Carly2332

Why do we keep going back to the very thing that has hurt us? That has made life harder...I don't know what to think anymore....I think I'm a pretty smart person, do well at work and all, but, I still want alcohol in my life....I mean, not consciously, subconciously...maybe....I never plan to drink, it just happens...and it's so stupid.....I'm really starting to feel weak...

Dee74

There wasn't much logic to my addiction Carly...not much rationality either.

That's why I think decisive action - making changes and gathering support...working hard to stay sober - worked for me, where years of trying to think my way out didn't really get me anywhere?

D

renaldo

I do the same thing. I think it's the pleasure principle... a desire for instant gratification. Once the proceedings are underway, you become tired, lose appetite and have irregular sleep.

I once posed the question here, "what's in it for the addictive voice?" If it kills its host body, it's got nowhere else to go. I think the addictive voice is not sentient. It's just a primal urge. It doesn't know you from a hole in the wall any more than hunger or thirst do.

Carly2332

Thank you Dee...I appreciate you acknowledging and giving advice...now it's up to me....

Wastinglife

It's baffling isn't it. Alcohol has brought nothing but destruction to my life, yet I still crave it like it's some holy elixir. I mean, if I had a friend that stole from me, got me in trouble with the law, and ruined my reputation with others, I would not want to see this friend ever again. Why can't I treat alcohol the same way? It's a powerful and cunning drug...

Carly2332

I've thought about this alot since the Connecticut school shooting...it's a horrible tragedy, yes....but maybe the human brain is so complex that we can't really rationalize some decisions....so many times, I've thought beforehand, and KNEW how things would end up....but in an instant, that's all forgotten...my ****** up brain...I wasn't born this way, this just happened, I guess brain's are powerful things, they control everything....somehow it tells me that it's "ok" to drink....I guess, it's just luck that I'm not a homicidal maniac....I am NOT making light of what has happened, just thinking....searching for answers...

awuh1

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wastinglife

Alcohol has brought nothing but destruction to my life, yet I still crave it like it's some holy elixir....

Such interesting language to use for alcohol. Alcohol has been referred to as a spirit for many hundreds of years, Why? Even AVRT refers to the “voice” of the “beast” lol. Why does this language seem so appropriate?

Here is a link to a letter from a world renowned psychiatrist to one of the first two members of AA. What is being talked about is somewhat difficult to decipher but the same “spiritual language” is present. A.A. History -- Dr. Carl Jung's Letter To Bill Wilson, Jan 30, 1961

instant

It is an addiction. It is not rational

hypochondriac

Wow, thanks for posting that Awuh. I like Jung x

Carly, I see it a bit like how people say if people could remember pain then women would never have more than one child. Even non alcoholics have this, the swearing you'll never drink again thing and then doing the same thing next weekend. It doesn't make you weak, it makes you human. I like that in the AVRT stuff it says (somewhere...) that your craving for alcohol is a sign of a normal healthy brain. Sometimes I feel like all this distress over 'what's wrong with me' makes us drink more. Accept that that is just the way you are wired and get some help not letting it happen again. There was a line in Augusten Burroughs book I really liked when his counsellor said something like 'treat your head as a dangerous place... never go there alone' x

tomsteve

for me it was insanity. there is nothing normal or healthy about craving alcohol for me. i dank because i am an alcoholic.

MIRecovery

Lots of research on the brain and addition. Addiction effects the limbic system which is the primal portion of our brain. Our wacked brains treat alcohol like, hunger, sex, flight or fight. It has the ability to over ride our logical part of the brain (pre-frontal cortex)

Tons of stuff that is interesting but unfortunately it does not stop you from drinking but at least it makes sense why we do the things we do.

http://jamescrossen.weebly.com/uploa...bic_system.pdf

Mafalda

Interesting discussion. For me I think before I drink, I have to in order to hold it together. To me it is a a very conscious thing, I weighed the pros and the cons in my mind. If I had to drive I drank less. If I have to do a lot of things to do the next day I drink less. If I'm on vacation then I drink more. I'm like a yo -yo. What worried me was that little by little I would start losing this sense of control and the day I noticed I lost control it might be too late.

ultrabunny

I agree with you Mafalda, I used to drink less if I had a busy day the next day or something important to do, but recently I've just been cancelling the meetings or pretending I was sick just so I could drink heavily that night.

It's the addiction progressing I think.

bbthumper

From chapter 3 of the Big Book...

"You may think this an extreme case. To us it is not far-fetched, for this kind of thinking has been characteristic of every single one of us. We have sometimes reflected more than Jim did upon the consequences. But there was always the curious mental phenomenon that parallel with our sound reasoning there inevitably ran some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink. Our sound reasoning failed to hold us in check. The insane idea won out. Next day we would ask ourselves, in all earnestness and sincerity, how it could have happened.
In some circumstances we have gone out deliberately to get drunk, feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy or the like. But even in this type of beginning we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened. We now see that when we began to drink deliberately, instead or casually, there was little serious or effective thought during the period of premeditation of what the terrific consequences might be."

A great chapter to read for some useful insight on the type of thinking that dominates an alcoholic and causes him or her to continuously return to drinking.

courage2

my alcoholic brain completely overrides my thinking when it's at work -- i'll decide not to drink, i'll walk past the liquor store, i won't go in, and 10 minutes later i'll find myself back there as if on autopilot -- like there was no decision to do so, like something else just took hold of me.