readytobehappy

Hello everyone. I have been following this forum for a few years now but I finally feel comfortable posting. I absolutely have a problem with alcohol, there is no doubt about it. I have been to the hospital 4 times for severe withdrawal and I finally had to come clean to everyone in my life. I accept the fact that I can never drink again. I have been going to AA and SmartRecovery. I have quit hanging out with friends I have known for decades to be sober. However, I still struggle SO hard with my inner thoughts and cravings. I started drinking to self medicate my severe social anxiety. Now that I have to go to AA everyday I want to drink every time I leave there. I've been seeing a therapist and a psychologist plus taking countless meds. I feel like I'm doing everything I need to be doing to get better. However, I still can't stop thinking about drinking every hour of every day. Sometimes I even wake up and go back to bed because sleeping is my only safe space. Please help! I want so badly to be better and live a normal life.

Dee74

Welcome to SR readytobehappy

A lot of us started drinking to try and deal with social anxiety - unfortunately drinking just made my anxiety worse over time.

It took a while for me to start to see some improvement in my anxiety, cos it was a lifelong problem, as I've said.

I'm not cured but I can honestly say I feel the least anxious ever these days.
Improvement does come

How long have you been sober now?

D

August252015

Glad you decided to post! And like dee asked, how long have you been sober? I'd also ask, are you working the program with a sponsor? I completely related to how you titled the thread- it is definitely a me v my mind thing, and it took awhile to 'clear up' and more importantly, learn how to deal with it. I have found the way to do that is what I have learned in AA - and I still need guidance and a sponsor and my regular program (not just meeting attendance) as I go on thru my 4th year sober.

Actively engaging has been key for me and I'd definitely suggest it to others. It can start as simple as nodding and saying hello to folks at meetings, def includes distractions when I'm 'all up in my head' and can help to do anything that takes my focus off myself. That service to others part of the program (step 12 and beyond) is meaningful in big and small ways, in all of life.

Glad you are here!

tomsteve

how long have you been sober?
the first full day without even thinking about a drink didnt come to me until i was sober about 6 months. in that 6 months i was working the steps pretty hard.
are you doing more than attending meetings? reading the BB? working the steps with a sponsor?

NYCDoglvr

So glad you posted, we've all been there. What helped me the most was sharing in AA meetings and private conversations with other alcoholics. Somehow getting it off my chest led to "the voices" subsiding. It helps to read recovery literature, keeps my mind off myself. A big hug!

ImNotThatGuy

I can relate. That's the effect AA has on me too. Check out AVRT. I just found it, and I think it will work if I stick to it.

Your mind can be changed. Affirmations work. When you get right down to it, it's pretty simple: if you don't pick up a drink, you can't get drunk. People who say, "Oh, you're just a 'dry drunk'" are just parroting what they have been told, not really thinking. Is it better to be a "dry drunk" with many years of sobriety or someone who drifts in and out of AA? If AA doesn't help you to not drink (or makes you want to drink), look for another way.

That said, AA does work for an awful lot of people so I'm not going to trash it in a general sense. It doesn't matter whether it's AA, channeling aliens from the dog star, or just telling yourself over and over again that you don't drink -- if it keeps you off the booze, it's good.

Good luck.

Stayingsassy

I won’t speak to AA because I don’t have the experience, but I can touch on AVRT.

The cravings and inner thoughts about alcohol are NOT YOU. They are abnormal thoughts, they are the addiction speaking for you.

It’s not you vs your mind. There is nothing wrong with you, or your mind. It is you vs the addiction, and you have to fight the addiction. I was addicted to alcohol, but I don’t think about alcohol anymore, because I separated all thoughts of drinking from my core identity. The thoughts led to body, brain and soul damage. And I don’t want to damage myself. So those thoughts aren’t me, or coming from me.

Once you get better at this, you’ll be able to see how dark and sneaky the addiction can be. A ballgame. Christmas. A whole day to yourself, maybe with a cleaning project. An outing with old college friends. See how it lights up.....that’s your addiction.

I’m now at the point where it doesn’t light up anymore. Triggers are nearly extinguished. If you remain sober long enough, your brain self edits the addiction out.

Stop the thought. “No, I don’t drink anymore at all, drinking will kill me and I want to live.” “No, I don’t drink at these events anymore, drinking was only pain, and I have a new life now.” Just no, no, no, no. Affirm your sobriety. Affirm sobriety again, again, again and again, until you have vanquished that which has taken over.

Couple years. Do the work. Put your sober time in. It will become your new normal.

D122y

Aa used to stress me out. Too much going on I wasn't involved with.

The same folks all the time sharing for too long. Folks here would say try a different meeting etc.

I don't blame the folks there, I take responsibility for all of my problems.

I do that in life now as well. At work, with my family etc.

Taking responsibility is liberating because it keeps the problem under my control.

The minute I blame issues on someone else, I lose control of the issue.

I try to see issues through other folks viewpoint. I may not agree with the viewpoint, that doesn't matter. I just need to understand that another viewpoint is a persons prerogative. Especially if they are my boss or wife.

I still believe in myself all the way, but moving forward with the understanding that I may not ever get what I want from a situation.

I just let it go.

I tend to obsess a bit more than I like. I even obsess over obsessing.

I am working on it.

All my years of being a drunk didn't help me fix this.

Being a proud non drinker is fixing it.

Day in and day out clean living, for the last 4 years, is changing everything.

Serenity, patience, and contentment are words that mean the world too me daily.

Thanks.

RecklessEric

You accept the fact that you "can't drink again".
That could be causing you to have cravings.
You are choosing not to drink, which is different.
Taking ownership of the choice might help you.
Works for me.

Gottalife

In my first weeks of sobriety I often called in at my old bar, not for a drink, but because my alcoholic life was the only normal one. I thought that the bar was where life happened and If I wasn't there I would be missing out.

It took a few weeks, with a sponsor and working the program before, one day, the truth about that place was revealed to me. I never went back. Instead I found an infinitely better way of life.

Going back to your initial post, you refer to taking countless meds. I don't want to know what they are or what they are treating, but I will say that doctors in the know about addiction, in my part of the woods, refer to some medications as solid alcohol. In other words they can trigger the craving. Maybe have a good honest discussion with your doctor about this and see if there are better alternatives.

DayTrader

I've been in AA for over 12 years. I have a sponsor myself and I sponsor guys (and a couple gals). I guess I'm saying I'm an "active" member.

"Going to meetings" made me feel better for a little while.... like a handful of months. Sometimes now I suppose I get a nice boost from a meeting. Overall though, "going to meetings" is about as successful in treating my alcoholism and the unmanagability in my life as "going to the gym" is in weight loss and strength training.

I can go to the gym for 5 hours a day, watch people workout, listen to people who are lifting weights, and even speak with personal trainers about how to workout get stronger and lose weight..... i could even study and become an expert on the subject. If I don't pick up some weights and do some cardio, I won't get in shape.. the same is true for AA - for me. I can go to meetings every single day but if I am not actually working the program I don't get very far in my recovery.

of course, there are people that don't need to go to meetings, that didn't need any sort of spiritual experience, and who are able to manage their recovery on their own. I found out through trial and error, that I am not one of those people, as much as I wanted and tried to be. It was vital for me to discover MY truth and then act upon it.

Lautca

Well, gosh, I hear ya loud and clear!

This is coming in a bit late. This is from another response I did several months ago. I hope I can help you from some of my own experience. However, every person is different, and you must remember that! There is no One Size Fits All method, cure, program, process, therapy, or whatever. It is a Do It Yourself, because no one will do it for you, you can take THAT from me! But we are here to help you figure out how to do it yourself, every single one of us who has stopped, quitting came from within.

One of the things I did after I quit drinking was to actively search within myself to find out why I had been using alcohol. I already knew part of the story going all the way back to when I was a teenager and had my first drink, but successfully resisted drinking until "the coast was clear" when drinking wouldn't greatly interfere with what I would be doing for awhile as I slowly turned into a daily drinker.

After I became sober, I started to examine my thoughts on what alcohol alleviated and took the next step that apparently many alcoholics do not, and started looking at ways to remedy deficiencies within myself.

One thing I can't stress enough is it takes TIME to rebuild who one is. Metaphorically speaking, if you have a water line that is full of leaks, you can patch up the leaks and keep putting patches on the leaks. But the best solution is to rebuild the water line so it doesn't leak any more. Alcohol puts patches on a bad "water line", and what I had to do was replace my bad "water line" and with a good one.

After I quit drinking, I just didn't sit there twiddling my thumbs and watching TV, my next project was ME. I had quit drinking and I WANTED to stay quit, so I did some work to "stay quit". The only problem with that is I can't get rid of my memories, there were times when using alcohol truly worked in a few truly bad unavoidable situations that I didn't cause for myself. THOSE are the times that come back to bite sober alcoholics in the butt, and any of us have to figure out how to deal with them. This is where getting effective treatment for things like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Syndrome (PTSDS) are necessary, which may be the case, but require a competent therapist. It may take awhile to find a competent therapist, by the way. One fairly recent discovery is EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, that is a faster and more permanent way of dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder problems than prolonged talk therapy and/or taking pills - I used it and it worked very well to stop my past from ruling my future.

Fortunately for me, my being a drunk did not halt my growth and gaining wisdom as I got older, and I did learn how to deal with a lot of the contretemps that teenagers and young adults don't handle very well yet, plus older people have the natural advantage, which is others have much less of a tendency to "mess" with them purely because of their age. As the saying goes, "Rank Hath Privilege"! In other words, people used to "mess with me". Now they either don't because I've got gray hair, or I tell them to go talk to my attorney instead of me (I don't have an attorney). As I said, the "rank" of being older has its advantages in dealing with people who in the past would have driven me to drink. I'm in control of that now.

What I am getting at is that after winning my "war" with booze, I took steps to make sure that the causes for me to start drinking to begin with got eliminated as best as I could. That was a lot of hard work, and apparently a lot of alcoholics don't take that step. That is where others come in to support them and help them dig into the "cracks" and get all the scorpions and cobras out and gone. Fortunately, I grew up pretty much by myself because of where I lived as a child, and was not dependent on being surrounded by others for my sense of well-being, apparently a rather profound difference between me and most other people.

Yep, there is no one size fits all method to managing withdrawal and cravings! Mine fits me, maybe it might fit someone else or give some others an idea where to start.

What all alcoholics MUST DO is actively work on finding out what drives their alcoholism and then figure ways of getting out from under it. No one else can do that job for you, you have to do that for yourself. Others can help you do that, but they can't do it for you. It isn't easy, sometimes it hurts, and you have to sort through your past so you quit dwelling on it. After awhile it gets easier IF, and a big IF, you do your part and actively work on digging into what is going on with you.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

Lautca
7967 days

Briansy

I read that the brain actually responds much better to this approach.

Briansy

I've been reading a lot on the topic of late.

Three books I'd recommend:

Alcohol explained by William Porter.
The unexpected joy of being sober by Catherine Gray
This Naked mind by Annie Grace

These are massively helping "reframe" my thoughts around drinking. For me, it's important to really understand the subject and also the Catherine Gray and Annie Grace books are extremely relatable drunkalogues - the Catherine Gray audiobook is particularly beautifully narrated.

AAPJ

Edited a bit to depersonalize it. For me this is golden. Thanks!

ColoradoRocky

Have you been long enough without a drink to be past the physical withdrawals?

Me vs. My Mind?

My mind will win every time. My mind can rationalize anything that "me" would never do. And I haven't had a drink in a very long time!

Acceptance does not come from the mind.