serenitarium

"I don't want to be here. I have been out of these rooms for 4 months and now that I'm back, I feel like I am getting sober all over again. Frankly, I don't care about you, I don't want to know you, I don't want to talk to you and I don't want you to know me....and that's all I got. "

I shared tonight for the first time. When he called on me, that is what I said. I'm in a very apathetic state, and honestly, I can go either way. In a room full of people who are hailing their sobriety and saying how much their life has changed, I am the downer of the bunch, telling everyone to f*ck off with their stories of grandeur.

My new sponsor is asking that I go to 5 meetings a week. I have 2 commitments at 2 of the 5 meetings and at this point, I want to throw in the towel and say f*ck it. It's just too hard. I just want to live in oblivion because it is so much easier. I've never had to work so hard for something and in actuality, I'm working this hard because I want to live. Why does living have to be so f*cking difficult when dying would be so....simple?

How do people do this for 1, 2 3, 17 years? I can't imagine doing this for the rest of my life. It drains me just thinking about it. Frankly, how am I supposed to get through the night when everything inside of me is telling me to throw my hands in the air? Better yet, how can I live up to someone else's expectations when I can't even live up to my own?

Pinkcuda

When I first came into the program I heard stories of sobriety. 1 year, 2 years, 5 years. It sounded like a prison sentence. Needless to say, I wasn't interested!
After I pulled my head out I realized that I had been in prison. My own "self induced" prison sentence. Sobriety was, in fact, freedom. It gave me the freedom I had been looking for in a bottle. I quit drinking. Not for a year or two, or 5; but just for today. Make no mistake, it wasn't easy. One day is all I needed.
My first AA meeting was 25 years ago. I saw one year as impossible. Since it was impossible I didn't even bother to try. I had failed in admitting I couldn't do it. It came to me later that I just needed to quit for today. Tomorrow will be a new "Today" that I can quit for, But I'll concern myself with that when the time comes. The one day stretches do get easier and they do add up. Do not ever set a goal of any lenght of time. Just today. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow is promised to nobody. All you have is the moment. At this moment, don't drink.

jinxblu

I've read too many stories of relapses...got really depressed because I want this s#@%$ to be gone overnight ( even though it took me 20+ years to get here).SOOOO.......I am working REALLY hard to realize that the only way I can get through this is to remind myself that all I have is TODAY...that the richest/poorest of us have only today...that those with 1 hour and those with 25 yrs have only today......anyway, it helps a little!!

CarolD

If my drinking career had been pleasant and sucessful
I would have never quit.
Drinking made me detest the woman I ad become.

In order to enjoy life again...I do use God and AA.

I see AA miracles in each meeting and in my mirror.
This can be true for you as well.

Side by side...Forward we go

SaTiT

after all these years I still can't imagine not getting wacked for the rest of
my life. You said it..it makes me tired just thinking about.

just for today i could..heck after all these years i still can't do it
oneday at a time. i have to do it a half a day at a time.
well, somebody passed on a tool to me...
"you can start your day over again anytime you want"
I ponder about it...will yeah, it's so true ..i can give myself permission
to start my life over again anytime i want. after all there's no rules in NA
or AA..mmm how in the heck did i ever got into living under some rules.
I'm not really sure who made it up, that i had to carry on and on
having a bad day, or week, or months or years.

but if i really ponder and ask this simple question some more.
well, every moment that I'm awake, I'm always in the moment
and all i really have is today and this moment. i might have tommorrow
but it's not a garantee.

what might happen next week or next year..well that's just in my head.
The more i stay in my crazy head, that more tired i get and the more I
miss out on life and if I decide to run from life via drinking and using
well, than it's about as simple as that...I'm not living life, i was just getting
drunk to cope and missing out on life.

what so wonderful about my life today ?
well , if i gave myself permission to start my day or life over again,
maybe i'll just give myself permission to be happy too.
I'm capiable of it...becuase i gave myself permission to be misserable
or hate myself and dystroyed my life.

So it's a matter of me making a chioce. i made poor chioces.
and you know..those darn AA folks drilled into my head
"YOU HAVE A CHIOCE"

you know ????...i have a heck of time practicing freedom.
I hated everybody and everyone too...that's what i truley felt.
So i had to go sit under a tree in a forrest and just chill.
Away from people and society. I was sick and tire of being told
how to live, how to belive, how to think...AA have no rules
so it was a possiblity that i would wanna participate with mankind again.
But I still needed a lot of healing.
I found it through nature...i didn't have to do anything.
I could cried if i wanted to, i could scream if I wanted to
I could hate if I wanted to.
Gradully I started to notice how beautiful nature is...there's life
all around me in nature and there wasn't a right way or a wrong
way to be in nature. No expectations.
I begin to learn how to live in the moment.
There's beauty in life, there happiness, i just had to show up.
well...I didn't really had to dress up in nature.lol

i didn't really know what i was doing...I just needed that after
a suicide attempt. i needed to know that i was okay for being
me. i needed to know it was okay for me to feel what i feel.
I needed to know that there's beauty in life and it was still
worth living and trying again. i felt peace for the first time in
my life as i slept under that tree and felt the sunlight and breeze
curessing my skin. i cried for the first time in years and it was okay.
i didn't have to tried to be someone i wasn't. I was okay with being me
even if i felt all f-up inside.

Pilgrim

I remember that too. I didn't say anything because it would have been bad. I just thought the whole thing sucked.

Things turned around for me when I did Step 5 with my sponsor.

Reubena

Me too. That is the common denominator of most of us I imagine.

When I hear stories about peeps that have been sober for years and are loving life, I am happy for them and admire them, but geez, I can't really relate to them 'cuz I haven't been there. Some part of me thinks I will never be able to get there. But my life needs to change. I have a lot of living that I want to do and I won't be able to do that if I continue to drink. I want life to actually be enjoyable.

I admire you for speaking up at the meeting and telling people how you really feel. And I hope things get better for you.

R.

findingout

If I wasn't an alcoholic, staying sober would be easy.

If I start thinking about the work of staying sober for the next 17 years (hey why shoot low, staying sober for the rest of my life), it's easy to get overwhelmed and start imaging situations where I just won't make it because if this happens or that happens, well, I'd just have to drink and if I'm going to drink eventually, why not just start today and have done with it. So I don't do that.

If I am having a bad day (and getting sober is not an insurance policy against having bad days), it's natural for me to seek the path of oblivion because I'm an alcoholic. That's what alcoholics do. If I'm having a good day, it's easy for me minimize the contribution that all the previous days of recovery have made to that day. I may start thinking that I can stop all this nonsense because I've got everything under my control and hey, it actually quite possible I never really was an alcoholic and what harm could one drink do anyways, I need to celebrate these good times! That's also what alcoholics do. The hardest thing for me to accept when I started was that every sober is a good day because I'm an alcoholic and I'm sober. No day, no feeling, no event is so bad that drinking won't make it worse.

Other people's expectations? I can't live up to other people's expectations. I'm not in this world to live up to other people's expectations. My expectations for recovery are things will get better (or at least my feelings and thinking about them will get better ) if I don't pick up and if I don't pick up today, I won't regret it tomorrow morning. I have to trust this because at some moments, it's all I got.

mike_mass

It's a day at a time.

GlassPrisoner

Well then, you've got a good chance at recovery, IMO.

There is no fast death from alcoholsim. THere is only 10-15 years of what you were going through before you came back. I thought I'd drink myself to death, until I realized what a slow, painful , humiliating and lonely death it would be.


Hang in there. Do what's suggested, espeically when you don't want to. It gets better, it really does.

Tazman53

serenitarium that was a great share, that was brutal honesty of how you feel/felt!!!!

More people need to tell the truth in meetings like you did, if have done that a few times, my sponsor at the time after we had discussed how things were going for me, told me to go to the meeting that night and "Throw that turd out on the table!"

There have been some great shares in this thread.

For me simply said I went to AA because alcohol had kicked my ass, I was scared and I did not want to die!!!!

In early sobriety staying in the day was not going to cut the mustard, I was having to stay in the minute, I was scared to death I was going to relapse so if my sponsor had told me he put marbles in a bag and hit him self in the hed every time he wanted a drink I would have been one swollen head looking dude.

I started following suggestions even when I thought they were stupid beyond belief!!!

My sponsor told me to call him every day and 2 other AA folks everyday. I thought "What the hell, how in the world is me calling people going to keep me sober?"

I hated talking on the phone, hell when my mother was still living I would only call her on holidays and I loved her dearly, I visited her more then I called her!

Well I figured what the heck, calling people is not going to hurt me so I followed the suggestion. Next thing I knew I was making sober friends and more then once the guy I was calling thanked me for calling him because he had some things on his mind he needed to talk about! WOW I realized that little old drunk me was helping some one else stay sober!!!

I had about 2 months sober when I found out the main reason he wanted me to get comfortable calling people. I was having a really bad day..... I mean really BAD. Well my wife told me something on the phone that was the straw that damn near broke the camels back! I hung up on her, slammed my first on the steering wheel and said out loud "F it, I am getting a beer!"

Well my next thought was man are you going to throw away 2 months sober? My mind started to race, that voice was telling me I needed a beer, the other voice started to say the serenity prayer!

I grabbed the phone and called my sponsor! NO ANSWER!!!!!!! Did I give up? Nope I called another sober drunk!!! We spoke for about 4-5 minutes and life was good again!

I have found that the harder I work my program, the more steps I worked (done with them for the first time) the more I live the steps the best I can the better every day gets, crap still happens, things are far from perfect, but thank God I no longer feel the need to drink over anything!!!!

You know I will be brutally honest here and say that if alcohol still did for me what it did for me the first 20 years of the 40 years I drank I would never have stopped, but alcohol went from the solution in my life to the problem in my life and now I have found that if I work & live the steps in AA that everything alcohol used to do for me is now done even better, AA is now the solution in my life.

Jersey Nonny

Quote:

that those with 1 hour and those with 25 yrs have only today

Uh, huh! I could be dead, you could be dead, the world could come to an end...who knows what can happen in the next 24 hours? Only HP, and he's not telling!

Yesterday is History...Tomorrow is a Mystery...Today is a Gift...That's why it's called the Present.

Pilgrim

How are you doing today Serenitarium?

barb dwyer

I hate to bew the one - but - what you said cracked me up.

I'd be the one in the rooms ... wh'd probably really tick you off
cause I'd be snickering into my coffee until it was my time to share.

And my share would be -
(since we're pretending here)

hi, my name is *barb* and I'm an alcoholic.
I've only got a couple of things.
One - thanks for the laugh.
I'm not so sure I care about a lot of the people in here, either.
But I'm here for them ... because they keep me sober.
(then I'd probably call one by name and tell 'em I never really liked him anyhow)
LOL
I love honesty ... and what you said was great.

Second -
and i feel compelled to share this with you ...
don't be too sure that dying is easy.
*We* do not determine whether we live or not.
See, I know this first hand.

A year ago - I tried to kill myself.
And didn't.
Booze, pills, and sliced arms and legs.
And I didn't die.
There's no medical or scientific reason for me to be sitting here.

There's only ONE reson.
And that ONE reason -
makes my life worth every breath today.
ONE thing only.

See, I always thought I could pull the plug when I was ready, too.
So I pulled it.
A year ago.
But I woke up.

So see ... yes, you're fighting for your life,
I understand that like few others.
Having died myself,
I can tell you from personal experience -
dying ain't what it's cracked up to be.

But what I know about Spirit ...
makes each day ... worth it all.

I wish that for you some day.
Keep coming back.

scaredykat

Thanks everyone. I really needed to read this tonight for myself.

Serenitarium- You got a lot of good advice from everyone. Don't quit fighting.

Barb

chicago

WOW thank you so much. thats honesty in its purest form. I really needed to hear that. That takes me way back. "I'm working this hard because I want to live. Why does living have to be so f@ckign difficult when dying would be so....simple?" Jesus, I cant tell you how much i used to think this very thought. Honesty is one of the key components to sobriety. You just displayed rigorous honesty. I commend you for it. Like stated above...this is a one day at a time program. If i had to commit to staying sober for the rest of my life, I'd be drunk right now. I dont wake up today and think "I just have to make it to the end of the day without drinking." When the inevtiable rough day happens, I do it but certainly most days I dont even think about it. It gets so much easier after a little while. Clearly you're on the fence...and we're used to taking the easier softer way. But the easier softer way got me stealing food to survive and shaking from alcohol withdrawal. People say in meetings that their lives have gotten better because they have gotten better.

Jfanagle

Serenitarium,

As my first sponsor once told me; "Don't kid yourself that the people in those meetings are nearly as concerned about you as they are about themselves." I attend to keep Jon sober, anyone else's sobriety is a by product of my desire for my own sobriety. I will always help if asked, but a F..k Off here and there from an unhappy alkie,(imagine such a thing), is to be expected.

I certainly hope you make it, but if peace and ease is what matters the most I was just at a really large "meeting place" that we call Forest Lawn here in Southern California. It was chock full of very quiet and peaceful folks, all laid end to end and NO ONE was bragging about how long they had been there.

I had my last drink a few years ago, but I have always reserved the right to have my next one tomorrow. Quitting for the rest of my life is something that I can't wrap my mind around. AA, like a lot of things in my life sometimes feels restrictive and constraining, but the value for me out weighs the inconvenience. After all those tiny little plots in Forest Lawn looked pretty constraining as well.

PS. I was "attending that meeting" to watch a fellow join that group because he never quite felt at home in the other meetings. THIS ISN"T ALL THAT SERIOUS, just LIFE AND DEATH.

Here is wishing you the best and the life that you want, where ever that may be.

Jon

barb dwyer

Jfangle wrote -

that's truth.

InnerWinner

Does that mean suicide? When I say "**** life" or "**** it all" to MYSELF..that I think about myself just going homeless living on a beach in california sleeping all day begging for money.....
WHICH WOULDN'T BE SOOOOO BAD but then I'd have to get over my fear of skin cancer....i mean **** all that time in the sun, i'd get burnt.

asfjaslkdfjasl;kdfa;sdfjas;ldfkja;sdlkfjas;ldkfja; sdlfkaj

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Dee74

:wtf2