MissPerfumado

I will never regret making the decision not stop drinking. I still regard it as the best decision I ever made.

I have been sober 16 months now.

The rewards have been many. Better health, a work promotion, a stronger financial position, purchase of a new house, interesting pursuits, the respect of my family. The list is long... I am blessed and very grateful.

But with the great rewards have come challenges. For me the biggest of all is what to do with the underlying issues that tempted me to drink.

As much as I love my job, I cannot help but see the utter futility and inequity of the underlying system. It was one of the reasons I drank so much. I used alcohol to run away from the things I hated about this unfair, mindless way of life so many of us toil at.

I'd love to make a difference. Bring about change from within. All the good people I work with, especially the young ones, deserve a better way.

But some days I wonder if I have the fortitude. There is no alcoholic haze to disappear into to numb myself, nor would I wish to do that anymore. I know alcohol is poison to body, mind and soul.

Is it just the end of the pink cloud?

Good SR folk, can anyone here empathise with what I am feeling...?

Dee74

Hey Miss P

I couldn't live my old life anymore - I had to be drunk to tolerate it...

so I started building a new life and finding a purpose.

For me that meant helping others and getting back into my music.

It all depends on what making a difference means to you I guess.

I didn't really have a job to walk away from, but I don't know that you need to go that far. Having a wage is better than not having one

But you can still make a difference

If service gives you purpose, I've done some volunteering over the years in my spare time, and thats always been rewarding.

finding my purpose and following that has been the best port of my recovery - no pink clouds but a steady appreciation for life and very often some joy to be found

wishing you the best MissP

D

PhoenixJ

Miss P- we are around the same time with sobriety. I had my 'check-in' coffee afternoon with my sponsor today. He is like the school teacher expecting me to give the answer in his head. I am finding it harder now- than 6 months ago. Mind- a LOT more is happening, but grass roots- I spend every waking hour thinking I am not doing enough, that something bad is going to happen and questioning all that I do. So my sleep is about 3 hours a night- depression and anxiety especially thru the roof. I mindfully meditate a dozen times a day, do HALTS, go to lots of meetings. Nothing seems to lift this numb feeling. Therough the obsessive researching I done and what my learned sponsor said- yep, common. Took him years to get even as far as we have in a much shorter time.
So I am just riding out the storm and waiting for this feeling- with lots of very hard work to bugger off. One time I actually have to trust others. My litmus test is to make sure my routine has not faltered. Like washing dishes/clothes/floors. Watering plants, journal etc. If something falls behind- it means I need to up my game.

Soberwolf

Can you elaborate on the second quoted paragraph ?

As for pink clouds can i ask have you been especially happy about anything recently ?

RDBplus3

Hi Miss,
The program of AA is based on the premise that our underlying 'self' issues are what drive us, and that drinking excessively becomes our 'solution' to being 'restless, irritable and discontent'. The Program, when understood as it is intended in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, is a guide for complete renewal of these 'self' issues. The book is best understood as a Repair Manual, or Textbook, not an 'inspirational book'. Many people, including myself, have had our lives completely renewed by Working the Program.

There are as many ways to get Sober, and stay Sober, as there are people that do it, as evidenced by the Sober Recovery website and community. For me, the 12 Steps and the Working Program of AA walked me thru a process of unraveling, and rebuilding, the deep and often hidden, drivers of my thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and behaviors.

If you are interested, I can send you some info on working the 12 Steps, sent thru this website. You can also go to AA meetings, but I highly suggest you specifically ask for, and find, the people there that have Worked the 12 Steps, and are 'living in the solution'.

RDBplus3 ... Happy, Joyous and FREE ... after 40 years drinking and drugging, and a l-o-n-g time struggling.

August252015

Thanks for sharing.

At almost 14 mo, a few of my own observations and experience -

I feel more confident in my sobriety and I keep working the basics of my plan. Some times I have to remind myself that staying sober isn't about "not jinxing myself" by doing or not doing a meeting, a reading, whatever - it is always about choice.

I still need a good drug regimen and probably always will. I am realizing that anxiety has problem been a life long problem and it is definitely a bigger one than I gave credit to and I am dealing with it now; I guess it was time for that to shift to the forefront.

I am so grateful- I live in the pink most days, most of the time - and am better at stopping myself and "flipping things" that seem like big problems.

I feel I have SO much to offer- not entirely sure what that means yet but I believe it. Working in the restaurant industry might sound odd on the surface, for an alcoholic, but it was one of the best decisions I made during my first year and now it being a conduit to a huge service opportunity (a new rehab chapter of a group originated in Charleston SC, for food & bev industry folks with substance abuse issues).

I am better able to trust in my relationship. And it is like none I have had before.

I could go on- mostly, I am excited about the future, aware of my struggles and weak points (and I keep learning) and still know that drinking again, ever, would be the death of me.

Doug39

I worked the same unchallenging job for over 8 years. It paid well, but the employees were all miserable people with no ambition just going though the motions of life. Working this job increased my depression and caused me to drink more to forget about my dead end job. Sure, I should of looked for a new job but I was so depressed and catch up in alcoholism that I barely had the energy to get out of bed let alone the self esteem to go job hunting.

My last drink was 10/24/2016 - my last day at that dead end job was 10/26/2016. I collected disability while I recovered and went back to that job on 2/6/2017 but I only last 5 hours. Being at that depressing job and being with those miserable people put me back to square one. I know today if I stayed at that job I never would have survived and stayed sober.

I am now going to school, bettering myself and I have ambition and I look forward to life. I had to completely change my life and way of thinking to live a sober productive life.

Mattq2

Hey miss,
I've never really thought about liking my job. It was always something I had to do to support my family. It's just always been that way.

Like you , if I'm reading your post correctly, I have been fighting this sense of something missing in my life as I got sober. I really had to spend some time thinking about me and what I wanted from this life.

I was always the one, even as an alcoholic , that took care of everyone around me. Always the responsible one, the one people called when there was trouble. Juggling that with alcoholism was exhausting. It was one of the main motivations to quit drinking.

The past few months I have been really searching for what makes " me" happy. Trying to do some of those bucket list things that may seem insignificant to others but are important to me.

I think you should try that. Take care of "you" and seek out what "you" find rewarding and satisfying in life. Your sobriety accomplishment is fantastic and you deserve to reward yourself for it. I don't know that's just my two cents.

Fitcher

Congrats on 16 months, and thanks for the insightful, thought provoking post.

I can completely empathize with your feelings, as I am also currently struggling to find "deeper meaning" in this crazy world.

My cynical side believes that nobody truly knows the real meaning and purpose for several billion souls floating on a rock in space, so we make either enlightened or not-so-enlightened stabs at discerning some sort of purpose and meaning in order to make it appear more logical.

Like others in this thread, I find the whole exercise of earning a living to be more than a little maddening, particularly the notion of staying in a boring, unfulfilling career simply because it provides financial security.

I drank to make these circumstances more palatable, which obviously only made the underlying issues worse. Like you, I needed to pull out of that downward spiral and take time to heal, physically, emotionally and spiritually. The physical part came first, and the emotional part is making progress as well. (Lows aren't so low anymore, and escaping them takes me just hours, not weeks or months).

And like you, I'm now finding myself on the precipice of the great, "What now?" dilemma.

thomas11

Hi MP, I can emphasize with you. If I understand you correctly, you sometimes were simply frustrated or depressed with the "world order" or life in general. I too see so much injustice in the world that it weighed on me heavily and I drank to alleviate it. Probably simply feeling sorry for myself more than anything. But I am right with you, I'll never go back to drinking. It was pure hell.

SnazzyDresser

I'm not really sure what you mean by " the utter futility and inequity of the underlying system" or "this unfair mindless way of life." I suspect I'm on a different side.

NYCDoglvr

Once I got sober I saw that I had to change myself. It's the "ism" of the disease we must address and I did that through the 12 Steps and therapy. A big hug!

MissPerfumado

Thanks everyone for responding.

Dee, thank you for your wise words. You and August have pointed to something vital, which is the value of giving back. In the past, I have limited my volunteering efforts to mentoring within my professional community and I just don't think it gives me the same satisfaction as helping people who are truly needy.

RDBplus3, I don't think AA or the 12 steps is the path I am seeking, although I thank you for the offer to help. My feeling is that this is a deep-seated reaction to a structural problem, to do with the things that are expected of us in this society: to be educated in a mandated way, to "earn" a living (the message being that we don't deserve to live otherwise), to accept dictates, rules and mores ... to what end?

I have a job that pays well and is interesting and self-directed. There is a fair bit of autonomy. But I know that, even so, I am just a cog in a very big wheel.

Whilst I work within the machine, I am not truly free. The underlying story of what drives our modern capitalist society is a story of greed, manipulation, mendacity and callous disregard for fellow human beings. People are merely "resources".

I am not from the tinfoil-hat wearing crowd carping on about conspiracy theories; I work within the system and I see it every day.

I thought at first that, like Mattq suggested, taking care of myself would help. It has in fact helped. I have hobbies, I keep fit, I take time out and go on holidays, within reason I buy myself nice things, and I look after my parents and spend time with my sisters. I am happiest when I do these things.

But the gnawing sense of pointlessness remains. Until we become a fairer, less wasteful, more cooperative society, the hamster wheels we are on will not bring us true happiness.

Maybe I just want to stop being a hypocrite about it.

Ahhh, I'll muddle through, I guess.

In the meanwhile, thank you all very much for your insights, help and support.

MissPerfumado

Hi SW, I hope my post immediately above makes clearer what I meant.

I was very happy for the first 12 months of my sobriety. I felt like I was contented being a "useful" member of society again.

More recently, I have felt happiest when being with my family and when spending time doing things I love (like running and taking flying lessons). I was reasonably happy when I bought my new place, asI felt that was a sign of the kind of maturity that eluded me when I was drinking.

gaffo

I can't believe it but I'm going to be six years sober next Halloween! Doing napkin math, I figure that I've reversed a trend so that I have now spent more of my life sober than drunk--the type of achievement that only Sober Recovery folks can understand. I remember losing the pink cloud (episodes) after a year in. At first I missed it but now I feel like it was really just another fake carrot to be chasing, not totally unlike the high that I was always chasing as a user. Maybe it was my higher power's way of getting me through that first year.

I've had to figure out how to be me in this new sober adult world. I wish I had some fantastic insight but all I can offer is that the little things, the one step at a time of life is it's own reward if you let it. It's not always easy. I still give thanks for not being hungover. I like to take a deep breath of clean air. I try and be helpful when I can. Even though I don't always love my work I try and be thankful for having it. I enjoy eating a good meal. I like that I remember all kinds of things now. I can drive anyone anywhere any time. I feel basically comfortable in my own skin. It's all due to my ongoing commitment to sobriety!