Rickie

Just thinking...

Pretty much for my adult life i've celebrated every accomplishment, no matter how small, with booze.

If it's something big, well then there's an excuse to get totally ratted beyond belief.

Sound familar?

LaFemme

When I got sober I worried about what I would do if I won the lottery....I had always planned on drinking Veuve Cliquot when that happened

Couldn't by a lottery ticket sober for the longest time.

:rotfxko

Rickie

Hehe

The question is...what would you do if you won the lottery now LaFemme?

TotoBidule

I feel for ya mate. It's a lot easier for me - the only real achievements I've ever made in my adult life were done when I was abstinent.

Maryjan

Here's a funny lotto comic--warning, contains druggy fantasies. It's pretty funny, but I have a weird sense of humor:

YouTube - Justin's Lotto Fantasy

I used to celebrate the end of every tough day with wine. Without wine, I am getting used to the day winding to a peaceful end...no big hurrah and then numbness. Tonight is our first party where I'll be sober. It feels really good--I always, always worried about getting too drunk. If I won the lottery, I'd buy plane tickets for my family to go on one amazing adventure a year forever.

AmericanGirl

Hi Rickie! I relate. About three months into my sobriety I achieved a longterm goal that I had always imagined celebrating with champagne. I definitely had a history of "celebrating" all accomplishments with booze, which would end up with me waking up anxious and hungover and with the achievement completely out of proportion in my head because it was now coupled with self-hate for getting so drunk etc.

Alcohol is a depressant. Achievements give me a major "rush" that is somewhat uncomfortable to face, even if it's a good thing. So, to quell this rush, I would drink even more than usual.

What I do now is remind myself that the achievement is itself a reward. I don't need to drink to celebrate it. I feel good about whatever it is, and remind myself that tomorrow I'll feel normal again (instead of having the head noise about it all). I do treat myself now and then too -- to a dinner out, to being lazy, to buying something -- but I try to be moderate with that.

Hope this helps!

NEOMARXIST

Yeah I know what you're saying. For me then I used to get wasted whatever to be honest. I didn't need any excuse to get wasted but I did used to 'celebrate' everything by getting wasted, with others or alone I didn't care. What I did notice though as my alcoholism progressed as time went by, then things to actually celebrate were non existant. The only things I was drinking on was a desire to get out of my head to escape my life for a while. The achievements died up long ago for me and there is a definate correlation between my starting to drink regularly and achievements dying out.

In recovery I have had lots to celebrate and have made some great achievements by all accounts and this is purely a result of my total sobriety and recovery. There is a massive amount of acceptance involved for me as I was always a character who liked to enhance good feelings, like in the past I would feel that natural high and just want to increase it and go on a mad bender. At the end of the day learning to accept that you're an alcoholic/addict and that a chemical enhancement/celebration is simply not an option just had to be worked through in my own experience. Sure you may feel p*ssed-off and feel totally screwed up that you've just gotta sit with the achievemnt and not go all out on a mad-one but ultimately then the achievement has probably only happened because of your sobriety. For me then that's 100% the case, I know that if I drink then I can kiss goodbye to a life of any achievement. It would just be back to a life of regret and failure, I was tired of that.

Basically then all this stuff doesn't come easily and it's why many, many people go back out again but it does sort itself out over time. It certainly takes time and much recovery work. Basically I don't think about stuff like i used to now and also my expectations are different too and I accept experiences to be as they are now and enjoy them as they are. I guess it takes time and work inevitably and you get to understand your mind and how you used to think about this type of stuff and those thought processes change, Certainly for me anyway. Acceptance is always crucial for me and always gratitude that I am achieving what I'm achieving and also 100% certainty that alcohol would take all of this good stuff away from me in an instant.

Peace

Reset

Toward the end I didn't have a whole lot to celebrate, and I was getting hammered every night regardless. Pretty sad.

bevin

Yes - that is exactly it for me. I was trying to think how to put it into words, but I can't do it any better than that. When you really get used to being numb, any kind of emotion is an uncomfortable experience.