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No longer numbed and reality is crashing in.

Old 10-13-2016, 01:57 AM
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No longer numbed and reality is crashing in.

Hello all,

9 days sober. That part is easy. I'm so tired of being drunk, to the bottom of my soul. Don't want it, don't miss it, don't even want to look at a beer can. It stopped feeling good a long time ago. But I can't say I feel very good either. I understand that this is normal, especially this fresh in, but still unnerving, nonetheless.

My brain adjusting to sobriety is very tiresome, and I've been glued to my bed. I make the effort to eat good things and get exercise, do a couple chores, but then find myself immediately back to lounging. All the things I was actively numbing out with booze are also hitting me all at once.

It is apparent to me now that I am quite dysfunctional. Emotionally childish. Full of anger and resentment. Self-centred. A bad employee. Not a great parent. And that I somehow have to do something about it, and that this is not fast, nor easy. I have started therapy, and feel like I've just touched the tip of the iceberg, and feel a little overwhelmed about how much work needs to happen. Also frankly taken aback that I have allowed myself to have gotten that far into madness with the booze...

Meanwhile, time is ticking, life is continuing, while I lay there like a bomb just went off and I'm a part of the debris. I'm elated that I finally took the plunge, and know that life will improve, but could use some insight from those who have been there, to get through this very peculiar part.

I specifically could use some other people's stories of how they felt freshly sober, so I could perhaps get some clarity on my own situation.

Thank you for your time.
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Old 10-13-2016, 02:13 AM
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Nothing was pleasurable in the beginning and the physical symptoms on top of this made life very difficult. People telling me that it would get better helped. Focusing on what I could actively DO helped.

It sounds like you've taken some very positive steps to improve, and you need to take some credit for that. Important now is to maintain your focus on your recovery, even though you are faced with big challenges in the immediate future.

You've decided to change your direction. The view gets better on the path ahead.
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Old 10-13-2016, 02:33 AM
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Hi and welcome Bulgakova

What you describe is familiar to me - I was pretty beat from years of drinking...but with time and abstinence I began to get better. For me the upturn began in month 2.

You'll find a lot of support and help here. This is a great community. You are not alone

D
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Old 10-13-2016, 03:13 AM
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Bulga,

The physical addiction goes away pretty quick, the mental...lasts forever.

It gets easier and easier to deal with, but it is there. That is why people relapse after years of sobriety. Who would intentionally poison themselves after a full recovery.

Sounds to me like you are still healing from some serious hard drinking. I was the same way. I would lay around all the time and sleep in my car at work.

I think it has to do w the pancreas and dopamine in the brain. It took months to settle down.

Also, my anxiety was insane for many months. It took well over a year for me to stabilize to this level and it is still improving at 17 months.

Thanks for the post.
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Old 10-13-2016, 03:40 AM
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Hi Bulgakova,

That definitely rings true for the way I felt in the very early stages but beleive me it does get better if you stick with it.

Check out the October class thread - plenty of people who are at the same stage as you and some great support there - I found this extremely helpful for the early stages of recovery.

Keep going though it is the best thing you will ever do - being a parent your children spend their life trying to make you proud of them - do this for them and make them proud of you.
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Old 10-13-2016, 06:10 AM
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Hi Bulga, welcome.
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Old 10-13-2016, 06:26 AM
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Originally Posted by Bulgakova View Post
It is apparent to me now that I am quite dysfunctional. Emotionally childish. Full of anger and resentment. Self-centred. A bad employee. Not a great parent. .
I, for one, am extremely impressed you recognize the above. All of those things will change with sobriety. Good job.
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Old 10-13-2016, 06:40 AM
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Welcome. Your description of how you are feeling sounds quite close to how I felt in my first couple of weeks. It gets better. Stick around and read around. For me hearing the stories of others really helped.
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Old 10-13-2016, 06:50 AM
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Welcome. Lots of people who can relate to what you posted - get to know SR and the Oct class is a great way to do that with folks starting their sober lives now, too.

Have you learned about PAWS? Mine was severe, compared to some, though relatively speaking it passed quickly; I say that because my symptoms were severe, yet given what I did to my body, and that I was given a yr, 18mo to live if I didn't stop, several months of physical "adjustment" wasn't such a long time.

Here's a good article:
https://digital-dharma.net/post-acut...r-immediately/

Now is a perfect time to get a plan started- my way is AA and I'll tell you what I tell everyone- now's the right time to go to a meeting.

Good luck. You can stay sober and find a completely different and infinitely better life.
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Old 10-13-2016, 07:03 AM
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Welcome! What you are describing sounds a whole lot like me at about that same time. I was so tired - slept about 12 hours a day. And I was overwhelmed emotionally. Suddenly, I was facing up to the issues I had spent years escaping from with booze. And at the same time, I was elated and hopeful. It was quite a roller coaster - crying one minute, beaming smiles the next. By nine days, I was in outpatient treatment, and going to AA meetings a few times a week also. Not sure I could have made it through those early weeks without that support. It is great that you have started therapy - huge step in the right direction. I'm not sure how you feel about AA, but being in a room with a whole bunch of people who had been where I was and really understood what I was going through was pretty much the best thing ever for me. It still is, 22 months down the road.

You have started a difficult but extremely rewarding journey. Hang in there - your mind and body need time to heal. Take good care of yourself.
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Old 10-13-2016, 08:18 AM
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Originally Posted by Bulgakova View Post
Full of anger and resentment.
we are the same you and i

my #1 offender and not because the book says it

i was full of fear driven hate and blame way before my first drink

in fact thats why i took my first drink



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Old 10-13-2016, 08:45 AM
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Yeah. When I first got sober many years ago, people would tell me to treat myself as though I'd just been discharged from the hospital following heart surgery. The rest of the world didn't know what I was going through. I still had to go to work and meet my other responsibilities, but I managed to make time for myself, and especially to get the help and support I needed as MLD spoke about.

Reality was crashing in all over the place and all over me while I as drinking, and the clock continued to tick. I just didn't care that I was sitting in a house afire or that the flames would eventually consume me. My not caring how I affected other people was also a given. Life goes on, with or without us, but we can't fix everything all at once or very quickly. "You can pay me know, or you can pay me later." I can't emphasize enough how much face-to-face support in AA, IOP and OP treatment, and individual counseling helped me. I don't know that I could have gotten and then stayed sober without it.

It also helped to slow down my life and to work through a range of different problems and challenges as they presented themselves. I was a big talker about how I could take care of myself when I was drinking, but I rarely did anything about it, unless it was related to my ability to continue drinking.

Nobody wants to get treatment for alcoholism or anything else. We all have great reasons/rationalizations for not getting the help we need, and this only tends to make things worse. No one truly cares about why any individual "can't" do what is necessary in order to get sober. We've all heard the same story thousands of times, over and over again. From personal convictions, to political considerations, to personal needs and wants. It doesn't matter. Most of us only care about what concrete steps a person is taking in order to get there.

When I got sober following my relapse, I was very skeptical about my ability to get sober again and, in truth, I did not want to. So I gave myself over to all the treatment I could bear, some of which I did not agree with in principle or for some other trivial excuse that would have allowed me to circumvent the help I needed, but I eventually came around to accepting that my life would continue to be miserable unless and until I was willing to make major changes in my thinking and in my behavior. My reluctance about getting help was all about fear, especially my fear around not drinking anymore. I don't for a moment or for any reason believe that I am alone in this. Making the necessary changes is no different for me than it is for anyone else who is committed to getting sober or, more generally, to building a better life for ourselves.

Take it slow, but make it your purpose in life to do whatever is necessary in order to get sober. It always gets better, but rarely right away.
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Old 10-13-2016, 09:12 AM
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Welcome, Bulgakov,

I think your feelings are similar to what many of us face in early recovery. It's a bit overwhelming as we look at the messes we've made and where we'd like to be. In my case, I found I was not the person I had believed I was and that was very disconcerting. My suggestion is to go slow, make a list and try to accomplish two or three things each day. You will feel like you're accomplishing something and you will be moving forward. You're right that this will not be a quick fix. In fact, I feel that recovery is a way of life.
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Old 10-13-2016, 09:15 AM
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That sounds like how I felt after 9 days. Today is day 31 for me and I'm really only just starting to come out of it. It's kinda scary how bad alcohol can affect you for so long after quitting it.
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Old 10-13-2016, 11:00 AM
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I would like to express some gratitude about you folks.... didn't expect so much overnight help, in such kindness. Thank you so very much--this is very helpful, and makes a hard time somehow humanizing.

So I've been going down the rabbit hole of information about alcoholism and sobriety. Everything from neuroscience to diet to pathology to psychology. Modern research, old takes, stats on what works or does not, you name it. Down to how to encourage neural regrowth and reestablish a healthy gut flora.

A bit of an aha moment... I had studied cognitive neuroscience in university when I was in my early twenties. I had taken a course called "psychopharmacology", where we looked over all psychoactive drugs, from LSD to caffeine to benzodiazepines. Thoroughly. Except alcohol, it seems. We covered it, but not very much. It seems that most of what I am reading right now about the long term effects of alcohol is completely new to me. It shouldn't be--I can't tell you how thorough this course was on all other drugs.

Then it hit me... that prof had a booze tan. Red nose. Shakiness. Scatterbrained. I got to thinking about the power of denial. And my own previous denial.... I am an information junkie. I will look into the far reaches of any topic, from the science of perfect meat cooking to bodily mechanisms of exercise.

How is it that I never looked into my daily companion, booze, before? The one thing my life revolved around, the one thing that followed my day from wake to sleep? Easy answer really--I didn't want to know. Really, we all know that you shouldn't wake up and crack a beer. Or sneak some in your coffee mug at work. It's amazing how you can just shut down your inner voice and gloss over it, just like that.

Leads me to wonder what else I've swept under the carpet. What else I'm pretending is totally okay when it blatantly is not. I think I'm going to call that bomb that exploded "The Question Bomb". 'Cause that's what the sentiment is, really--a stunned stall, a gaping mouth, and a million questions.
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Old 10-13-2016, 11:02 AM
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Originally Posted by january161992 View Post
we are the same you and i

my #1 offender and not because the book says it

i was full of fear driven hate and blame way before my first drink

in fact thats why i took my first drink



Have you found any ways to improve this aspect of yourself?
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Old 10-13-2016, 12:30 PM
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Hi Bulgakova, so glad that you're here! I think you can see now that how you're feeling is a very common theme with all of us. It's all part of the process of getting better. Things do get better too, it just takes some time. Do exactly what you're doing, come here and ask questions. There's a world of hope here.

Remember to be kind to yourself. You're doing really hard and really good work. Lots of time to deal with things later.

I saw this today and thought it fitting:

"You're not going to master the rest of your life in one day. Just relax, master the day. Then just keep doing that every day".

............oh yeah, and keep coming back to SR!
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Old 10-13-2016, 12:54 PM
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We are all different with our own struggles. Sounds like you are really thinking about this. For me now after 5 months of not drinking it is more difficult. Don't really know when it gets better.
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Old 10-13-2016, 02:40 PM
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Originally Posted by Darwinia View Post
We are all different with our own struggles. Sounds like you are really thinking about this. For me now after 5 months of not drinking it is more difficult. Don't really know when it gets better.
Darwinia,

I was a wreck for over a year. It got a little better each day and today....i really feel like I am mentally at a state of reasonable normalcy.

It was worth the wait. Stay clean.

Are you on any meds? If so....I bet that is part of the issue.
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Old 10-13-2016, 02:58 PM
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At least when we were drunk we could kind of, sort of, ignore the fact that the bomb had gone off and that we were sitting in the debris, right? Being sober, the reality of that situation can seem pretty stark at first.

But, over the coming days, you will develop the strength and the motivation to start to clean up some of the debris. That is when the benefits of sobriety will really start to be revealed.

Stay vigilant about your sobriety. Even though you currently have no desire to drink, that urge can hit you suddenly, and like a sledgehammer.

Good luck. I am glad you are here with us.
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