uncle holmes

My sponsor once told me when I was in early sobriety that it may take up to 5 years to get my marbles back and then up to another 5 years on how to use them!

Even in early sobriety if we get a sponsor, work through the 12 steps, get to as many meetings as possible....Is it possible to return to normal (or get all our marbles back) if we drank and/or did drugs all those years and were really messed up?

I'm leaning on the theory that yes, many people can get well and show great improvement in those first few years by staying sober, sponsorship, working the 12 steps, many meetings.

But from my experience it also took many years (5-10) to really get my marbles back and know how to use them after being messed up for so many years, especially at a young age.

What are your experiences and thoughts on this?

courage2

Hi unc!

I have 2.5 years sober. I'm operating pretty sharply BUT -- I have very very little short term memory, I'm insecure and a little paranoid, and still can't read for any length of time. I have other issues that may be unrelated, but I think the memory & reading are related to alcohol abuse, since they set in after my drinking got bad. & I think the paranoia & insecurity are the results of a life spent as an alcoholic & in alcoholic/druggy familial-social circumstances.

So -- will I ever have all the marbles I would have had if I hadn't become a drunk & drug abuser? I seriously doubt it.

I don't live in 'what ifs' though. I'm happy with whatever mind I have now -- it's a lot better than when I was drinking.

Gottalife

Gosh these AA sponsors tell some lies. I was told 2 years. When I got to two, they said five. When I got to five, well, I'm still looking for mine.

They weren't lying about AAs message of permanent recovery. I did actually find that.

fini

weeelll...isn't permanent recovery a restoration to sanity which is having, uh, a full bag of marbles?
probably we don't get them back the way they were, and that's quite possibly a good thing.

courage2, my reading is much slower now than it used to be. i hadn't put that together with alcoholism/drinking, but...now that i just superficially look at it, yes, i think i've been a slow reader now the entire time i've been sober.
when i used to be so very fast.
(and memory i'm afraid to look at, since my mom has dementia. if not for that, i'd just think it's age-related.)

Fly N Buy

I find I am indecisive , perhaps. Difficulty at times making up my mind about choice A or B. Sometimes I'll start a task and switch to another in the middle of its completion - or incompletion.

I find that I am much more sensitive to others and my own feelings. Reminds me of a Seinfeld where jerry ponders what the salty discharge is coming from his eyes.

Come - come to - come to believe ( I may find most of my marbles) two years and counting.

CousinA

My friend Dale gave me marbles at my 30th anniversary. Like my mother used to play with when she was a child in the 1930's. I still don't know what to do with them.

-allan

fini

I still don't know what to do with them.



https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j...26130881,d.cGc

best with audio

Gottalife

Might be more to do with age. Oldtimers disease I heard someone call it. I am not as decisive as I was. I take more time over things, but often make better decisions than I used to.

Permanent recovery for me, by the way, has meant complete freedom from alcohol. But it did not make me a paragon of virtue, a font of wisdom, the model of decorum, or personality of the year. I still await my first original thought in AA.

However I have found I can blunder about in life, making all kinds of mistakes, and learn from them rather than drink. I might have had most of my marbles a year or two ago, but now they seem to be going missing again.

elihoping

Ha! My sponsor used to tell me that so for her 5th birthday, I gave her a bag of marbles and told her they'd been returned from Head Office.

August252015

Loving this gift of marbles idea!! Totally stealing it.

Physically, the 2 yr mark is a common 'explanation' of recovery. I've read a lot of medical-based stuff on this. And our bodies all recover - to full capacity? not? some ways and not others?- differently.

Right now at 135 days, my sponsor tells me it will be a year then two before I am completely sober; she couches this in terms of the amount of time it usually takes for women. At this point, I find myself a little scattered (probably why my longtime pre-alcoholic days of liking lists is a ritual again now) and feel little surges or something like mini-cramping in the arches of my feet; like verrrry minute versions of the seizures I had detoxing. Most other stuff I notice is a lot like I was before; I was scared that my inability to pick the right word (and I am very word-specific, an English major and a writer) would not come back but it gradually has. I am almost 40 so I have no idea what will change/go away/come back as I age - probably won't know if it is related to my alcoholism and damage done, or increasing age.

Just glad to be here with what I have intact, mentally and physically. I was pretty damn smart (testing wise) before and have to be grateful for how still-smart I am, even if not as much as before the darkness.

stevieg46

We are restored to sanity the obsession has been removed according to the book after step 9 . That's very well but I think its very important to remember that we only get a loan of our marbles back as its very easy to lose them again . Restored to sanity is not permanent .
Spiritual Awakening is not permanent . Both are conditional and if failing to recognize that, ? then one must not allow themselves to feel they are ''Special '' and have hit the jackpot and have it made and sit back , could end up in the ''chosen frozen ''

We continued in 10 . We sought and improved in 11 . We practiced and carried in 12 . I feel that getting your marbles back is also when we ''realize these things '' and continue on a daily basis maintaining them .

Regards Stevie recovered 12 03 2006 .

Centered3

So needed to read this today. Thanks for the thread. :-)

I finished a thorough Step 5 a year ago. Worked through 6-9. I don't have my marbles back completely but I at least have the self-awareness of that. Some weeks/months went well until I'm triggered by the past, fall into ego, instead of turning to God.

For me it's always an indirect correlation with where I am with God and 10, 11, and 12....

advbike

I'm almost three years sober but only six months in recovery.. the difference is painfully obvious. Need to get through all this stepwork but it's finally getting better.

Tommyh

I was told it would take me 2 years to find my marbles and a year to learn how to play with them again

almost 28 years sober,I am still finding a marble now and then and learning what the heck to do with it...

in the early 60`s we played marbles on the playground at recess


more (marbles) will be revealed!

Carpathia

I've heard that 5 year marble talk too.

I'm at 2.5 years without a drink. When I think I've found a new marble, I seem to lose one that I had!

It's a lifelong program of recovery, so I suppose everyone's marbles will come and go at times.

In early sobriety there were definitely symptoms of post-alcohol withdrawal syndrome. At 2.5 years, I'm sharper, cognitively, than I was earlier on. Fear of people is still an issue for me, but I recognize the triggers. Generally still working on fear.

As far as the promises materializing "sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly"? I'm definitely in the "sometimes slowly" camp as compared to some of the stories I've read in the Big Book. But that's okay considering the alternative.

tomsteve

why in the world would I want them marbles back?? they were defective and wobbled.
I got a new set of marbles over the years- one at a time.
which they can still scatter.

paulokes

Ha! So many ways to look at this...

AA restored me to sanity around alcohol...and allowed me to see and admit that I was not, am not now, and never will be working with a full deck of cards.

Apart from physical sobriety, the greatest gift I have been given is a sense of humour. But like everything else, it comes and goes with the wind

P

Edit: For some reason, I'm reminded of that song...
"Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got til it's gone..."

Or maybe sometimes, you don't know it's gone til you get some of it back

Centered3

^^^Love this!!!

Ok so I have a serious question. Today having lunch with a friend, I had an insecure thought pop into my head that I shared out loud. The moment I did, I actually paused and realized how silly I was being, and I thankfully let it go. It didn't even cause me anxiety that I had the thought. I was able to have it without judging it or attaching to the insecure feelings behind it.

Is that what you mean about our defective marbles? That our thinking will always be not quite right, but at least now we have the awareness of it, can catch it quickly, and do something about it?

Some days I think I've got a new marble or two, and then poof! The old ones sneak their way back in....

Centered3

This is really curious for me.

So, "the problem has been removed". Yes I couldn't care less really about my addiction anymore; I've definitely been placed in a position of neutrality. But, I'm still not "sane" where it comes to "character defects"?

Humor is good to have, P. Some days, I am able to laugh at myself for my thinking, etc.

I guess I'm one of those people who thought a spiritual awakening would be all butterflies and roses.... I hadn't realized that we're restored to sanity just in terms of alcohol.

I guess it makes sense, though. I'm left with the character defects that God will remove in His time, but I need to still do my part in paying attention to them, and when they crop up, turn my thoughts to God? And realign my will with His well (unselfish, honest, God-centered, fearless)? At least I'm not pouring alcohol all over them, no?

paulokes

^ That's well put Centred. Personal opinion...insecurity, irrationality...these thing are part of the human condition. Being aware of them is progress

Getting carried away with them, or thinking we have evolved beyond them is insanity

P