krimpoo

Sorry if this an often answered question but i am only 4 days sober (new to the site) and this issue is very important to me in the moment. Is avoidance of situations involving alcohol 100% important? Is it important at the start and then you can integrate situations as time goes along? Is this different for everyone?


The reason i ask is that as a musician i am obviously in bars quite often to play music. I also go to a lot of couples nights and host couple nights with my wife and alcohol (in proper quantities unless its me drinking) is almost always involved.My hockey nights involve beer in the dressing room etc...i could go on but you all know the picture.


My gut instinct is that you can't avoid alcohol in this society and once you have decided to quit and feel it in your bones that alcohol is not working for you any longer avoidance is futile. We are surrounded by it in so many ways it is up to me to feel it deeply (and i do) that if i take the first drink i KNOW i will want more and more and to make the decision not to.


This does not apply to sitting around with bar buddies or situations where alcohol is the ONLY reason we are there (those are out of my life)...im referring to situations where alcohol accompanies the activity. Thanks for any replies.

HenryKrinkle

Welcome krimpoo. I can only share with you what my experience has been.

I know that for me, avoiding situations where alcohol is present, especially situations where I would normally drink in the past, is crucial. I have started drinking again, after promises to myself to stop, so many times by putting myself into the same old situations too soon into recovery. I told my wife there are certain restaurants we won't be able to go to for a few months because I so strongly associate them with having a couple of beers with dinner. I also told her I don't want to go to any gatherings, dinner parties, etc. because I am so used to having (lots of) drinks a those events.

I know myself after years of trying and failing. Once I get several weeks, maybe even several months into sobriety, when I have hammered the point home that attending these types of events sober is way better than attending them and doing what I normally do (drinking), I will be able to attend and know I can abstain.

That's just my $0.02.

Anna

I tried being around alcohol in the early days and I absolutely could not do it. I would not be sober today if I had done that.

So, I stayed away from situations involving alcohol for a long time - many months.

When I did get back into it, I felt very comfortable.

eJoshua

Welcome to SR!

It's like the old saying, nothing changes if nothing changes. I tried to quit drinking without making any life changes several times and failed. For me, I had to make a decision to walk away from my old lifestyle in order to embrace my newly found sobriety, that was the only was I was going to be successful.

I think it does depend on the person though, but I think it's best to err on the side of caution, especially in early recovery.

Best wishes.

langkah

I go wherever I have reason to be. If alcohol and carpet tacks are both served I'm as likely to partake of one as the other.

But if you are depending on your ironclad decision to not drink then yeah, use enough caution to keep yourself safe, however much that is.

Peter G

I've been a working musician for about 28 years, so I'll give you my own experience...

No, avoidance is not futile - at first. as you've pointed out, eventually you'll need to re-integrate yourself back into the 'real' world, the world full of alcohol. But early on, avoiding such things is nothing more than wise and prudent behavior.

During the initial phases of my sobriety, I avoided any situation that would have had me in proximity to booze. I even turned down a few highly lucrative gigs simply because I knew it would put an extra strain on my -then- tenuous hold on sobriety. In fact I tanked everything that put me within 100 feet of drinking, no matter the circumstance. I missed weddings, parties, cancelled gigs, tours, the whole nine yards. Why? Short answer is because I knew drinking was going to kill me very quickly if I kept at it. Longer answer is ... while there is a time for learning how to deal with life on life's terms, without that initial decompression wherein I took the time to develop a solid program and learn more about how to cope without drinking, the minute I became more uncomfortable than I could stand while in a drinking environment, I'd be drinking again, full stop.

As alcoholics our preferred... hell... our ONLY coping mechanism for all of life's more profound nonsense is to drink. Within a work setting that involves crowds of drinkers, or a social gathering, in fact any situation where you're directly or indirectly being encouraged to drink, there is heaps of extraneous nonsense to be expected. Without a solid program, any newly sober alcoholic can - and usually will - cave.

I bolded something you said in red because it really is a good case for the popular argument 'life doesn't stop just because we stop drinking'. Quoted below might help you see the other side of that. It's something said to another poster with almost the exact same issues you're having...

I also have to point out that this is all wisdom I gathered after asking around. It's not something I just decided on. For me, first getting sober, I was looking for any angle out of the argument "stay away from booze". In the end, I couldn't find one sober musician who would back me. Instead of arguing, I decided to listen because my way hadn't worked for decades. My taking that advice has resulted in the longest period of sobriety I've experienced since puberty.

See, when I first got sober I sought out some of my sober musician friends, and I asked the opinions of many sober musicians from my brother's AA group that I knew were successful for many years in beating back alcoholism, moreover, not letting it affect their careers. Every single one said that it was absolutely necessary in early sobriety to separate themselves from all things alcohol related and develop strategies and a strong program, even if it meant not working or missing out on social activities.

If I were you I'd opt out of anything that puts you in proximity of your potential for getting loaded, until you have a developed program and some sober time behind you. That's MHO anyway.

krimpoo

wow...that's a lot to digest Peter and greatly appreciated. Given the clear tone of your response i would be a fool not to take your advice...and i will. I'm lucky in that i have no reason to be near a bar until april or may and like i said before...i'm only on day 4 of sobriety.


Strategies and a program...at this early stage i have no idea what those terms mean specifically. I am NOT a religious person and will not be attending any program that involves higher powers or god. Simply out of the picture.

At this point i am using my decision and clarity that alcohol simply has become a sum loss equation to be sober. The fun has run out.The hangovers aren't worth it.The wasted money and the loss of memory....i just don't want too anymore. Of course from what i have read on this site that means "today" and not tomorrow and i will need to find strategies and programs as you suggested. At this point i will be seeking out a therapist or counselor with alcoholic(s) experience and moving from there.


Any suggestions greatly appreciated....that's why we are here isn't it?


Peter....i truly appreciate your sincere and thoughtful response.Thanks again.

Dee74

Well Peter saved me a lot of time LOL

I lost my musical career through my drinking...everytime I resolved to quit, I'd have a gig and...the inevitable happened.

I made the decision to avoid situations that centred around alcohol until I was strong enough to handle them. I still think that was a great investment

By April/May you may find yourself a different, new and improved Krimpoo - so I'd try not and worry about it too much now.

D

Peter G

Sorry it took a minute to get back, this is the first opportunity I had at my computer.

My first suggestion would be not to attach conditions to your goal of sobriety. Be an empty glass right now, and let everything be poured in (accept Jack Daniels of course ). Nothing, I mean nothing should be too much for you to consider as a route to successfully managing your illness. At my worst point, had someone told me in order for me to be rid of the hell I was living I needed to dance naked covered in pig feces, or jog through the Grand Canyon in a tutu and tiara, absolutely no doubt I'd have done it. Sure, down the road you can say "that's not for me", but right now? Amigo, try anything and everything that has proven to help others get and stay sober with a completely open mind.

This brings me to the issue you have about higher powers, Gods, and all that happy horse$h!t. Like you, I have no use for Gods, Demigods, or any other cosmic nonsense. But what I do have use for is the humility I felt when I realized I am not the most powerful force in the world. I came to that conclusion when I discovered I truly had no internal power to stop from ingesting booze in alarming quantities, even when my life/loved ones/career was being literally destroyed by it. That being realized, it seemed that my higher power was booze all along, I was just long ignoring a glaring and obvious fact.

Once I came to grips with that, accepting that other higher powers could influence my life became elementary. I mean honestly, whether you believe in gravity or not, you had better pack a parachute when you decide to skydive. In AA, the 'higher power' axiom is the parachute. Nothing more. You do believe in a higher-self no? I mean to say, you understand that you own a conscience that guides you to do the best you can, even though you may not always live up to your own internal expectations? Your 'higher power' need not be anything more than your own conscience.

Thing is, AA is not Jesus Freak Central, no matter the picture that is so often painted. There are literally thousands of people in the program of AA who believe exactly as you and I do. Having said that, even within the walls of AA there are many who will try to massage and pervert the 12 steps until it becomes what it was never meant to become, a religious dogma. Honestly, AA is only about providing relief from the condition of chronic and hopeless alcoholism. Anyone telling you it's about Jesus, Allah, or green men from Mars is full of crap.

I do understand your point though ... each to their own and all that. If you don't think that AA is your bag, I strongly suggest you buy the book Rational Recovery by Jack Trimpkey and read it front to back a few times. Then, maybe you could take the crash course in AVRT (you can find links with google or by searching around here). I'd also suggest that once you read the book you join the ongoing AVRT thread here, which has a virtual Rational Recovery Yoda overseeing things, occasionally shedding some much needed light on the techniques of AVRT. His username is 'Terminally Unique'. I'd even be so bold as to suggest sending a private message to him, as he likely has some links and info that us mere mortals don't get access to.

I am somewhat involved in AA, even though I hated it for my entire life, having seen it fail my brother time and time again for over 30 years. It was only when I ran out of options, tried everything to no avail, and truly was begging the thin air around me for help that AA came to be my last possible hope. And that's when it helped me. After nothing else could. What I found when dropping the judgments and actually reading the Big Book is that it spoke to me as if it were written for me specifically. Within that perspective I came to see I had misjudged AA and what it was my entire life.

Now I use AA and AVRT, both pretty much equally. Once I opted out of the "my program is better than yours" happy horse$h!t, I quickly realized that both AA and Rational Recovery compliment each other very well.

Seeking out therapy is also highly useful for developing a program and learning the sober ropes. You mentioned you're looking in that direction? Well bro, find one, and don't stop until you do. That will definitely add to your armor. Try to find an addiction/alcoholism specialist, for obvious reasons.

My overall point for this long winded reply is: on your own you have come to a point of knowing full well your boozing sucks on an epic level. That's all well and good, but on your own it's usually not enough. Sorry, but I say that based on both my own experiences and by watching other alkies tank so many best laid plans. Eventually epiphanies fade, and moments of clarity become diluted as time and life get in the way. Eventually, once far enough removed from the pain and the anguish of past booze problems, we forget the poignancy, and given one overly uncomfortable moment we always fall back on the relief we have come to rely on - a drink or 20. So don't be that cliche amigo. Get help from everywhere where help is, which BTW, includes this forum.

Terminally Unique

Much as I might want to pretend that all of my insight came to me in a flash of inspiration, that is simply not the case. I read through the entire original RR forum archives, and there were several people who posted on there that I learned from. Unfortunately, I have no way of thanking them for their insight, but perhaps I can pass some of it along to others.

krimpoo

Thanks