crisco

Hello,

I am Chris and an alcoholic. I am in early recovery after a 3rd relapse. Recently, I have tried to work 9-10 hours a day at work and work the weekends, but I believing that working overtime is interfering with my recovery.

I have recently start to attend less meetings than normal and stopped exercising since I have been try to work 9-10 hours a day plus working Saturday and Sundays. I also recently experienced a relapse after six months because I had panic attacks that were unbearable to cope without resorting to alcohol.

I have not came to the point in my mind where I realized that I should only work 8 hours on Monday-Friday and 4-6 hours on Saturday and Sunday. I can work seven days a weeks, but there are daily limits to the amount of work that I can work per day. By limiting the amount of hours that I work,it gives me to attend meetings and exercise on a daily basis.

I guess the point of this post is that I need to stop thinking that I can work 8 hours a day and that my body has limits. Sure, I can work seven days a week to accomplish the mission of my job, but my hours on the weekend need to be limited. Therefore, I should not work a total of no more than 52 hours in a week and not work any over time on Monday through Friday.

unentschieden

Its all about balance and limits, crisco. I also work too much, well until drinking was more important and then my work suffered for months.

Now that I'm sober I've had to put in long hours to catch up, and it is very gratifying to be getting stuff done.

But! I am also going to yoga every day to ensure that I'm working at me.

I set goals, reasonable daily goals for work, and stop when thats done. My work is still there for me the next morning.

Fenris

I've heard it said a lot that anything you put ahead of your recovery is the first thing you'll lose and I've tried to keep that in mind any time I'm tempted to set my sobriety at a lower priority than anything else. In the end, the things that help keep me sober, like going to meetings and getting together with my sponsor, or taking weeks last year to go to rehab and outpatient therapy, take up time that I would spend with my family, but not nearly as much time as drinking did.

Dee74

if there's one thing I've learned Chris it's I need balance.
An unbalanced load is likely to topple over.

D

sugarbear1

Everyone needs some real rest and time to themselves. I tend to overdo one thing.... As stated, balance is crucial. Remember meetings are important, but the solution is stepwork, prayer & meditation. Try adding those, specifically the steps!

Keep Staying Stopped!

MsJax

Hi Chris. That does sound like a lot of hours. Do you work for yourself? Set the schedule? I work for myself & often overdo it just to pay the bills. Labor costs are so very high. If you work for someone else they may not even want to be paying you overtime at all. More info needed!

Like the others said, balance is needed! One thing I have noticed about myself is that sometimes when there is something going on that I really don't want to do or am uncomfortable doing, I will use "have to work" as an excuse. Are you doing this at all by working so many hours?

Please let us know how you are doing I try not to complain too much about work because as maddening as it is it allows me to live a decent life depending only on me. I like that. Ask yourself what you need and how can you get it and are you self-sabotaging/being a martyr at all with work, or are you just working tons to clear up bills and debt. Very best wishes to you!

keithj

If exercise and a proper work schedule can keep you from drinking, more power to you. I needed something much more fundamental (12 Steps of AA), and spent many years trying to arrange the outside circumstances (like work and exercise and relationships and friends and free time and blah blah blah) of my life so that I wouldn't have to drink. It never worked for me.

Recovery ended up happening from the inside out. The rest was just me playing some games, thinking all those issues 'out there' were what was making me drink. I was very wrong about that.

Anna

I agree with you, Crisco, that a more balanced life would be a good idea. I find that exercising regularly is helpful, and so is taking some time to be quiet with myself.