Strugglingto

least

A profile photo or an avatar? The profile photo is on your profile page and an avatar is the picture under your username.

Go to "user CP" and then either click on "edit profile picture" or further down, "edit avatar". The avatar you can choose from those available or upload your own.

Strugglingto

Either I just don't want to be faceless. I am not telling my name or wanting to make friends but this addiction can be so dehumanizing. My first rehab I got called пьяная собака by woman who worked in the kitchen. It means "drunk dog". I dropped a potato

Strugglingto

I think I need an admin. It doesn't work for me

Dee74

if you want to post or PM the avatar you want I can try and fix that for you

Hows everything else going?
D

Strugglingto

I solved it on the desktop version. I feel awful but I knew I would. So nothing new. It was a short bender but all the usual symptoms.

biminiblue

Nice image! I hope you feel better.

Strugglingto

I just hated being completely anonymous here. It is a supportive community and I genuinely think it has saved my life. But I keep, trip, stumbling and falling.

biminiblue

You'll get there.

Fall down seven times, get back up eight.

What do you think is causing you to pick up? Figure out what happened the last time right before you drank.

I had to take alcohol completely off the table. No drinking, not one, no matter what - that was my #1 DailyGoal, to put my head on the pillow sober.

NerfThis

You will stop falling eventually. As bimini said, drinking alcohol had to become an absolute no no. I wasted way too much of my time trying to cut down drinking days and trying to moderate. None of it ever worked and never will.

Sasha4

Are you warm enough?
You have many layers on!

Listen, if stopping drinking was so easy, places like AA, rehabs and here would not exist.
It's not easy.
You will get there if you want it.

I finally stopped nearly 8 years ago.
I had many stop/starts.
Then I eventually 'got it' as we say here.

For me the key was 1 day at a time.
I made sure I went to sleep sober each night.
If something troubled me, I would think to myself 'if things are still as bad tomorrow, i will think about having a drink, but today I am not drinking'.

It worked for me.
I didn't plan ahead too much.
My friends were all going through mile stone 40th birthdays.
They would say will you not be drinking at my party that's 2 months away.
I also answered that I didn't know, I would cross that bridge when I came to it.
I never drank.

Something that my beloved Dee taught me was this saying -

'everything will be okay in the end. If its not okay, its not the end'

For me it was so true.
Drinking solved no problems I had.

I went through some life changing times too in early sobriety - redundancy, moving house, a health scare, my relationship ending.
I did it sober.
It is 2nd nature for me now.
I do not miss drinking one bit.

I had to change my routine a lot.
I used to sit with my favourite glass, with my favourite vodka in front of the TV in the same spot on the sofa every single night.
I smashed that hideous glass.
I got off the sofa.
I became busy.
It worked for me.

Just keep going, step by step, day by day.
Come here and post and engage with other members.

I wish you the best xx

Strugglingto

Rejected for a job. There are things that make you feel "why not?". It was not even an interesting job. I was a crime reporter. I worked in print and online as well as some TV and radio. My addiction took that from me. And I am not actually employable really. It took over completely. This latest relapse is not the worst. Just a week. I am not as sick as I have been in the past. I am not a death's door. I am just bored. I am trying to check in here. Maybe it is because it is late summer but it seems very quiet on this site. And I need to read insight from people who "get it" and need to talk.

Strugglingto

Ha. That was January in sub zero temperatures. This is a five year problem for me. And in January I started this train wreck again. A breakup, and boom I fell off the wagon very badly. And of course, drinking made everything worse. I don't really understand Fahrenheit. The rest of the world uses Celsius but there can be a 50 degree Celsius difference between winter and summer where I live. Both are unpleasant. But the heat is harder to deal with than the cold

biminiblue

It is a little slow on this site - but I found that the more I plugged in to various ongoing threads, and the more I talked, the more people talked back to me.

Are you in the "Class of August" thread? I liked my Class of March thread and posted there daily. Some people start their own journal-type threads and there are no lack of past threads, I think over 6 million past posts. There's a deep well of wisdom on this site from people who get it.

Keep talking.

You'll be employable soon. Honestly I couldn't do that kind of work! Crime reporting sounds like it would suck my soul right out of me. Maybe I'm not understanding what it involves. I can't even listen to the nightly news; if I had to make a living at it I'd probably lose it.

Strugglingto

Maybe that was the start. I loved it. There was a rush involved. But it is the worst things that can happen to people and the worst things people can do to each other. You become like a cynical old cop. But leave it (as I did after seven years) and you replace the rush with another. For me it was alcohol. I am 37 and feel like I have lived a million lives and seen and heard so much. Most of it unpleasant. Murders, vehicle crashes, but there was an adrenaline component. And things can seem very mundane after that

Strugglingto

"Are you in the "Class of August" thread?' Technically I am the class of June. And was here constantly. And it went from big conversations to a trickle.

Misssy2

Its only anonymous for the user..If we want to post our pictures and have family members come across them when they are looking for help with addictions...that is up to us...I believe that is how it works.

Strugglingto

I placed a pic. Everyone knows so why hide? It is just a photo of me. It comforts me in some way. To see myself being honest. It is not like all my personal details. Simply a photo of myself to feel a little more genuine. You don't wear a mask to a meeting so I am following the same logic. In a completely relapsed state yet again, admittedly. It is not my worst. But I did it again and it is less about being sick this time. I was being a complete tool though. And this is accountability a little I hope

biminiblue

You can join as many threads as you want, August would be good.

The first month of any new "class" thread is very intense, lots of wordy introspection, many Resolutionists. People drop off of any forum, but especially ones like this where relapse is common and also people getting on with their sober lives is common.

Jump in as many threads as you like. Talk it out.

Strugglingto

I need to. Honestly I have not worked out where is the best place to go in terms of the forums. A lot of people post generally and you listen to them maybe respond and then they just disappear. I will check August. I know how heavy it can be but hearing people talk about their stories helps me even if they are going through hell. I don't feel so alone. Because away from a place like here people hate us. I say that loosely but in the last meeting I went to there was a woman, a teacher, and she said her husband called her mother to say "get this drunk b*tch out of my house". I need to hear the tragedy and understand how to come back. That is why I wanted a photo. To show I am a human. I stopped drinking a day ago. But I am still all over the place and I want to illustrate that I was better than this once. It is my reason. Other people have their views and that is fine.