Question to long term abstainers
 

I used to binge drink for several years.. I've been completely sober past 200 days (7months come Dec 15).
Am I out of the woods yet? what are the chances of slipping from this point?
your thoughts and experiences welcome!
Have a blessed day!

The chances of slipping depend on how badly you want to be sober. If you want to be sober more than you want to drink, you're likely to stay sober. :) For me, my sobriety got stronger when I started practicing gratitude every day. :)

I've been sober over 10 years. I don't consider it "abstaining" from alcohol. Abstain means to "restrain oneself from doing or enjoying something." I'm not restraining myself from alcohol or the enjoyment of drinking. I don't drink. I don't have the urge to drink. Therefore, no restraining myself. Because I focused on my recovery from alcoholism, not on just abstaining from alcohol.

It gets easier provided I place something in its place. My relationship with God, appreciation of life no matter what cards I'm holding. Some years were easy, some during life drama events were difficult to accept. I 100 percent took drinking off the table. I'm also very careful of any drugs taken in down to cough medicine (actual coughs before COVID-19).

Having been to 3rd world countries in the military gave me an appreciation of how good I have it. As least said, gratitude!

Hi Eastern Row

I think success depends much more on continued effort and vigilance, not simply on time sober.

Having said that I was into my second year when I knew with certainty I would not drink again.
My life changed, and I did too.

Different people have different experiences - but if you don't want to fall out of recovery, and back that up with some effort - you won't stumble :)

D

Hi EasternRow - great to have you here.
For me, I had to quit or alcohol was going to take my life. I'd been drinking for decades & had become completely dependent on it. It wasn't a matter of an occasional binge - it had become my life. So I had to stop or die. By the time I made the decision to quit I was desperate to get free of it. I think it's different if we're not entirely convinced we need to give it up. (I drank 30 yrs. & have been sober nearly 13.)

Congrats on your 200 days! You never have to have that slip.

Whether it's a year of sobriety or five, you can never get complacent. I think most people lose their sobriety when they entertain the idea of moderation.
Keep coming here. I'm 6.5 years sober but here I am. I never want to get complacent.

Be careful right around the year mark. It's common to convince ourselves we don't have a real problem and try to drink again at that milestone. If you can keep something up for 5 years usually you've successfully made the changes. When I was newly sober I paid close attention to why people relapsed after years of sobriety. The answer was always the same, "I thought I could handle it."

totally depends on the person. I felt like I was out of the woods by day 200, I feel I'm even further away from the woods now. I guess its all relative. No reason to let your guard down, but I'd say your doin good.

I'm approaching 2 and a half years now and I'm still taking it day by day, I've not made the promise to myself or to anyone else that I will never drink again, I am at this stage trying to be sober for as long as possible.

In my first attempt at sobriety, at around the 7 month stage, when I had thoughts of drinking I would answer them to myself with “just make it to the year”

The thing is, I said that to myself so much that when the first bad day came along after a year sober, I no longer had that mental defence and I drank. So began the slow slide and the worst 2.5 years of my life, especially the last 6 months.

Im nearly 2 years sober, and I don’t think like that now. I just don’t drink and it’s not a struggle. I don’t think about the time. Seems to work better for me that way

I'm 1 month shy of 4 years sober now. Out of the woods at 200 days or some given future time? That's more like a question for philosophy or something, it's complicated. I don't really think of the woods at all most days. There might be some trees around but they're keeping pretty quiet lately.

Congrats on your 200 days sober btw! That combined with your proven ability to stay sober each day will get you to forever if you want it to.

I can only speak for myself, but I will always be just one drink away from disaster. No matter how long I am sober, I will always have the brain chemistry of an alcoholic and could go right back to where I was in a very short period of time. I am sure it will get easier to abstain as time goes on because abstaining has become my new normal, but I can't imagine a life where I won't have that tiny voice in the back of my mind saying "You can control it this time. Just have one."

But your mileage may vary a lot. I have met people with long term sobriety who say they never get cravings anymore and can't even imagine taking a drink now. I know myself well enough to know that I still miss the feeling you get after that first drink, so I will always have to be somewhat vigilant about my mind set when it comes to social events. It's all too easy for me to romanticize that first drink and forget all the awful things that happen when I have the second, third, fifth, tenth... etc. For me, I think it will always have to be a conscious choice not to drink, so that means I need to stay on top of my recovery and plan my social events ahead of time.

It can be a lot of extra work, but I try to remind myself "sobriety is hard, but not nearly as hard as being an active alcoholic was."

There have been long term studies on length of sobriety and how that effects future sobriety. The one I wanted to cite is behind a paywall but here is the general takeaway from the study.

*Only about a third of people who are abstinent less than a year will remain abstinent.
*For those who achieve a year of sobriety, less than half will relapse.
*If you can make it to 5 years of sobriety, your chance of relapse is less than 15 percent.

Having said that...I got sober in 1990 and relapsed in 1996 after over 6 years. I got sober again in 1997 and relapsed in 2004 after over 7 years. I got sober in 2013 and I'm still sober, and I'll celebrate 8 years in about 4 months. So making it 5 years didn't keep me from relapsing, yet I seemed to "breeze" by the 1 year mark each time. For me it was a matter of becoming complacent (what AA refers to as "resting on your laurels"). After several years I stopped doing the things that I had been doing to stay sober. I didn't consciously stop doing them, but I guess you could say I slowly fell out of the habit of doing those things and took my sobriety for granted. Each time I relapsed all it took was a good "life crisis" and my defenses were weak.

The first time I relapsed after 6 years it lasted for just under a year and the damage done was fairly minimal. The second time I relapsed after 7 years it lasted for 8 LONG years and it nearly killed me. I believe that people can recover from alcoholism but can never be cured. There's another old saying in AA that goes something like "you can recover from a gunshot wound but it doesn't make you bulletproof". I now treat my alcoholism like someone would with a chronic illness where if you take your medicine every day you can keep the illness in remission. My personal medicine are the 12 steps that originated in AA and have worked for millions of people. I have found that if I live by the principles of the 12 steps on a daily basis I stay on solid footing, and there hasn't been a "life crisis" I haven't been able to weather going on 8 years now.

And if AA and/or the 12 steps aren't for you, find something that is. Some type of plan that helps you stay sober and can withstand whatever life throws at you...good or bad.

Hi EasternRow! Well, gosh! Let me pose a few purely academic questions. Do YOU think you are out of the woods yet? Are you asking just in case some day you feel a "slip" about to happen and you want to know how to handle it? Are about to slip now?

All those who answered have darned good insight. Everybody is different is probably the main answer, and the best thing to keep in mind is what LateBloominCait said about just "one drink away from disaster".

I was a professional drunk for 25 years. I tried quitting many times and failed miserably until I decided to get the things out of the way that that were making me drink. I have mentioned these things before. Ibuprofen was no longer a prescription medication and became an over the counter item for pain instead of taking a few drinks. Use ibuprofen carefully, and never use acetaminophen aka paracetamol if you are drinking since it may cause irreversible liver failure in a few days. When I couldn't sleep I used Benadryl, but don't use it with alcohol! Counseling used to demand that only sober people could be counseled, but then that changed with good results.

After I took the initiative and grew up some more, I just quit without any big hassle, no slips, and I never looked back. That was a little over 23 years ago. There have been a few times when things from my past re-appeared, but never ONCE have I ever felt a slip coming on. Everyone is different.

Alcoholics have to take the responsibility upon themselves for getting the things out of their way that are keeping them from getting sober. They have to take an active interest in themselves, and if that spark is not there, they will never get sober. We can help you light that spark, but you have to find out what is going on inside of you. How is your health? Do you have aches and pains? Do you have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? Is your boss ragging on you at work? Slips can come from outside of you, too. The Titanic was not sunk by an iceberg, it was sunk by its captain who did not steer away from the iceberg in time.

No, I don't think you're out of the woods yet, not by any stretch. 200 days is certainly a pattern-breaking streak, and you can continue that to 2,000 days if you wish, but it isn't guaranteed.

For 6.5 years my conviction for sobriety was rock-solid, temptations minimal/nonexistent. Lately, it's been tougher, just because life has gotten tougher. I'm almost 7 years in and don't feel I'm out of the woods, really. Everyone's different.

I've seen people fall when they let pure inertia carry them, the kind of thinking that goes: "Well, I've made it 200 days, I don't want to mess up this streak so I won't drink tonight." Eventually, in some circumstances you can't anticipate, perhaps in 1 year or 3 years or 20 years, that reason -- the inertia -- might not be enough to keep you from drinking.

How are you going EasternRow?:)

D

I don't know that we are ever out of the woods. I think the 'woods' are all around us - in front, behind. For me, I had a good 7 years and all it took was a major event in my life that led me to turn back to drinking to numb the pain. What I learned is that even though I stopped drinking, I didn't take a realistic assessment of myself and how I coped. I went back to what I knew like it was a default action. If you are on the journey of sobriety, I believe it is important to discover healthy coping mechanisms that would replace alcohol. The reason? Crap will hit the fan at some point in your life and you best be prepared on how you will deal with it to avoid taking that self medication.

Compliancy can get you. For me, it was letting my guard down and not protecting my sobriety - 3 years and 7 months - gone in one drink. I had times where I was confident and thought I was unshakable - no desire whatsoever to drink again. Then there were times I allowed myself to imagine having a drink with friends - big mistake. Guard your thinking. Constant mindfulness is required, at least for me.

I think some people may reach a point that drinking never crosses their minds again. But I've also seen people with decades of sobriety relapse. My advice is always be mindful and guard your sobriety.

Almost five years of sobriety for me. I feel secure in my sobriety, but I remain vigilant. There are scores of examples where people have been sober for many years, have one drink and they're off on the crazy train for two or three years. Some probably never make it back.