helpimalive

Because this girl I'm arguing with is just not listening to me. By which I mean me. I am not listening to me.

I know that most of me knows I can’t drink. But there’s still too much of me that doesn’t know that. There is so much of me left that can’t stop coming up with reasons it’s okay.

Reasons like the following … someone help me figure out if this stuff is ********, please:

--I don’t really have a problem with alcohol. I just want to believe I do because then I have an explanation for what’s wrong with me. Or I just want to believe I do because then it’s not really my fault my life is ****. Or I just want to believe I do because then I have an identity I can tolerate; “alcoholic” is so much neater and cleaner than “reclusive young woman approaching middle age who is bad at her job and can’t even perform basic life functions because she would prefer to lay in bed.” It’s lying to myself to say I have a problem with alcohol.

--One of my main motivations for wanting to quit is it makes me tired and foggy all the time, and that means I never accomplish or do anything (like at all). But that’s not a good enough reason to quit! That’s just my weakness showing. A strong person could drink the way I do AND accomplish things. I’ve just got to be stronger and push on through better, even though I never have before. Tomorrow will be different!

--I’ve always been bad at life, at getting things done, at following through on anything. I’ll never amount to anything, I’ll never make any friends, I’ll never accomplish anything. So why deny myself the only pleasure I’m capable of experiencing, i.e., booze?

Could any of that be right?

I'm sorry this post is long also frankly terrifyingly self involved. Tell me to get lost if you want to.

Soberwolf

This is a combination of no self worth mixed with self pity and your AV is thriving in this enviorment

((((()))))

Its not right you kicking the crap out of you i think the opposite only diffrence is i dont think i know your worth it

have you tried our 24 hour thread youl find so much support http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...t-22-a-21.html

there is an online topical meeting in 38 mins in chat its so nice your very welcome to join us its very beneficial

Mountainmanbob

I'm the one that I need to keep an eye on.

No one has deceived me more than myself.

This may also ring a bell with you ??

MM

Jipsee

Wow, for a minute I thought I wrote this. Well, until I got to the "reclusive young woman approaching middle age". I've hit middle age and it's not so bad. We can do what we choose to do, even if it requires professional help. Best to you young woman.

helpimalive

I guess it is that. Not that I know what to do about it.

I'd join the chat, but I'm on mobile, at work because election night. Which makes the fact that I want a drink even worse. It wouldn't at all be the first time I drank at work.

Hawks

You are very self aware helpimalive.

Drink causes problems of its own, but life is unbearable without it.

The classic alcoholic dilemma.

drinking is causing its own pain ...

but reality / life / jobs / families / people are so painful that a drink is an easy & simple way to obtain relief.

You can probably go a few days or maybe a week without a drink, but then some-one or something upsets you & a drink gets rid of the upset .... Sound familiar ?

So the reality is that you have a two fold problem.

Alcohol & life itself.

Rock & a hard place.

This guy describes the sensitivity of an alcoholic beautifully.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaMQj53TDZg

helpimalive

JESUS CHRIST that recording is a gift. Is that really how it is? Is that really a way other people who call themselves alcoholics see things?

Thank you.

MavisTheFairy13

I was the same, always had low confidence and self esteem, I'm a bit of a loner. Tend not to push myself to do new things for fear of messing up or rejection. I thought that alcohol was the only thing making me feel happy. That I couldn't socialise without it. It's taken a long time to realise that alcohol was stuffing down my emotions and stopping me from developing as a person. I was literally going round in circles. You will get there, you've come to the right place. The support here is wonderful

Dee74

Hi helpimalive

I recommend you commit to not drinking for a decent amount of time - 60 or 90 days - you'll soon find out if you have an alcohol problem...but you'll also get a clearer perspective on who you are and what you want from life, I think?

It can be a bit of a trudge to get there - years of drinking leaves its mark and it takes a while to recuperate - but it really is worth it

D

Hawks

Clancy Ismislund is about the most self realised alcoholic alive today as far as I'm concerned.

He is old enough to have met most of the pioneers, Bill Wilson included.

Listening to him has been a revelation to me.

Glad you got something out of it

JanieJ

Hi, I'malive

I did wonder whether I was going to AA meetings just to create another drama for myself, and whether I don't really have a problem, and was just using it as another excuse to procrastinate !

Anyone who knows me would tell you I'm outgoing and confident, but it's a front. A coping mechanism. I'm fairly reclusive and introverted.


Introversion | Psychology Today

x

JanieJ

Thank you so much for the link, Hawks. Amazing

Hawks

U Your welcome Janie

One of the guys at my home group was sponsored by Clancy.

He's Australian, and lives here now, but got sober in Los Angeles.

He put me onto the talks by Clancy.

Joe Nerv

If I drink, I have no chance of getting or feeling better about anything involving me. So long as I don't drink, I feel anything is possible. I believe that with all my heart and soul. Black and white. If I drink I'm going downhill, sober uphill.

I drank because I couldn't function in the world. For a very short while alcohol made me feel better about myself and gave me all I ever felt I was missing, so that I could function and enjoy life more than I ever did. Then it took all that away from me, and lied to me having me think it was all I had in the world to hold onto and keep me sane. All during that time alcohol was actually stealing my life from me, while working daily to make me completely insane and full of fear. It did a great job of that, so much so that when I finally had to put the drink down or die, I believed that alcohol was the very least of my problems, and in fact the only thread that sill held what was left of me together. Everything else, including a phobia to even walk out my front door held a lot more weight than my alcohol problem. How insidious.

For me, and the majority of people with an alcohol problem, just putting the drink down is not only next to impossible... it doesn't really help matters a whole lot. Often just makes them worse. What does help, is getting some sort of help after putting the drink down to learn to live as people who don't need, nor want to drink anymore. AA helped me with that big time. It gave me some simple guidelines to live a much more peaceful and happy alcohol free life (the 12 steps), lots of practical advice on staying away from that first drink, tons and tons of support, and a living, breathing social network of awesome people outside the only other world I knew - for which drinking was the only social activity. I dove head first into AA, and it pretty much became my whole world (the way alcohol had become my world), for the first couple of years. I've since started and graduated college, became self supporting, became a landlord (that one still freaks me out a bit), landed a job teaching HS, married an awesome woman, traveled lot of parts of the world, lived out some of my lifelong dreams and fantasies, experienced things that were never even on my radar... I could go on and on and on. There's a really wonderful alcohol free world out there waiting for even the sickest, craziest, most anxiety ridden and depressed of us. We just have to want it badly enough, and be open minded and willing enough to change. So long as I kept drinking there was no way any of that was going to happen.

I wish you the best in your choices. Trust me when I tell you it absolutely can be done, and it's more than worth whatever sacrifices it at first feels like you might be making.

Tang

This is one of the best threads I've read and does a wonderful job of summing up the alcohol abusers conundrum. Thank you all!

helpimalive

Dee, I'm committed to not drinking, like, for the next hour. So there's that. I've made myself so many promises, I don't know if I can contemplate more than that right now. For someone like me, being "committed" to something is basically meaningless anyway at this point so. Ya know. But I'm trying. I want to commit to the next hour when this ones over.

Joe Nerv, thank you. That sounds so wonderful. Something to wish I could do, too.

I'm extremely glad I posted that stuff. Those truly are my main arguments against myself (to myself?) for why I should drink. And between the reaction they got from y'all, putting them to words, and that link Hawks sent, I am looking at them a lot more quizzically than I was when I wrote them down. Honestly it's a little like my arguments for drinking have been magically transmogrified into arguments for *not* drinking. I think I'll save this thread for whenever I need it. And/or come back to it and rant more later. If I had anything coherent to add right now I would, but I just have Thank You All.

LBrain

Something I just thought about: If you want to quit drinking but find it difficult to quit, then it's time to quit.

EndGameNYC

Any and all of what you commented on could be "right." But there's no way to know this, or to make any meaningful changes, unless you get sober.

Not worth the risk? Then your perceptions around who you are remain your reality.

helpimalive

Haha, then it was time to quit when I started, pretty much.

freshstart57

This ambivalence, the internal argument you are having, is the defining characteristic of addiction. You can understand its source and a very effective way of dealing with it by looking at Rational Recovery and AVRT. You have seen the term AV or 'addictive voice' used here in this thread. Rational Recovery is the source of that term, and offers a solution.

I suggest you take a look at that, and see if you find it helpful.