sydneyman

So acter 27 days sober I had a corona beer at xmas lunch.. First i have to say the beer was warm and honestly never been a beer drinker. It tasted pretty vile and it took me 1/2 hr to drink it. That was it did not want another so left it at that.. So I guess I have relapsed in a sense and need to start all over again? Tomorrow would have been 4 weeks sober but do I now look at it as day 1 again? I guess technically it should be a new start. I must say peer pressure ( i know) the whole xmas atmosphere let my guard down.. I myself do not consider myself being a failure but that I had a bump in the road. Is it going to get me from my chosen path, hell no.. So I guess I could say tomorrow is day 28/1 ..

PurpleKnight

Don't beat yourself up!!

Rather look at the reasons why you decided to have a beer, learn from it and keep moving forward!!

sydneyman

I did learn from it.... And I can chose 2 paths to be angry at myself get negative dissapointed= start the cycle again or say hey I shouldnt have done that but didnt like it , so move on and keep going. I have chosen the latter.. I am
I am still looking at day 28 tomorrow for myself to keep going... All
My family and friends are snoring their drinks and xmas day lunches away. I am sun baking in the garden Enjoying mineral water and reading SR.. Thinking about it now baving that one beer was really
Pathetic of me and I wish I could go and delete what happened 2 hrs ago.. But I am
Not going to dwell just move on...

sydneyman

And not dri k more ��

Nic233

Merry Christmas :-) try not to be too hard on yourself

Dee74

My early new years resolution is to not tell people what they should do re counting days.
Be true to yourself is my only word of guidance

I'm sorry you took that beer but I'm thrilled it wasn't the start of a binge or a bender. You were lucky

D

ubntubnt

Hi SM.....I also relapsed recently after 28 days which was my longest sober streak in 27 years. Losing those days was really painful. I immediately started again and am here on day 12 now. The whole point of losing the days is that is supposed to be painful and partly to stop those minor relapses....that it didn't lead to a bender is not the point, the point is that you allowed your AV to talk you into drinking. Are you saying that you will only reset if a beer leads to a bender? If you had one beer tomorrow would you reset? What about two?
Don't beat yourself up about it but suck it up too..you drank. Now it time to move on. Well done on the 28 days, go on now to beat that this time.

Dee74

about 'losing days'...the days are not really the prize...

what we learn and what we accomplish is...

nothing can take that away from us - unless we choose to throw it away.

D

Inchworm

I like that ^^^^^^, Dee

Donnylutz

You had 1 beer, not something you really wanted to do, but you did. Look at the positives, you only had one!!! Don't beat yourself up about it, applaud yourself for stopping and jumping on here and forcing yourself to think about it! You learned more tools that will help you stay sober. Focus on the positives!!!!!!!!! And as far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't change my "sober date" over one drink. We're sober for life right? Well, we can't be perfect all the time, we learn from our mistakes and move on, and this, all in all, wasn't a very big mistake.

Happy Holidays!

Creekryder

I feel counting days sometimes gives us false sense about our status of sobriety. If we slip, many times we feel like we failed. That just isn't true. It isn't that we have to start over again, we simply continue on with abstinence. The past is gone and doesn't have anything to with the present.

Donnylutz

Double Post :-(

SoberComposer

Like many here said.. stay positive because you learned and it didn't go any further. There are so many wise people here, I love it. I would consider yourself lucky that it didn't go any further.. I doubt I would be as lucky.

Kallistia

I looked at it this way...in the beginning it was rough...I did think "it's been five days, a couple drinks won't hurt" - which of course turned into the entire six pack. On day six I counted it as five days sober, one day not, called it progress and pushed on.

Maybe not the best way to look at it but I wasn't going to discredit progress I had made over a temporary lapse in judgment and I didn't allow it to completely knock me off my path.

Have I drank since then? Yes...but there are many many more days of non drinking than temporary relapses (including a two week lost control binge). I'm going to trip and stumble, I'm going to have a moment of weakness and errors in judgment when I get overconfident or a new and unexpected trigger pops up. However, at the end, there are more sober days than drunk days, and the periods in between are growing longer and longer. Eventually the beast will be subdued.

I apologize if that doesn't make sense, but it's how I view my own recovery and helps me to keep from beating myself up.

Altoids

THIS! As far as what you should do, nobody can say. For me, I don't count days at all. None of that matters to me. All that matters is today.

Now, I must admit, that doesn't fly well in the AA circles I have. They seem to think that "how many days" is the be all and end all of sobriety. What matters to me is that I live today, the only day I have, with joy, gratitude, love and taking care of me and my family.

Nuudawn

Although I should probably lean into what Dee is saying..and zip it. It seems...well, weird to me ..that if "day count" is a big deal to you that you are devising some sort of personal loophole.

I suppose it depends on what those 28 days represent? Its not 28 days without alcohol in your system. It is not 28 days of saying "no" and abstaining from triggers yadda yadda.

But is it 28 days of progress in sobriety? Yes, I think so...as long as it was an isolated lapse in judgment.

As PK says, it's stumble and one can certainly dust themselves off ...jump back on the horse and ride.

Transformation is a process. Keep on keepin' on.

JanieJ

I think that the important thing is that you stopped after one and posted about it.

That is honestly, my friend.

Merry Christmas !

downtown3

Look at it in the aggregate not a continuous string or perhaps a ratio. Of course not drinking is the goal but when you can look back and say i was sober 364 days out of 365 or 99.7% days this year, I would say thats pretty damn good. You are doing this for your health and mental well being not simply to reach milestones.

If i was to plot my total units of alcohol consumed, over my entire drinking career per year - the chart would look like a jagged bell curve. It didn't simply peak and fall to zero in 1 day. It was a gradual decline that took me 7 years from the first time i said to myself, "i need to stop drinking". Everyone's time range is different but all our graphs look the same. A constant decline in overall volume till one day it sticks for good. Sobriety stints last longer, relapses are shorter. You are on the right track and moving toward your inevitable goal - sobriety.

Great work! and Merry Christmas =)

Soberwolf

This

Elodie

Congratulations on using this slip to strengthen your resolve! 27 out of 28 days is awesome!

You have to do what feels right for you. Speaking for myself only, I'd rather say I have X amount of consecutive days, rather than Y days with a little mental asterisk next to it. But that's just me.

More important than the days, I think, even though you said you didn't enjoy the drink, it would behoove you to really go back and analyze what made you choose to have that drink. Think about how you were feeling, what you were thinking, any mental dialogue going on, etc., so that next time you're in a similar situation you can do something different and not pick up that drink.

27 days is still really early sobriety, and this time of year is rife with opportunities to derail our mental resolve. Stay strong!

And again, congratulations on the sober time.