not2late

In the mornings I'm all in. I'm strong and confident that it will be a "dry" day. I'm not craving it. I'm not wanting it.
But then I go to work. It's busy and stressful. I'm getting older and my patience begins to wear thin with coworkers who are lazy and stupid. They run their mouths all day long and treat work like a social scene. By 5pm I'm so done with it all. Where is the morning confidence then? Drinking does not make work easier or stupid people smarter so it is a total waste of time money and effort...but still I must..in the recesses of my mind think it will calm my nerves and make things better.
This morning I'm fine..I just need to be ready for 5pm and know ahead of time what will happen and be ready for it. Ready to fight.

Are you a morning person?

Nonsensical

That was me for years and years. I quit every morning. I am not going to drink today. Then every evening I was stopping at the store on the way home and buying a little something. Just one more night, tomorrow I'll quit.

It eventually got worse for me. I needed to drink more and more in the evening to feel good. Then I started waking up still drunk and tippling just a little more in the morning. Maybe stopping for a bloody mary on my way to work. Maybe stuffing a few minis into my sock for something during the day. Keep a little beer in the car and take a ride at lunch time.

Find something else to do in the evenings. Something actually relaxing, not that thing that used to be relaxing. It's so much better.

jutam

every morning I quit.... every night I would drink... for years.... or every second day...
Just once more....
I will stop tomorrow...

thank god tomorrow actually came... :-)

FreeOwl

six months ago I was caught in that cycle.

It feels really really really REALLY good to be an ACTUAL morning person now.

A person who wakes to the birdsong and finds the beauty in the summer breeze coming through the window. A person who maybe reads a little with his coffee... maybe writes a little... maybe logs onto SR and spends a little time honoring sobriety and sharing with others on that path.

It feels incredibly good to be a morning person; clear-headed and peaceful and able to start the day with a smile, with gratitude, with goodness. Even on days where I'm feeling a little glum or have a bad cold.

When I was that other type of morning person.... I felt the cold hand of dread upon my chest when I woke. Shaking off the headache and the shaky remorse, I tried to gather myself for my day and shove my self-loathing and disappointment at having 'done it again' down as deep as I could. I tried to bravely soldier on as though it was just fine. I told myself.... TODAY, I won't drink.

Then one day, finally, I really didn't.

And the next.

And the next.

And on.....

And now. Now I really, truly LOVE being a morning person.

changeiscoming

Every morning I was strong. The guilt consumed me and I would vow not to drink again. I would actually say the night before while I was drinking that it would be the last time. The end of the day came and i needed it and I started the vicious cycle all over again. You hate it but you do it and it goes on and on until I jumped out of the circle.

forabetterlife

Yes, I am most definitely a morning person. Unless I am disgustingly hungover, making a commitment to not drink is easy as pie in the morning. Like you, once the afternoon rolls around, things change drastically. I am learning that all the morning promises, all the writing and reading about recovery, is great. But it all comes down to that moment. When drinking seems like the answer. Are we going to apply all that we read and write? Are we going to honor our morning commitment? Or can we ride out the craving, realize that it's all part of the process, be uncomfortable for a few hours or less? If we do that, we can wake up in the morning feeling better than ever. If we don't, the cycle continues.
Stay strong, keep busy, go to bed early, honor your commitment. It is so worth it.

badger1172

It's just the opposite for me. For years on my days off I would start drinking early so I'm shakiest in the morning - even today. If I can just get to 2 or 4pm I'm okay, but different for all of us I suspect. Stay strong!

doggonecarl

It is in the recesses of your mind that alcohol calms, or rather, sooths, the receptors in your brain screaming for relief.

I always thought I needed that first beer to relax from work...but that didn't explain the beers I drank on weekends, or the 6, 8, or 10 that followed that first "work day" beer.

What I realized was what the first beer did was end the withdrawals I was going through but "called" stress because I didn't want to recognize the depth of my problem. What I called calming was really alcohol dependence.

hokey

I did that for a long time too ... used stress at work as an excuse for drinking. What about days off? And vacation time when I was away from work? I found another reason to drink if I couldn't use stress as a reason. The reason I drank is because I'm an alcoholic. Blaming it on stress at work seemed an easy out rather than admitting that I couldn't quit.

I've got three weeks sobriety now and a big part of my recovery plan is to just let things go. I say the Serenity Prayer before I walk into work, sometimes in the middle of the day. Like you said, drinking won't make anyone less lazy or stupid, but it's not my problem to solve. It's not my problem period. I go to work and do my job (which I do much better now that I am sober, might I add) ... and I don't worry about other people's issues because I can't change them, I can only change myself.

It's helped me immensely to understand this, it makes my life much simpler and takes that trigger out of the equation. One less thing to feed the hungry monster in my head that wants me to drink. Holly-1 , AV-0

Good luck on your journey!

SonomaGal

It's funny you should write this. I like to say I am two people, morning-me, and evening-me. Evening-me thought drinking would make work problems better, morning-me hated drinking and could barely function because of evening-me's stupid drinking. Since quitting morning-me is elated, evening-me is getting there too.

huntingtontx

I could have written this a year ago. It was so easy to tell myself every morning I was through with alcohol, but by evening, well, I deserved it. I put up with stupid people all day, I worked at a male max prison. and I deserved it, right? Life is so much better without alcohol. It did not make people smarter, but I feel smarter for quitting.

PurpleKnight

This is where we need to find a substitute for dealing with the stresses of life, we used alcohol before but rather than turning to it again, we need to find a new way forward or relapse will be inevitable.

Non drinkers find ways to de stress, so it can be done!!