Forwards

Hello SR friends,

Things haven't been going well for me but I have a few questions that may help please.

I was drinking 30 units a day up until the start of last October. My schizophrenia and severe paranoia was getting worryingly worse and I decided to self detox. Big mistake... I lost the plot completely and begged my psychiatrist to admit me as an inpatient to the local unit. It was a rough detox and I suffered several major setbacks as my mental health got worse. Long story short I was discharged after 10 weeks. The unit I was in didn't offer any alcohol counselling or treatment (they specifically don't do it) and I became increasingly obsessed with the idea of another drink. When I was finally discharged I thought I could get away with one or two and you can predict the rest of the story. I'm back where I started.

So questions please :

- I can get through the physical detox over a couple of weeks but the mental obsession just grows and grows over time. What do I do about this completely overriding fixation with alcohol that hit me even after 10 weeks?

- Part of the reason for my drinking is the severe anxiety I suffer as a result of my mental illness. I daily feel that I am under severe threat. Any suggestions on what I can do about this?

- I'm now working with the local alcohol treatment charity that uses SMART-like principles of recovery. I think the idea is that I make a recovery plan and refine it over time. I'm worried however that this will allow intermittent drinking and I will be unable to control it. Any thoughts?

- My family have threatened to withdraw their support if I drink. How much should I involve them in the recovery process? They need a break from me...

Thanks in advance for all advice. Forwards.

zjw

i dunno how much if at all that i'd involve my family. i mean i'd home they'd smile and nod but my recovery is my problem. But I suppose i'd want someone to hug me and all but if i need a shoulder to lean on for recovery reasons I"m not sure it would be my fmailies.

as far as anxiety goes obviously doctor might help best. But in my case it was off the charts bad. I told myself if this odesnt ease i'm just going to kill myself i could not fathom living the rest of my life like that. Luckily for me in time it did actually ease but it took a REALLY long time. 8-12 months and now at 5 years i still have issues just not as bad and i Have a lot of things i do or dont do to try and keep it manageable.

sg1970

It took me a few months to lose the obsession. I use AA and worked the steps starting at around 3 months. It was gone somewhere around month 4 or 5. Was it the steps or just time that caused it to go away? I can't answer that but I would do it over again in a heartbeat. Best wishes.

Forwards

Thanks zjw. I guess it's just back to basics for me now. I have only been drinking heavily for a week so I shouldn't be physically dependent this time around. Time to just stop and do everything I can to avoid alcohol while the recovery work gets done.

As mentioned, my family are pretty fed up with me. When I came out of the unit their expressed wish was that I would never drink again. I can't really lean on them through what may still be a case of trial and error but that's no excuse for drinking...

Dee74

Bottom line was I had to take drinking off the table as a viable option.

That wasn't easy to do - it was at times very painful mentally and physically - but I really wanted change.

There was a lot of support here and I used it.

After a month or two things got lot easier...then I had to turn to my life and how to rebuild it as a sober person...

Doesn't sound like you're drinking for pleasure - what are you self medicating for?

Are there other ways to deal with whatever it is?

D

Algorithm

I don't know about "completely overriding fixation" -- that sounds like premeditated surrender to the bottle to me. You are essentially asking how to remove desire, which is difficult, and I don't know how to advise on that. I do know that we don't obsess over that which we know we won't, have, however.

Ever wonder how smokers don't go insane on a 10 hour plane flight, how expectant mothers don't drink for months without going insane, and how people in the navy don't go insane abstaining on a ship deployment? It's because they know they won't be indulging, hence no 'overriding fixation'.

You can remove the option of indulging entirely, as Dee suggested, and obtain the same effect, more or less.

Abstain from alcohol and other hedonic drugs, and ask your psychiatrist for proper medication. Note that no psychiatric medication will not work if you drink alcohol while taking them.

You mentioned schizophrenia, which can be tricky, from what I understand, but it's beyond my purview and training. I'm sure you know that drinking will make any symptoms much worse, however.

If you would prefer something a little more absolute with regards to abstinence than the RET/REBT of SMART, there is always AVRT from Rational Recovery. You can find more information in the secular connections forum. There is also a very inexpensive book on the technique.

fini

my own experience when not drinking while pregnant and not smoking for several hours in certain situations tells me that i didn't go insane then exactly because i knew i would indulge, albeit later.
just a temporary suspension, which made it easy.

Forwards

Thanks guys, some very useful advise there. As you say, I just have to remove the option of alcohol entirely from the equation. So here's to Day 1...

Berrybean

Why not go back to AA, get a new sponsor who has what you want, and do the step work thoroughly and with complete self-honesty? (Three legs of the stool firmly in place so you give it a real chance).

I kept scraping around for a solution that I was completely comfortable with. I went to meetings so said I was 'doing AA', but I wasn't prepared to do service, let people in past my ourside shell (lots of "I'm fine!"-ing going on), and I certainly had NO intention of doing the steps like those other people seemed to need to do. Asking someone to be my sponsor , and in particular those steps 4, 5 and 9 set off warning bells in me that could deafen a small city. But the thing is, meetings aren't The AA Program of recovery. They're just the top of the iceberg. The visible bit. The substantial part of it all is far less visible. It happens when we take the principles of the program into our lives, and we can't do that until we've done that 12-step work. Not really. But, I resisted the work, and then complained when it didn't work for me.

Unfortunately for me, the thing I needed most was in the cave where I most feared to tread, and until I was able to lean into those fears I just couldn't break free from them. It wasn't a case of learning to not be afraid. That's not the point. The point was to reach a stage of willingness where I would feel afraid and do it anyway. Someone told me once, "there are no problems, just solutions we don't like." That really peed me off. But when I finally did get desperate enough to find the willingness to do it anyway, despite my fear and discomfort, that's when I started to get better and adress my alcoholic thinking.

Wishing you all the best for your recovery. BB