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Getting off.....

Old 06-16-2019, 11:07 PM
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Getting off.....

I've had a method for getting off alcohol. It takes 4 or 5 days. Sometimes I've gotten to day 3 and just felt so **** I had to get some relief. 'I'll taper...', etc
I'd try and get 4 or 5 days before joining a class of whatever month.
a few days in and for the first time in months you sleep through the night and wake feeling human.
I don't really care about controlled drinking. Who'd want that? If you seriously like drinking.....all that is just BS. So no illusions. I do three months, and then I want a whole carton of beer. Then I'm awake at 3.30 a.m, sleepless, so just get up and keep going. My clock is different.
I don't have to go to work, I live alone.....I have money, there are no limits any more.
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Old 06-16-2019, 11:20 PM
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How's it going canguy? I'm not sure if I totally understand your post but...I was 54 before I got sober - I have no idea how many times I failed to get sober before then but it got to the get sober or die stage so I found a way. You can do it canguy.
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Old 06-16-2019, 11:34 PM
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So......first day, however drunk or sleazed you are the priority is a fish dinner. Drink all day, drink while you are doing it, whatever, but...eat fish.

Crank the oven up to 250. . Make a mix of Japanese panko breadcrumbs and dashi flakes. Coat the fish in tartare sauce. Crumb it. Lick your fingers because it tastes so good, have a wash up. Stick the crumbed fish in a small puddle of sesame oil and bake for 10 minutes. Or maybe 12 if its a thick fillet.

Veg? Up to you. Perhaps mine in another post.

Now, you may be drinking while doing this. But...what I find happens is the smell starts. It's warm, its a meal. Get some bok choy on....
Given that we are coming off and love fats and sugars......oven baked chips. Get a meal together. Oh man....that is good.

Settle in the sofa, watch TV and feed yaself. The beers in the kitchen forgotten.

You get drowsy, relaxed. Go to bed.

Wake at 4.30.
And off it goes again starting with last night's leftovers.

Stupid way to live.
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Old 06-16-2019, 11:35 PM
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I feared that I'd never quit yet I always wanted to.

I was another stop or die conversion. but I can;t recommend that cos some people don't make it that way

I think it's about what part of your mind/life you feed - the drinking side or the other side.

I wanted to do more with my life than what I'd allowed myself to do for decades.
I wanted the things I saw other people here at SR had.

I had to believe them when they said it could be done.
I had to believe them when they said the rewards may not be instant - they may take months - but they do come.
I had to believe them when they said the key to staying sober is to build a life you don't want to escape from

all those beliefs came true for me.

D
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Old 06-16-2019, 11:46 PM
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If you can manage the night sweating, the strange random itchings.... Then you can savour the sleepless early hours revisiting of every **** thing you have ever done or said , a pitliless examination of your personal failures. Perhaps, just before dawn, just before you drop off of a couple of hours of shallow dozing, you might wonder what your funeral will be like.
Not many there, really. You failed at loving anyone because it was more fun to drink solvent.
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Old 06-16-2019, 11:57 PM
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Ok....so I've had the idea of Day Zero.
Day Zero is the day before day One.....the day where you drink just enough to cut the worst of withdrawals, cook a meal, flake on the sofa watching the usual news horrors and pass out for a bit.
Later in the evening you awake with all the lights on, aircon going, laptop on the floor glaring blue light.
Soda water.....bottles and bottles of it, always one next to the bed.

The night drowsyness is the best time. Its a kind of utter total painless relaxed. This is what alcohol gives.
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Old 06-17-2019, 12:00 AM
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.
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Old 06-17-2019, 12:05 AM
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....but before that gets banned as 'triggering', : it's not sleep. real sleep relaxes and refreshes you.

I'm someone for whom drinking has shaped much of my adult life.
I'm wondering now if it is something that fixes and holds you in the thoughts you were having when you started?
Maybe it so effects your thinking....you can't move on mentally until you stop.
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Old 06-17-2019, 12:24 AM
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The night drowsyness is the best time. Its a kind of utter total painless relaxed. This is what alcohol gives.
sounds like a little like stockholm syndrome to me, man.

Obviously each and every one of us had something we liked about drinking...or if we drank enough to become a necessity drinker, we had something we liked that we lost and wanted to get back

but the really big picture for me is alcohol gave me nothing.
The opposite of pain is not oblivion.

I found more meaning and more profundity in a year of recovery than i did in 30 years of addiction.

I sense that you're looking for that meaning and profundity too Canguy.

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Old 06-17-2019, 12:47 AM
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Look I'm realistic about this. I like to get trashed. I don't want to drink socially, I don't want to even drink with others. As a kid I was a loner, and I learned very early that I preferred to drink alone. I enjoyed reading, music , more alone and drinking.
As an adult, I'm now a loner. No self pity, really, my preference. Otherwise the wife would still be here, the cat would still have a tray under the kitchen table, and perhaps the baby would have been born alive. But it didnt happen.
So the marriage went, then the job.....and now. Now? I can just drink all day everyday if I want.
The only thing that stops me from wanting to, is knowing that there is another way of living. But I only seem to be able to access it for 3 or 4 months at a time.
And its hard to get started.
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Old 06-17-2019, 01:49 AM
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Yes it is extremely difficult to get started. I am only 7 months sober and joined SR in 2014 so it took me that long.

It is also hard to maintain, but lots of people do. I remember a particularly difficult time around the 3 month mark but ploughed on as I was scared to go back to exactly what you describe above.

I still have thoughts of drinking to oblivion, if I could just once and walk away, who knows but I can't. I would want it all day everyday again. So I don't have it.

Do I have a better life? Short answer yes. Although I am not running along green meadows with the wind in my hair singing with joy. I am dealing with life on an even keel, difficult times an all.
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Old 06-17-2019, 01:54 AM
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I'm sorry you're dealing with so much pain Canguy.

The main part of me was fatalistic too - and even a bit belligerent with it - I thought I was a low down loser who deserved to die alone stewed in alcohol and some nights I honestly thought the sooner the better.

That wasn't the whole story tho and I know it's not the whole story with you either.

You're here and you keep coming back for a reason - and it's not to tell us how much you love drinking, man.

You're a thoughtful decent guy who's been to hell and back and then back again - and I don't believe all that loss is down to you.

You deserve better CG.
D
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Old 06-17-2019, 03:06 AM
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Thanks for sharing everything you did, canguy. I relate when you say "I love getting trashed." There's a sliver of me that loves the idea of making everything stop, and just feel euphoric for a few hours. What I've learned, for me, anyways, is that if drinking is on the table, I'll find a reason to "need" a drink, or create one out of some everyday circumstance that could have otherwise been dealt with a number of other constructive ways. And wherever I was before the drink, I'm in a worse place the next day. I'm not trying to tell you what to do...I haven't had over 90 days sober in 20 years. Just sharing some thoughts as they came to me reading your thread.

Peace to you.
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Old 06-17-2019, 03:57 AM
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I think we all wish we could get more empathy ( or even pity) from the world out there. It is just not going to happen. Alcoholics are considered weak. Even those in recovery do not get a lot of praise. After all, it is a self-inflicted condition that any one should get out of. It is a lonely road, drinking and not drinking. We can and should only do it for ourselves, whichever option one chooses.
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Old 06-17-2019, 05:34 AM
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I had to choose to live and that meant getting sober.

Up to you.

Life is absolutely different on this side- if you want to take the risk and find out. It's the best risk even the lowest feeling of us ever take.
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Old 06-17-2019, 05:44 AM
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I wish I could somehow bottle what it is that happens after some sober time. I wish I could film it or write about it eloquently or implant it in drinkers or whatever trick would work to let them actually feel what happens with sober TIME. Not three months, more like a year.

It is absolutely worth the battle.

I was a lone drinker too. Money and time, a terrible combo for people like us.

I hope you make it back this time canguy.
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Old 06-17-2019, 06:28 AM
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Money and time. I've been at home for almost 8 months now. Free to do whatever. I was drinking all day. Probably have a quarter of a pint of rum down by now (9am). I chose to stop cuz I knew it was not going to be pretty as I got older health wise (Im 47). Best choice I ever made as far as I'm concerned. Sure its only been 8 days but its been 8 days that I feel better. Like I've been released from the torture chamber and I actually feel good. Its not easy cuz I'm still sitting here bored, with money, time, no responsibilities, but its worth it, plus that hundred and some odd dollars is still in my wallet.
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Old 06-17-2019, 06:50 AM
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All my rationalizations were the brain damage from drinking. I would say abusing drinking, but I believe folks that consider themselves moderate drinkers are brain damaged.

My wife claims to drink a glass of sangria or a margarita every 3 months or so. She is defensive about it. If I ask her about it things get awkward. She never has gotten beligerantly drunk.

I can call it what ever I want, but my brain has been permanently altered, damaged, by booze. If I ever drink again, I will continue to damage it.

I drank for every occasion and I rationalized, romanced, etc.

Bottom line was getting clean hurts like hell for a long long long time. Folks regret relapse after decades of sobriety.

I am still learning to live without booze. I go hours without thinking about it, but since it is so prevalent there is always something. That is when I fall back on all of my growth since I quit.

Education and suffering got me this far. I work out 4 to 7 days a week. That gets me dopamine and adrenaline. These are the natural high that booze alters.

Thanks.
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