Smilax

I talked about tapering off drinking here and was recommended against it. I'm down to about 1 beer a day from 1 Bootle of wine + 2 to 3 beers a day. Feeling great actual genuine happiness and a feeling of being at ease that I haven't felt in weeks or months. But as others pointed out and as I realised would be true myself. Stoping is one thing staying sober is another. Because while feelings of happiness may have been uncovered I'm also reminded of why I drank in the first place. Feelings of emptiness, loneliness, purposelessness. This is going to make it hard to keep it up. Another thing worrying me ironically is I have a vacation coming up in a week. 12 days off. It's much needed as im burning out at work, but also worrisome in terms of occupying my time. Been thinking of planning a camping and hiking trip.

sugarbear1

Try complete abstinence. You can stop that one beer a day habit and feel completely sober, it's a very new experience, but takes time to learn and live.

Smilax

That is actually what I'm doing. It hasn't been a beer a day habbit, as I was drinking said bottle + 2 to 3 beers only about 4 days ago. I only drank a beer when I felt I had to because of withdrawal symptoms. But I'm still going to have to deal with these emotional issues which is why I was drinking in the first place.

leighbond

I know it's seems counter intuitive when you are an alcoholic but you quickly find that emotional problems are a lot easier to deal with when you are sober.

least

Give it up entirely. You'll go thru some uncomfortable withdrawal but will come out stronger afterward. If w/d worries you, can you get help from your doctor? I don't know where you live, but in the US meds are often given for the first few days to guard against seizures and the awful w/d anxiety.

Dee74

I agree with everyone that things will get better once you're down to zero. Even when I wasn't drinking anymore my accumulated years of alcohol still affected me for a little while.

I really needed the support I found here.

A plan is a good thing too:
http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ery-plans.html

D

sugarbear1

I understand dealing with the emotional issues, but that is part of our alcoholism. For me, alcohol was like self-medicating, once I removed the alcohol, I needed a new solution which I happened to find in the 12 steps, there are other ways to deal with them, too.

Time to do it, it is SO MUCH BETTER than living drunk!

Smilax

Thank you everyone. You guys are right. Sadly I don't feel good about my odds either way. Not that I'm giving up. Just a feeling. I need to build a network of support. There are resources here I should turn to. There are secular programmes around here, im an atheist, government run ones too. I also need to build a social network. I keep my friends at an arms length still. I still lean on my parents financially and they still smother and enable me. Sigh. Anyway sorry.

Dee74

Odds schmods man.

Commit yourself. Don't pour alcohol down your neck - ever. No matter what.
Do everything you can to support that commitment and you'll stay sober.

D

zerothehero

I tried moderation for 20 years, but it was more like spiraling between sobriety and binging, and it was nothing like recovery. Each day a new adventure. I know things about myself and the world I had never noticed. Some ugly. Mostly beautiful. Even if I could drink moderately, and it is true that some people are able to drink moderately after a period of recovery, I don't want to. There are way too many advantages to 24/7 clarity to give that up, and it's taken me more than a couple of years to get here. No buzz could be better than this feeling.

fini

Sadly I don't feel good about my odds either way. Not that I'm giving up. Just a feeling.

your odds depend on your actions, not your feelings.

Dame

Hey Smilax. Sounds like you are doing well. I was enabled too. Now that I'm not drinking my SO's behavior continues. So it's entirely up to me to make things improve, because he will willingly do anything to keep me in his life. Have you been down to 1 beer everyday for 4 days? Sounds like you are past the seizure window, but I'm only going by what I have read.
And I believe that the odds are absolutely in your favor. The emotional withdrawal can be very rough and will test your resolve. Try not to be impulsive. Think before you act. I've had far more sober "vacations" than drunk ones. They were fabulous compared to the messy inebriated times.
Wishing you Courage and resolve.

ccam1973

Smilax, you are stronger than you give yourself credit for. Commit 100% to your sobriety and everything will fall into place. I spent 20 years trapped in a bottle. I know it can be scary at first, but trust me you won't regret one minute that you are sober. Every angle of life is so much easier, more fulfilling, more rewarding, and easier to deal with when not being held down by alcohol.

You deserve to live your life on your terms, not terms dictated by alcohol.

Lean on us to get you through the tough times.

Smilax

Been down to 1 beer yesterday and today. The first of the 4 I had a 1/2 bottle of wine and the 2nd I had 2 beers. I was worried about seizures as well however I'm not sure if I was drinking enough before for that or not. Or for long enough. I have noticed that each day the physical withdrawal symptoms have been getting much better and set in latter. But yeah emotionally I'm not doing that well. Thank you!

EndGameNYC

Sounds to me more about negotiating with your drinking on your vacation than struggling with the inevitable problems of existence.

My own thoughts on these things. We don't get to feelings of belonging until we've worked through loneliness. Every person who is a part of the happy-looking couples that people often mention here had to work through the ordeal of loneliness in order to learn how to love and to work through the aggression and the emotional violence that comes with rejecting love from other people. This is a real and serious problem related to feeling or actually being disconnected that is rarely discussed.

Emptiness. We're born that way. The solution is not to run around filling things up, as booze is just another way to fill ourselves of something we empty of ourselves. Activity is very different from making progress or living with purpose, and many of us willfully confuse the two at our own peril, but as yet another defense against being. "I don't know...I workout all the time, work like a dog, take care of the kids, volunteer, so things for my friends, but I'm still miserable!"

In my experience, there are levels of consciousness which we cannot and will not access without struggling with and through a great deal of pain. We don't just one day stop reacting to people, places and things in a self-defeating and unhealthy ways because we need a change in our emotional wardrobes or that we've learned that doing so will render a fuller, more peaceful way of being. We can only hope to train ourselves to make such major changes in attitudes and beliefs in what is usually a grueling process. And if we can't do that, then we're gonna need help to get the job done. And here is precisely where the emotional response to love offered, in this case, "getting help," comes into play. Too many of us are stuck on the ego-driven farce that accepting love or help means we're weak or damaged, or that we'll then be indebted to a nameless, faceless debt collector sent by the Universe. After all, if someone cares for me, then they must want something from me. Right?

We further place ourselves in grave danger or, at the very least, in a morbid state of deprivation, when we expect things such as happiness, peace of mind, and a sense of fulfillment as part of the deal we make in life. We do not exist in a Universe in which such things are readily available. It's just the wrong place to be if you expect to be happy by virtue of your existence alone. None of these things are possible without suffering or, rather, without our working through whatever suffering there is that challenges us in life.

Suffering is relentless, all-encompassing and without either mercy or grace. Suffering is, in a very real way, what it means to be, to exist. The more we resist, the more we put ourselves in the same painful situations, over and over again ("Why do I always pick the world's biggest loser at any given time as my partner?"), while what we refer to as "meaning" takes a lifelong holiday, until such a time comes when we either stop fighting that which is intrinsic to being human, or when the clock runs out. We don't all or always stop fighting to tear down and then to remake the world in our own image, but the clock always runs out.

Despair is the easy way out, and no decision at all. Complaining regularly is only another way that we rob ourselves of the very little time in which we have to decide what we'll make of ourselves and our lives. And drinking, well, if you've been around here for more than a couple of days, then you know what it means to die a slow death that, by our own hand, is predetermined from the start. It's a rigged game, and the only way to stop the bleeding is to stop playing.

PrinzessinD

My first vacation sober was awesome! You should just be completely sober and take everything in. My first vacation sober I went to Seattle, the weather was awful and I hung out with a bunch of people who didn't speak English. I didn't care, I just drank tea and had a blast. I had so much energy and woke up feeling great everyday. You should try it, it's the best ever. Good job on the tapering, I did that too then stopped. Just stay positive and good things will happen, you are on the right track. Remember when you wished you were on this track? Well now you are!

Smilax

Thank you! I realise the truth in your words. There is a hint of solipsism in your world view. As for accepting love. Aside from my parents I've very much spent my entire 34 years on this terrifyingly beautiful little blue dot actively keeping everyone at an emotional arms length. I've had friends, have friends, but never anything deep. I've never been in a relationship, never even held hands with a girl. My parents love me, I was never abused, but even there there was a distance, something missing. Paradoxically they smother and enable me. At the core of my struggles is a terrifying fear of life itself, of others, of letting someone in. And yet in my desperate loneliness it's also what I most greatly crave. Being an atheist one would think I would be intensely aware of time's sand sifting through my fingers as I twiddle my thumbs and complain. And I suppose intellectually I am. Funny that is the story of my life, intellectual awareness, emotional blindness.

EndGameNYC

Glad you got something from my comments, Smilax.

Solipsm? Love, peace, meaning. They all defy logic, particularly the process involved in experiencing each. We only know how we got to where we got once we got there, and can never successfully replicate in order to get the same results.

One of the most efficient ways to keep someone at an emotional distance is to smother him and enable him. In this way, and at the very least, one never needs to deal with a real person, with the reality of the "other's" being. When we learn this from our parents or otherwise influential others, we tend to do the same, not only with other people, but with ourselves. And thus the whirlpool of denial resides.

Not sure that you suggested it or not, but I wasn't making an accusation of "complaining" so much as commenting on my own experience with it. What's the purpose? We can either choose to act or choose think, speak or do nothing. Why do we so often choose almost anything else but to provide a compelling case for our own Existence by what we do? Who will speak/act for me if I don't, can't or won't do it for myself?

So, now that you've said as much as you know that intellectualization is often a defense against feeling, against emotion, against togetherness, against being, really, what, if anything, would you like to do about it?

sweetichick

I think you are lucky to have such supportive parents. Mine basically rejected me from birth but I had my grandmother who loved me to death. I became an alcoholic when she died. Maybe I just dont get where you are coming from.