Hmmm. I don’t believe “plain old living” and “facing it as a whole, powerful, compassionate, kind woman” is the real problem. That seems to be overthinking it. It is also nonsensical. The rational you knows that drinking in no way helps you to be a whole, compassionate, kind woman. So hoping to be those things is not relevant to this conversation. You’re overthinking what is really much, much simpler (thank god).

Life is life. Even discussing its complex and difficult nature is, to me, irrelevant. I don’t think that’s why you (or any of us) drink/drank. You drank bc you were addicted. And, even when you were no longer physically addicted, you’ve never been sober enough to no longer be emotionally addicted and to heal the very real brain damage you caused by drinking. It worries me to even hear you bring up “plain old living” and wanting to be “powerful, compassionate, kind” because (to me) this is giving your AV a ready-made excuse (‘I drank bc life is hard and I’m trying to be powerful, passionate, kind’.). Every human alive has to to deal with ‘plain old living’ and at least everyone I know hopes to being compassionate, kind, etc. But non addicts would never use it as an excuse to drink, bc these goals are totally unrelated to pouring poison down their throats and are actually deterrents to accomplishing those goals. I would just say what I always do. Recognize your brain has been severely damaged and needs to heal. And, if you want a drink, tell yourself you have no more right to a drink than a toddler does to drive. Your brain is nowhere near healthy enough, having been damaged by years of addiction, to make such a decision. And then trust that in time this will become easier and you will feel your brain recovering.

I really do mean this in all the best ways. It just seems you keep seeking an answer, a cure, a new way of thinking/believing, etc. To me, I just had to simplify it and stop thinking about it. I can’t drink. In the same way a person who knows they are allergic to peanuts can’t have peanuts. You are allergic and your brain is damaged (a particularly bad combination all addicts must face). So ground yourself: no more drinking for you. Force yourself not to drink for a year. Deal with whatever issues you need to deal with in therapy. But none of them are why you drink. An allergy and broken brain are. You can’t philosophize and think your way out of addiction any more than you can philosophize or think your way out of a bug bite itching. They are just realities, like the sky being blue.

All truly meant in the most helpful way. Truly.

Yep. I mean, yes, you understood me right that, in my opinion, nope, plain old living soberly isn’t the real problem. I don’t know when Obladi began drinking. I only know when I began drinking. But let’s say Obladi began drinking at age 16. So, she was sober living between day 1 and day 5840. I’m not saying life wasn’t hard, I’m not saying there were no challenges, but I’m saying that she didn’t drink because of them. She might’ve cried, she might have cut herself, she might have been a kleptomaniac for all I know. But if she didn’t start drinking until she was 16, that was not the problem. We know she can live without drinking, she’s done it before. We all have. And I don’t believe she had her very first drink because “living soberly” was difficult. After all, living soberly is all she knew and she didn’t yet know what intoxication felt like. She had her first drink for the same reason we all have our first drink. It’s just something most humans do eventually. The problem, to me, is simple. She has an addiction that was activated and then brain damage which followed. Again, this is just my belief. I also don’t believe Obladi ever got near a point where she was trying to “avoid relapse”. She hadn’t been sober nearly long enough to relapse. I’m at 327 days sober and I don’t believe I’ve been nearly sober enough to relapse. If I drank today, I would think of it the same way as I would think of it If my dear friend (who is undergoing chemotherapy) still had cancer after 4 months of treatments. Meaning - damn, it didn’t work. I wouldn’t say after 4 months if she reported the cancer was still there “oh, she’s no longer in remission and she’s now having a reoccurrence of her cancer.” There was never a remission so there cannot be a recurrence. It’s just still there. And that’s the zone I think Obodi is stuck in. She’s never gotten nearly past the healing phase. I say this not to be offensive, and I’m putting myself in that same boat. After 11 months, I wouldn’t say I relapsed if I drank tonight. I would say that I haven’t stopped drinking yet. There was just a looong break. To me, until I’ve given myself at least a year, minimum, for my brain to do some significant healing, there’s no relapse I need to be wary of. It’s still that initial urge. The cancer is still there.

But my cancer is minimizing every day. Because not drinking each day and building my sober muscles is my chemotherapy. And I know it’ll work bc I’m trusting the doctors that tell me this is what I need to do: not drink. There’s nothing I need to do other than not pour poison down my throat. I don’t have to worry about plain old living. Humans have been doing it for thousands upon thousands of years and my body will do that naturally.

Again, I know different strokes for different folks. This just works for me. :-) And I thought it might help Obladi too, who clearly really wants to be successful as shown by her great, great efforts. 👏👏👏👏👏

I think this short article might explain better than me the difference between 11 and 12 months. Each day matters. From my understanding, statistics show that you are often in the cancer clear after 5 years, which is why they say cured then. I would say studies have said the same with alcoholism. So, I’ve got healing to do for 5 years and, until then, to stop using my damaged brain to think about any issues related to alcohol (because what my brain is really trying to do is convince me to drink). And I agree. There’s not much time difference between 11 and 12 months. So I’ll still consider myself working/healing/etc past that point.

That of course does not mean that I don’t have issues of my own. We all do. I’m human too. Plain old living can be challenging for all of us. But I just don’t link these at all to drinking anymore than I would discuss flamingos here. Because that’s not why alcoholics drink (in my opinion). Because if I do, there will always be a maybe excuse to drink. Something horrible could come up. Like when Eric Clapton‘s 4 year old son fell out of a window and died. Eric Clapton had finally gotten used to plan old living soberly, but he hadn’t been used to this type of horror. So would it be an excuse/reason to drink? Of course not. Because he didn’t link drinking to life’s challenges anymore or to traumas or to anything else. They were unrelated.

I’m very glad you’re sober and safe. You can do this! I recognize we all have different ways out of this maze. It’s just that this way works for me and I thought it might be helpful to you or others reading this!

https://www.verywellmind.com/brain-c...stinence-66614