Groucho

Dawn. Dusk. Midday. Various points in between.

Events of particular joys or sadness. Boredom. Excessive business. The list goes on.

Mags1

Hi zjw, interesting post, thanks.

When I first came on this site about 4 years ago, there was a post saying that someone who had been a member and I believe ill had died. They had stayed sober through all the treatment but unfortunately, it was terminal. And still stayed sober.

My first thoughts were if I found out I had a terminal illness I would drink! Why not, I rationalised , I would be dying anyway.

I have more sober time under my belt now and have a lot more education on alcohol and more tools in my toolbox which I would hope they would stand me in good stead for any obstacles we meet in our life. And lastly, I have my friends here who I can share any thoughts and worries.

tomsteve

its not,nor was it ever,life events that made,or make me scared i might drink.
its not knowing how to deal with them .
however, since i decided i wanted to be sober and was willing to go to any lengths for victory over alcohol, alcohol as a solution was off the table. that doesnt mean that the thought of drinking came up early on when something came up-it did.
but i said NO and found solutions.
diagnosed stage 3 metastatic melanoma 13 months into recovery, drinking as a solution never crossed my mind. theres been quite a bit happened in my life in tbe 12 years ive been sober- nothing any person who never had a problem with alcohol might face. and i dont recall ever thinking about drinking.
i still dont understand why people who have been sober a while would run to a bottle with news of something hard or some rough patches along the journey.
other than self pity.
or maybe havent fully committed to recovery?

Dee74

I can say with certainty there are none.

I love who I am and I love the life I've built.
I don't want to run away anymore.

I can take whatever is thrown at me.

However bad life gets (and its been quite bad at points since I quit) I know drinking will only make things worse, not better.

D

leanabeana

I wouldn't call it self-pity. I would say it's the inability to cope based most likely rooted in a trauma history. It's what many of us need to learn and there are many possible roads to that destination.

AAPJ

Same!

When I got sober in late 2015 there was a guy in my home group we called mailman John because he was a retired postal worker. He had cancer and I always admired him for not drinking despite his condition. He did lose the battle recently and passed away. Sober.

I miss him. But cancer or no cancer death is guaranteed for all of us and for the survivors it's the ultimate test of accepting the things we cannot change.

Grungehead

If I'm maintaining my program of recovery (the 12 steps for me) I don't think there is anything that could make me drink. If I were to become complacent with my recovery I believe just about anything could make me drink.

I have 4 years of empirical evidence from maintaining my recovery on a daily basis that I haven't thought about a drink, even though I lost my father in December and my mother went on hospice last week, not to mention several health problems and financial concerns that have cropped up for myself in the last year.

I also have empirical evidence from my past where I drank after multiple years of sobriety over what seem like trivial matters in hindsight. My pattern was that I would go to AA for a couple of years, never actually work the program (steps), eventually quit going to meetings altogether, and end up drinking over some perceived "crisis". Even more painful is that I have made this mistake more than once. The difference then was that I was not maintaining any active program of recovery.

Alcoholism is a chronic and progressive disease, but there are some simple daily measures I can take that will keep me immune from that fatal first drink. Those simple daily measures for me are to trust my HP, clean house and help others to the best of my ability.

JimiC

I used to have many triggers including Sunday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday. Drinking was just part of the routine. Work stress and being home alone were big reasons to drink. Also, fighting with my wife which is the only one that still gives me urges. Drinking is never the right response so I've learned to ride it out and stay sober.

Gottalife

I found it easy to stay sober in the nut farm, but when they released me and I was faced with the pressures of life, I drank almost immediately. That is how it goes with untreated alcoholism. Everything is cool until something goes wrong, and then it is automatically back to the old solution. No choice in it by this time.

Later I treated my alcoholism with the AA program. Since then I have lost a job, lost people important to me, faced business problems, pretty much had all of life's ups and downs and not once has it occurred to me to drink. It never came to mind as an option. I have never sat there, strongly saying NO! To a drink. Instead my mind has been focused on dealing with whatever the problem is in a sane and normal way. This is what is meant when we say the problem has been removed, it does not exist for us. That is the power of the God of my understanding.

If there were certain events that compelled me to drink, I could never be sober because I could never permanently avoid all such events. How do you avoid getting fired, losing a loved one, getting ill, having a relationship problem. These things are all part of life. They can't be avoided. What has to change is my reaction to them. It was my internal condition that caused me to drink, not my external world.

BullDog777

I don't know.....I do know what I'm capable of when I'm drunk and on drugs though.

I honestly don't think i can answer it...not because I don't want to...i just don't think i can . Maybe it's the therapy or God or whatever. Those "what ifs" always caused relapse after relapse and I refuse to think of something so awful that's not directly in front of me.

FoleyUK

That's very interesting. I've been spending a lot of time focusing on my inner dialogue, giving myself back some self worth and belief that I am worth something. I'm going to start thinking about that river method. It makes a lot of sense. I was drowning for years, lol.

NYCDoglvr

The problem with that is alcohol takes me down, down, down. Once it lifted me up but when drunk I become suicidal. My perspective is that alcohol will only make me feel much worse.

DarklingSong

Really helpful thread. Thank you.
This has been a a real preoccupation for me.....what if?
I still don't know if I can face really difficult experiences without alcohol as I am just 3 months sober. But, I do know that before quitting I couldn't handle breaking a nail without needing some wine. Now regular stress is absolutely fine. I hope that time will give me strength. I suppose I will need to get through some crises sober to truly believe I can do it.

leanabeana

So true. I can also gain strength knowing I am handling the small stressors without drinking. It is practice for the big stressors.

paulokes

Two games that my head would play at one stage:
How could I cope with [insert problem] without drinking?
Would I drink in exchange for a million pounds /a night with [insert woman here] etc etc

With time I stopped playing with ideas like that and they seemed less interesting. I agree....I think it's a function of 'alcoholism'...life got a little easier as I got comfortable with the idea drinking is not an option...and as I grew confident that I can deal with anything sober.

P

treeguy24

I've had thoughts like that basically if such and such happened my first instinct would be I need to drink.

But ultimately, regardless of how alcohol makes you feel when you're drinking, it will eventually make you feel much worse. You can't run away from pain or things you don't want to deal with forever. Numbing whatever it is you don't want to face will make it that much worse when you do face it, because not only do you have that to deal with but you have all the negative effects of alcohol abuse to now sort through.

tomsteve

pretty much what i said- early on we have to learn solutions.

if i would have drank after being diagnosed it would have been self pity.
if i drank after a good friend comitted suicide it would have been self pity
if i drank after another good friend died from cancer it would have been self pity
if i drank when my mom died it would have been self pity.

leanabeana

I guess I have a hard time believing that triggers are all due to a defect of character like self-pity. It's contrary to what I've learned in therapy. Is it helpful for you to believe that the desire to drink is a moral failing? Maybe I'm not approaching it the right way, but it doesn't sit right with me.

paulokes

It's an interesting thing. I suppose the trick is learning to take responsibility for our lives, for our emotional reactions and for our responsibility to reach out for help when we need it.

The concept of (excessive) self pity isn't necessarily a 'moral' thing. Let's say I have a partner and children. The partner dies. The children need me more than ever to support them...I drink harder than ever, neglect their emotional needs and withdraw from my responsibilities. I say I'm drinking to cope with the grief of this bereavement. I carry on for years and leave my kids to deal with their own grief and the lack of a supportive father as well as a mother.

Anyone would understand that I have had difficult circumstances to deal with. That the death of my partner affected me.

But the 'ilness' of alcoholism tells me that's an excuse to drink more...because this has all been so difficult for ME to deal with. It prevents me from seeing that the needs and the grief of my children are pretty damn important too...and maybe I need to pull myself together and seek more appropriate help and more useful ways of coping.

That's just an illustration...the kind of thing people mean when they talk about self pity, selfishness or self centeredNess in the context of alcoholism.

Looking back "I" think that I was frequently selfish and self pitying in my drinking days. Sure I had lots of difficult circumstances in my life but I kind of wallowed in them...and I'm ashamed to say I sometimes knowingly used them as an excuse to continue drinking and not dealing with the problems in my life. That's not a judgement on anyone else...just a concept I have found useful in recovery.

P

Fusion

So does it follow, that when you first began dranking alcohol and early in the drinking curve, the desire to drink was fueled by self-pity; or was the desire to drink fueled by something else?

Very occasionally my AV projects future drinking scenarios, but I don't listen.