Syn3rgistic

“Drinking robs you of ambition, but it can temporarily turn an ordinary circumstance into an extraordinary one. However, if it is extraordinary circumstances you are seeking, then you need ambition. “ - Syn3ergistic

This is something I wrote tonight and I wanted to share. I'll let you interpret it yourselves.

Hope everyone is gearing up for a sober weekend!

Cheers,

Syn

Syn3rgistic

Any comments or questions?

Hopefully this helps someone like myself who could be categorized as the "alone and bored" drinker

sva777

For me, I don't think drinking turned any experience into an extraordinary experience. More it just fooled me into thinking that it did.

Syn3rgistic

I don't think I see the point in your statement. If a variable alters an ordinary experience to make it extraordinary, the experience is altered regardless of how it's viewed in hindsight.

Try this analogy. I'm selling you a car. The car's price is $20,000 dollars. It's a fair price, it's an ordinary price. We are getting ready to sign over the title, and I say you know what. I'll give it to you for 18,000. Now the price is extraordinary. Here you thought you were about to pay 20,000 dollars and now you only have to pay 18,000. Now, what was an ordinary experience turned extraordinary. I'm sure you are very happy with the new price. We sign over the car and then I tell you "well to be truthful, I bought the car for 16,000, so I'm still making money on what I thought was going to be a depreciating asset." Knowing what I paid for the car only changes your perception in hindsight, and it's biased. It doesn't change the fact that you were excited to save 2,000 dollars.

Alcohol is the same way. Knowing that alcohol is a problem for us alcoholics/ problem drinkers, and knowing that if we do not remain sober, it could end up killing us. Doesn't change the fact that the effects were desirable while we were using. For me, it was taking a mundane night and turning it into something better. If drinking didn't turn ordinary experience extraordinary, then it wouldn't be addictive. There would be no point in doing it ever, let alone becoming dependent on it. If drinking was utterly terrible, this forum wouldn't exist. People don't get addicted to sticking paperclips into electric sockets- even low voltage ones.

sva777

I stand by my statement.

It is my opinion and we can have a difference and agree on that.

ScottFromWI

Initially alcohol improved my mood, but towards the end of my drinking days the only thing it made "extraordinary" was my misery. I didn't drink to feel good, I drank because I needed to in order to avoid heart palpitations and withdrawals.

Syn3rgistic

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that certainly doesn't mean that some opinions aren't better than others.

For me, alcohol was desirable, too desirable. That was the problem. It did not fool me, it did not trick me, for it doesn't have the intelligence to do so. I fooled myself into thinking that as I enjoyed night after night of debauchery my ambition would remain intact, but I was wrong. I have no fear of admitting that I enjoyed nearly every moment I was drunk, but eventually that meant that every sober moment was torturous. I find now that in order to have extraordinary experiences again without alcohol, I need ambition to make those experiences happen--- so it's a good thing I'm not drinking, because drinking robbed me of my ambition.

Jsbodhi

Alcohol ruined many extrodinary experiences for me.
I backpacked across Asia and wasted some of the experience by being drunk or hungover, if I could go back I would rather have been sober.
I also didn't enjoy being drunk, hated it in fact- I liked being tipsy after a couple drinks, but I could never stop at that.
I also blacked out, so I don't even remember many nights of my life because of drinking. So I feel I was robbing myself with alcohol, not adding to an experience, I was actually dulling it or flat out ruining it.

Jsbodhi

. Never mind

letitgo

I still had a lot of ambition when i drank. Unless i was hungover. The alcohol tricked me into thinking experiances were extraordinary while drunk. This was not always the case. Drinking was not always pleasurable either.

Everyone has their own thoughts and opinions. I dont think anyone was saying an opinion is better or worse. Just a personal thought or choice.

wehav2day

The car isn't going to kill you...

I have to say for me, alcohol made certain situations SEEM extraordinary. A great conversation, a friendship, a spectacular night. When I look at those exact times with sober eyes, I realize it was just me thinking it was great at the time, because my mind was altered.

I don't want my mind to be altered anymore, so I no longer look at drinking with fondness. I learned to have extraordinary conversations and evenings while in my right mind, with no deception. It's pretty great.

In terms of life goals, I was steady while drinking... I had a great job, a roof over my head, a partner, even though that was starting to go south.

Now I have a great job with the respect of my peers, I have a marriage, and we are buying our dream house that we can actually afford because I'm not drinking my salary.

Yep, this life waaaaaay better.

esinger

In my experience, alcohol certainly turned what should have been ordinary circumstances into extraordinarily stupid ones.

Dee74

LOL You can think that way if you like - but, really, you're trying to attach a objective empirical value to what is a subjective thing..


Seems like I, and maybe a few others, were on a different point of the addictive trajectory than you were.

my experience is I drank way past enjoyment...my drinking became functional.

There was nothing extraordinary about it by the end.

That doesn't make my experience or my opinion better than yours or anyone else's - it just makes it different

D

Soberwolf

How would you interpret this if I presented this to you on a sobriety forum it sounds like your AV is running circles round you Syn

An ordinary day in my life was falling asleep drunk let's not glamorise that

An extraordinary day in my life while drinking never happened think about what your saying here bud

We got sober for a reason

Aellyce

I can easily associate to that statement in the OP. Drinking definitely made lots and lots of my experiences extreme and very convoluted, both internally (how I felt about them) and often what actually happened. We can definitely call those "extraordinary" in the literal sense of the word, and my sober life does not have those kinds of extremes at all. I feel that what some of the comments contained here were interpretations where "extraordinary" would have a similar connotation as exciting or fascinating... suggesting something positive. Obviously people who are committed to sobriety and have experienced many improvements in recovery will likely not react to it in agreement if it's interpreted that way.

I think that many of us, especially in early sobriety, look back at our drinking life as somehow more intense or interesting and the sober days may seem a little flat in comparison. There have been many posts discussing this here on SR and it's usually interpreted as someone questioning the worth and quality of sober life.

For me, there were definitely plenty of out-of-the-ordinary events and feelings in my active alcoholism that would never happen sober, and I mean this without a qualifier. That lifestyle also made me dream about things that were far beyond the boundaries of reality -- I perceived them as great ambition back then but of course nothing would come of them, simply because they were mostly otherwordly fantasies. I spent my time making and cultivating those while neglecting real, normal possibilities and challenges. And then lost quite a few opportunities due to my being stuck in that crazy fantasy world. Lost important relationships that had true potential and while some things could be repaired later, the opportunities of that phase were gone. It definitely dulled every realistic, decent ambition and inspiration as well, to the point that I became extremely desperate, disconnected, and hopeless in that self-created fantasy world. I needed quite some time in sobriety to find my way and to start using my creativity in constructive ways again, to move on from a state of existential angst.

Now, nearly 2 years sober, I definitely feel that my current life is way beyond my prior expectations, but without the extremes and especially, extreme amplitudes. I feel that I am far more able to find / create great opportunities as well. There is definitely ambition, but it's different now, even from my pre-drinking times.

These are some of the subjective things that came to my mind.

Syn3rgistic

I agree, that is why I was very particular with the language. Most sober people seem to remember what alcohol was like at the end. Which is a useful tool to not going back to it. I've been in both boats.... I've been in the time in my life where by 3pm I was shaking and sweating and anxious and felt like I was going to die if I didn't have a drink.
I also have been (more recently, this year) in the situation where. I no longer needed to drink to function. It was purely a tool to help with my boredom (much like it was when I first started drinking).
I've seemed to undergo, maybe not unusual, but certainly not an expected inverted U curve of drinking. I started in 2011 very slowly and rose up to daily drinking in 2012, by 2013 I was miserable drinking high volumes every day, 2014, I calmed down and was drinking on weekends, and this year It's been every few weeks and then I quit.... one of the reasons I'm quitting is because I lost my ambition.

Syn3rgistic

This is fair. I mean if you are already having an extraordinary experience (backpacking, at least for me, is my favorite thing to do on this planet) pouring booze on top of that could ruin it. My quote was referring to those nights where you are sitting alone, and it's just you and the cat.......bored..... of course one thing to remember is that backpacking takes money, and money is earned by being ambitious.

Syn3rgistic

I replied to Scott in more detail, but it seems my words are relevant to me now, or at least in the past few months, where I hadn't been drinking on the daily. I hadn't been drinking to escape withdrawal. So I can see your point, because I definitely had my time where I was drinking around the clock to escape withdrawal and these words do not fit that experience.... except for the drinking robs you of ambition part.... that I think for most of us is true.

This is a bit off topic, but subjective statements can be evaluated with logic. All opinions are subject to a level of correctness as well. The scapegoat of "well it's just my opinion" is one that I seem to encounter far too often. It seems to me what that statement is really saying is "my opinion might be incorrect, but I have no more evidence to support the contrary so I will just say that it's my opinion and therefore it holds some inherent value because it's mine" Which is not true. "It is my opinion that 2+2 =5" Even though I'm clearly incorrect, or at least, have not provided good evidence for why my subjective experience tells me 2+2= 5 it is still my opinion so therefore in my eyes it's valid.

Well, everyone is entitled to their opinion but some opinions are better/more correct than others.

Syn3rgistic

I'm a bit ambivalent about this post.
If you are saying the car isn't going to kill you then you missed the point of the analogy completely. Of course the car isn't going to kill you, we are talking about hindsight bias. Again, you seem to disagree with me on a fundamental level. If alcohol made certain situations SEEM extraordinary. What is the evidence that they weren't? I would argue that the alcohol made the night extraordinary. Becoming an alcoholic, having it almost kill you, learning to live a sober life and going through recovery makes you look at those situations with biased eyes. The quote that I had in my OP is in the future/present tense. It's not talking about the past or how your new experiences may alter your memory.
Going back to the car analogy.... even if the car almost kills you.... IT DOESN'T CHANGE THE FACT THAT YOU ENJOYED SAVING 2000 DOLLARS ON THE PRICE... Not yelling I just wanted to emphasize my point because it obviously wasn't clear the first time.

As for not wanting your mind to be altered, and the success you've had living sober, I applaud you. I am in the same boat. I want to have extraordinary experiences without the help of alcohol, and now I have the ambition to do that.

Dee74

I'm glad we agree, or at least I think we do

As I suspected in my previous post, our experiences are very different.

However you get there, and however you stay there, I wish you well with quit for good

D