secretchord

It's been almost a year I quit drinking. Still, I cannot wrap my head around what happened and where everything went wrong. I don't understand why I still have very vivid dreams about drinking. I don't understand why I still have a desire to drink everyday. I have quit cigarettes and never had these dreams and cravings. I'm confused about it all because it doesn't make sense to me, and it bothers me when things don't make sense. Please someone explain to me why I still want to drink. Will that desire ever go away?

entropy1964

Hi Secret

Are you working any kind of program for your recovery? I know, for me, that part of removing the obsession is really talking opening with another addict about what is going on inside. Otherwise it just keeps bouncing around inside my head.

secretchord

No program. The only support I've had is this forum. I tried meetings and they aren't my thing.

graced333

Hi - The book 'In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts' has helped me so much in understanding my alcohol addiction. Blessings to you.

entropy1964

Hi there

Well maybe an addiction counselor?

I never thought AA was my thing either. I actually don't allow myself to feel a part of anything. That seems to be my thing Isolating myself and pretending its ok. I have surrendered to the fact that its not ok. That I need 'people' and I need help. And I need other addicts to connect with.

I hope you find something more to help you work through your stuff.

Hawkeye13

I had to rebuild my life, not just quit drinking.
Find stress-relievers and activities for physical and mental
growth and peace.

I also don't attend meetings, but I do meditate, do yoga, work out at a gym,
hike regularly, read books, do enrichment classes like art, music, and anthropology, play guitar.
I keep a journal and deal with feelings both there and by honestly sharing with the people involved,

I just generally engage with life much more than when
I withdrew into a bottle.
I still tend to isolate, but overall that is gradually improving.
I also cook healthy delicious food, and make herbal tea blends to drink
instead of alcohol, and I work to love and appreciate who I am now
and who I'm growing into. That took some doing as I grew up
with low self-esteem and I really hated how I acted drinking.

I realize the above is quite a long list, and I don't do all these things everyday,
but I did figure out that recovery and quitting are truly different things.
If I was doing it on my own, I had to really be proactive in changing how
I thought, felt, and acted which led to the drinking in the first place.

It is some work, but very rewarding.
I don't have cravings, and I don't dream of drinking anymore.
I have so much else in my life, I no longer miss them.

Congrats on your year SC

doggonecarl

Do you miss drinking? And do resent having to be sober?

MLD51

For me, the desire to drink didn't go away until I started honestly addressing my low self-esteem, and feelings of guilt and shame. I drank to escape myself - until I learned to like myself and forgive myself for the things I had done that made me feel like a crappy person, I was going to want to drink. So just quitting wasn't enough for me. I needed a program. I didn't really want to go to AA, but I was pretty desperate, so I tried it. It's working for me. But there are other ways of addressing the feelings that might be contributing to your desire to drink. Some great suggestions have already been given.

Anna

I would ask you what changes you've made in your life, besides stopping drinking, during the last year. I had to add things to my life that helped support my recovery.

Gottalife

Meetings would not have done me much good either. I needed a complete change in my reaction to life, a thing in AA that we call a spiritual awakening, and it doesn't matter how many meetings you attend, meetings alone will not bring this about.

It's the steps, all 12, that changed my life permanently. I read ealier today of a poster who hade been sober a while and went to AA to take the steps to fix just the problem you are talking about, which has a name by the way, untreated alcoholism. It worked!

This is how sobriety looks from the standpoint of the tenth step promises which cane true for me:

"And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone - even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality - safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition."

It's the steps, not the meetings, that make this possible.

tomsteve

soner up a drunken horse thief and ya gota horse thief.
nothin changes if nothin changes.
i had serious changes that had to be made in my thinking and actions. i had to take a good look inside to see what made me tick.
then work at changing.
i am also one that used THE PROGRAM of aa. yeah, i went to meetings, but going to meetings and not drinking wouldnt have treated the alcoholism.
how many meetings did you go to?
did you read the big book of aa or any other aa literature?

secretchord

Honestly, yes.

secretchord

I would get some one on one help but the problem is I don't have good health insurance. I'd have to pay for it out of pocket.

ScottFromWI

I see you live in Wisconsin, me too. Not sure where but I know that many cities have public health offices that offer drug and alcohol counseling/detox/resources for free or on a sliding fee scale. Therapy is also available on a sliding fee scale at many clinics.

As others have said, there's a big difference between just "not drinking" and living sober. Living sober means learning new ways to deal with life and all of it's stresses/issues as well as accepting and diagnosing/treating underlying issues like depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc. Many of us ( me included ) tried to run away from those problems with alcohol, but in the end of course the problems only get worse.

Hawkeye13

Most of what I do is free, or nearly free. . . what kinds of recovery actions are you doing for you right now?

You get out what you put into this recovery thing, or so it's been for many of us.

What interests, passions, issues do you want to work on or work with?
An honest personal inventory might be a great place to start, and then
you can begin with small steps to get an upward spiral going.

Algorithm

The desire to drink may possibly go away, but not necessarily, despite what anybody else may say about removing desire or there being a difference between not drinking and being sober. The desire has never gone away for me, and I don't believe that it ever will go away entirely.

The way I understand this thing, is that at a certain point, the illegitimate, artificial desire for chemically-enhanced feelings became mixed in with other, legitimate survival drives, such as hunger or thirst, and became a permanent part of my body. The only choice I have is to live with it, and I don't waste my time trying to remove it.

That's the price I have to pay for not following my original suspicion that anything that seems too good to be true (easy, synthetic pleasure on demand, without a price), probably is too good to be true, and for allowing myself to continue drinking for as long as I did. That said, this residual desire is a very small price to pay when compared to the price of active addiction.

Something to consider.

secretchord

Very helpful. Thank you.

Darwinia

You are not alone. I also miss drinking. But we have to move on, don't we.

Dee74

Hi again secretchord

I'm sorry its still somewhat of an ordeal for you.

For me I had to do more than just stop drinking.

I needed support in my recovery for sure, especially in the early days...but I also had to work on finding happiness and building the life I wanted.

It took a while - I was messed up long before my first drink, and drink and drugs made it worse...but I got there

I can honestly say now I love my life, I love who I am and I have no desire to drink.

Not saying that to toot my own horn - just to show that happiness and peace are things I believe that are open to everyone

GerandTwine

I discovered that if I did not have the specific plan "I will never drink again, and I will never change my mind!" then within me there was incessant anticipation of the time that would arrive when that Deeeeep Pleasure would again be MINE. Well, instead of wallowing in such a pergatory, I decided to make that seemingly irrational pledge. I will never drink again. That was decades ago. Before I made that plan, I had many dreams of drinking for years. I actually had a gnawing feeling while wide awake that I had failed at remaining abstinent, which I had not failed at. Today, I have none of what ails you about drinking/not drinking. Yes, you can get there, too. And pretty quickly, as well.

GT