reefbreakbda

We’ll be sitting back and watching actions, not listening to words. We have programmed ourselves to not control; we won’t be edgily waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Ninety seconds out of the front door of the treatment centre... after 30 days of seminal stuff on countering the powerful grip of alcohol and food. ..a month of working to remove the “active” from active addiction.

Ninety seconds along the road, into our journey home...she asks me to pull over at the gas station. I give her a look...she must see the panic in my expression. ..just getting a diet coke.

She drank this with vodka and she drank it like vodka, the compulsive habit of consuming litres of this toxic stuff daily. Do we think the addictive behaviour is still there? Doh.

Ninety seconds and she was satisfying the compulsion she’d been prevented from indulging in the managed environment of no junk food in the centre.
Shall we say, my expectations are low.

Im ashamed to admit I couldn't resist passing comment, albeit benign.

I know I will focus on me, I can’t control it, can’t cure it, I know, I know.

Just needed to share my adject failure moment in my own recovery....

Tuffgirl

You know, my RAH drinks sodas even more now in recovery than he did as mixers during the heavy drinking days. His was Jack Daniels and Diet Pepsi or Diet Dr. Pepper. I read somewhere that craving sweet stuff is part of coming off of alcohol, and as a matter of fact had a nutritionist tell me that that alcohol consumption was somehow related to blood sugar levels (I am not remembering the entire conversation now, sorry). I rarely drink the stuff; my beverage of choice is coffee (another addiction!). Anyway, my RAH also goes for really sweet sodas now too - not just the diet ones.

It may be par for the course, is what I am trying to say. Addiction? yes. Better than drinking alcohol? definitely! Have a good dentist handy, though, cause that stuff rots the enamel off the teeth in short order.

Funny the triggers, eh?

Learn2Live

Reef,
Where is it you feel you have failed, may I ask?

kiki5711

That's true. I'm still going thruogh my "ice cream" nightly phase 8 months later.

Summerpeach

I always say, put an addict on a deserted island with nothing but trees and grass and the addict will be addicted to trees and grass!

The void is DEEP!

Thumper

I think your reaction was perfectly natural. You are aware though. That is important. We can't extinguish natural reactions but if we are aware, we can deal with them in a healthy way. Step up your own program of recovery. It will be put tot he test I'm sure.

I know what you mean. It isn't just the physical addiction to the soda, it is the routine - the steps an addict goes through to get their 'fix' that is also part of the addiction. The very process can brings a level of emotional comfort but they don't get the physical pay off of the fix - which is a dangerous game in my book.

My xah was sober all of about 6 days after he came back from his first rehab. So he would go to the corner gas station/liquor store to get a Mt. Dew. Flag. I *knew* then. So I bought a case of Mt. Dew and put it in the fridge. He still went to the corner store for a Mt. Dew. I was praying he'd go a few more blocks to the AA meetings but he did not.

He used to go to that store and get a 6 pack, or a single beer, several time a day. It was part of his 'fix'. It was part of his way of escaping and coping with even minor every day stress (or the major stress of being new in recovery) etc. So in a few days he was going there and coming home with a N/A beer. Well, you can see where this is going if he was only sober for a week.

theuncertainty

I've noticed the pop addiction thing too, but not in connection with XAH, with myself. I hadn't had one in a long while, and have been trying to eat better. I caved earlier this week and went to the vending machine in the building and got a Pepsi for the caffiene (coffee still amps my anxiety symptoms too far). Honestly, it tasted like cr-p, but it's been really hard not going back to the vending machine for another one.

Bleahhhhh....

reefbreakbda

Thanks everybody,

L2l, I felt I’d failed because I slipped into the old trap of being agitated by the compulsive behaviour.

At this stage I should be able to detach from that and admit my powerlessness over it.
I slipped and I made a remark about it to her.

I hope it’s just that I've done a lot in the academic side of recovery and now I have to put it into practice in the real world of sharing a live with someone in very early recovery.

Intellectually I can accept I cannot control but years of Codie behaviour compel me to act or speak.

I will try harder. I recite the first step to myself like a mantra: it seems to help a little.

Thumper

You are trying hard already.

IME, just like yours, my head was there well before the rest of me. Recovery doesn't make the feelings go away, it gives us better ways of handling them. Feelings are normal we have just learned dysfunctional ways of dealing with them.

Over time I have discovered that some things do not impact me as greatly, or at all, but it did take time and I'm hopeful that as I continue on things will get even better. What I would like is for my first response (not first feeling) to be more automatic and less a forced go through this list or thought process.

I still have trouble (see my recent thread if you need proof, lol) but I don't really see it as a set back - more of a continuation - a little bump.

In my personal journey I need to also do a lot of boundary work but I see that as related to, but differnt from responding to the feelings.

LexieCat

How can we NOT be conditioned to respond reflexively to behavior that has traditionally meant the alcoholic is drinking?

It takes practice. We didn't get conditioned in a day, and we don't get over it in a day. I think awareness of it (which you had) and consciously working to let it go (which you did) is NOT failure. It is PROGRESS.

fourmaggie

wouldn't POP be a trigger? *just asking*