laxd44

Back to day one. How many day ones till I know better? I got some bad news about my buddy brett so guess what I did I drank like that's going to help anything. I'm an alcoholic and I've been one for as long as I can remember. I used to be the happy go lucky drunk but, now I'm the sad/creepy/alone/blacked out drunk. When did you know it was your last day one or dose anyone really know?

Soberwolf

Hi Laxd i woke up one day & just knew what i had to do it was either that or die have you got a sober plan

the key thing is acceptance

laxd44

I've never made a sober plan. I guess that's why I always fail. I think my first step is to talk to my doctor about getting and staying sober. I've always lied to my doctor about my drug/alcohol use for some reason I'm scared to be labeled an addict even tho that's what I am.

Soberwolf

Maybe its time to be honest with your Dr about whats happening

having a plan helps

least

Sorry to say I've had more than my share of day ones. But the last one, over five years ago, was the morning I woke up so sick I thought I would die. I said NO MORE. And I've been sober since.

One thing that helped me feel secure in my sobriety was being grateful every day. Each day find at least one thing to be grateful for. It gave me a whole new outlook on life and put me in a positive mood. Try it. Try a little gratitude. A little goes a long way.

fini

lax,
too many day 1's to count. a gazillion.
and on my last one i knew. that was years ago.

don't give up; if you don't have a day 1 at all, it can't be your last.

strategery

I think part of it is being tired of day 1's and realizing the drinking is not worth it.

With my last day one, the one night of drinking was not worth the 2 weeks of cravings that ensued. After that, I swore I would not pick up again since I did not want to go that again.

sva777

The last for me was pretty much the same as what has been said. I was tired of feeling so awful after drinking, I mean miserable for days. I just came to think why am I doing this, why am I putting myself in this agony. The fun had been over for years with booze but it took a while to notice.

laxd44

Im happy you said that sva777. The fun is definitely over for me and has been for sometime. I can't remember the last time I said "man I had fun last night" when drinking was involved. Now its "what the F happened last night and are the cops looking for me?".

MelindaFlowers

I knew it was my last day one when I had the worst hangover known to man. I had been hungover every single day for the past four years or so at this point. You read that right. There was not one day when I was no hungover. I would drink that night to cure the hangover and then have a hangover the next day and continue the cycle day after day after day after day. I really don't know how I lasted so long.

I'd look at people (everyone I know basically) every time I was with them and think Wow. They're not hungover. They're smiling. They're doing stuff. They're not ******* hungover. I wanted what they had. Oh, and they didn't obsess about drinking all the time. They just lived their lives normally without the thousand pound ape of addiction on their freakin' back all the time.

I would like to say that it was the serious health diagnosis I got that made me stop but nope. It was the hangovers. I could not DO ONE MORE HANGOVER.

Nathantas

My last day one was when I woke up depressed and crying, sweating, shaking covered in blood and couldn't remember the last two months of my life.

That scared me, to say the least...

I'm aiming for day 30, because then day 60 is after that, I know if I drink just one beer, that could kill me. I'm not playing roulette with my life any more and that makes me smile.

Keep trying, keep on keeping on, if I can do it, you can too!

itstheone

Unfortunately myself like many others didn't have a say in the matter..That day was chosen for me so to speak.

MythOfSisyphus

I guess I've had 1.5 day-ones. About fifteen years ago I had a bit of a scare from an incident that arose from my drinking; it spooked me enough to make me quit...for awhile. I decided to take a break from drinking, and I made it several months before I decided I must not be an alkie after all.

Really I've only had one day one where I really meant to leave the bottle forever. That was almost 2 and a half years ago now.

RevivingOphelia

yep. me too.

sobermax

Having had countless ´day 1s´I quite suddenly had the conviction that I just didn´t have another recovery in me. Couldn´t face another round of talking myself up and convincing myself that this time it would be different while all the time knowing that the next bender was around the corner.

I made a plan & stuck to it.

Bottom line - ´the gift of desperation´that I´ve heard AA people talk about. I really, really wanted to be sober.

mns1

Like many others, I just woke up one morning feeling like death and I just knew I had to stop or it would bring me down.

But who says you need to get to that point to stop?

IOAA2

Hi.
I had been going to AA meetings for quite awhile and “didn’t get it.” I knew I was an alcoholic BUT not many bad things had happened to me YET.

I started noticing that my values were lowered when I drank= I didn’t care about certain things, I started taking sick days, was feeling unsettled for longer periods of time and a few other signposts.

My recovery started when I stopped picking up the first drink even when I wanted one and when I became serious about not drinking one day at a time in a row.

BE WELL

nymets86

I'm just on Day 22 in my 2nd real attempt at getting sober. I think a countless number of times I've said "never again" while suffering a massive hangover or having crippling anxiety (not so much a panic attack, which I don't think I've ever had, but horrific anxiety) after a blackout and not knowing what I'd done, what I'd said, etc, but as soon as the effects wore off, my mindset shifted straight back to drinking. I'd always convince myself that since I didn't drink every day, I had control over it, or if I went out and didn't blackout, that I'd discovered not to moderate.

This most recent Day 1 has been my strongest yet. I don't think it's just "Day 1," though. I attribute a lot of this 22 days to really focusing on sobriety and taking a portion of my day to reflecting on my past drinking problems and thinking about how to not drink in the future. My Day 1 last summer faded after about 2 weeks and I stopped posting here and stopped remaining vigilant. I convinced myself I could moderate and that social settings where people were drinking would be intolerable without booze. That line of thinking just got me right back into my old drinking pattern.

I hope that Feb 19th was my last Day 1, but if not, I'm building up as many sober skills as possible right now so that having to reset the counter doesn't come 7.5 months later, like what happened to me last time.

I'm not sure if that's a bad mindset (the idea that I might screw up and relapse), but I think it's a realistic mindset and then if it happens, I'll have game planned for it.