedule, I applied that to my off-work time as well in early sobriety. Write down exactly what you plan to do and then you have no doubt as to what will happen. It's an easy concept but a hard thing to do...but it can be done!

Upstairs

Good luck! Try talking in SR or go to meetings to get some company. It is much easier staying sober if you have people to share it all with

FreedomCA

Reading books on recovery and/or spirituality took me out of my hole.

Dee74

Making a plan is pretty much a pre-requisite for me:
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ery-plans.html

D

biminiblue

I had a couple of years of serious self-pity in my mid-fifties. Loss of youth, fear of death, a serious debilitating and expensive illness, loss of job and all my older family members and my best friend of 20 years - a combo of all that plus drinking a poison that made my life seem gray and pointless. I well and truly wished for death many times when I was still drinking.

Now that I've been sober for a while, I'm just grateful to still be on this side of the grass. So many people don't get the privilege of living as long as I have.

I would have felt pretty stupid on my deathbed if I died of alcoholism. Not to mention it's a horrible way to die.

Hevyn

Hi WS. I'm glad you are determined to get free of it. Every time it was in my system I became reckless & could not stop. The only safe thing was to kick it out of my life and never look back. You can do it.

EndGameNYC

I know you're struggling, but even you admit that you're submarining your own progress. You're in the same spot as were a lot of people who achieved long-term sobriety. But don't confuse thinking with doing, or activity with progress.

Determination is not an action. Neither is reminding yourself to "stay strong." They fall in the same category as words like 'resolve' and 'willpower'. Though these words may carry some inherent appeal, they have little to do with getting sober, and each is nothing more than a conclusion of the mind. Figments of our imagination unless and until we do what we need to do. Even then, those words carry little meaning of any value. I'm more interested that a person is staying sober than that they "have the resolve" to do it. I don't even know what that means.

Never let your thinking or your beliefs stand in the way when action is needed. As long as staying sober remains "doable" and not something that you're doing, it will never get done.

What are you doing to get sober?

OddOneIn

I hear ya Weekend. Last week was a tough one for me too.

I have said this before but imagine waking up one day after 30 years of drinking and finding myself to be an old person.

I also have to find a job. You can't imagine the looks I get from HR people.

I was sort of in my mind putting off some things until after the election thinking things would calm down after that. Instead it looks like it's never going to end.

If ever there was a time for burying one's head in the sand this is it. And on top of everything I am having trouble sleeping. Sadly I have used up all my head burying days.

Don't stop quitting. I will soon have 500 days. It would have been 3 years had I not given in and relapsed a couple of times.

doggonecarl

^ This. It bears repeating.

WeekendShadow

This. Every time I start out thinking "normal people can have just a few, surely I can too." Sometimes I manage it; usually I go off to the races with it.

WeekendShadow

So far, making social plans so that I don't spend so much time home alone, which is when I run into the most trouble. This is especially important for me with the holiday season stuff coming up, which doesn't do wonders for me.

I know I have more to do, of course. But I've been sober for at least 24 hours now, and will be sober through tomorrow at the very least. (Work commitments, etc.)

WeekendShadow

Yeah, that sent me spinning pretty hard, too. I'm not a great big fan of the human world at the moment.

thomas11

Many of us clung to this site quite closely when we first started our journey. In the end its all about our actions.

waynetheking

Just don't drink. It's that simple. In all reality, that's what it boils down to. How bad do you want sobriety? I can absolutely assure you sobriety is far greater than the misery of being drunk. None of us here can stop drinking for you. And the only way your going to find out if sobriety is what you want, then you have to stop drinking. This is simple. Keep it simple. Take it one day at a time.