Jessielynn

It's like 2:00pm hits and I try to talk myself in to just having a couple sips take the edge off.. talking myself how it isn't a big deal.. how do I change this it is a big deal and in done I have to find a way to change the way I think ! 🤦🤷

ReadyAtLast

I can easily talk myself into drinking too. I have to want to be sober more than I want to drink. I use AVRT/Rational Recovery which helps me to recognise and separate the voice of me who doesn't drink and the AV that wants to drink

Hevyn

Hi Jessielyn - I'm glad you posted about your thoughts.
I don't know why we do it. I did it for many years and dug my hole deeper & deeper each time. Even long after I knew it wasn't going to make me feel any calmer or happier. I finally realized it would only lead to anxiety & regret - sometimes danger. Try to think of where those 'few sips' will lead. Nothing good will happen.

Jessielynn

.. I am not familiar with this but I'm looking for some closed AA groups, I know it will help to not feel like the world makes it looks easy well people who are not alcoholics well I'm over here obsessing over a sip of liquor.

DriGuy

Talking myself into a drink was a daily thing, until I decided to quit for good. We are not bad people. We don't try to talk ourselves into it for malicious reasons. Our intentions are always good, just a drink or two or however many without getting plastered. It always started that way, and always.. always ended in disaster. We are alcoholics. We don't stop when we start. I did a couple of times for special reasons, and stopping in the middle of a drunk was worse than the cravings that led to the first drink. I was irritable, edgy, and whiny to an extreme.

But soon, you will stop trying to talk yourself into a drink. It won't matter. At best, it will just be a fleeting thought not worthy of further consideration.

I'm happy you are here. You belong here. You are no different than the rest of us. We all went through this part.

snitch

In AA, I read the Doctor's Opinion in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and discovered that alcoholism is a 2 fold illness.

The first part of the illness is a physical allergy to alcohol. When I put alcohol into my body, I set off the phenomenan of craving. I cannot stop drinking once I start. I am always chasing the next drink. That is why it is the FIRST drink that does the damage. I treat the physical allergy by not putting any alcohol into my body which is pretty simple right? However....

The 2nd part of alcoholism is the obsession to drink. It is what you are describing now. The obsession centres in the mind. This is where a persons recovery comes into play. Someone has mentioned AVRT. I personally am an AA'er. So my "medicine" is my HIgher Power, meetings and the 12 steps.

There are lots of different recovery plans. It is about finding out what is right for you. You don't even have to stick to just one, but maybe incorporate different things. Whatever keeps you sober!!!

In the early days (and even sometimes now but no so much) when the obsession was on me to drink, I would pray to God (a God of my understanding) please God do not let me pick up a drink. Then I would put in some action. I would get to an AA meeting, or call another alcoholic, take a shower, go for a walk, clean the bathroom, scrub the oven, ANYTHING but drink!! I joined a monthly class here on Sober Recovery and posted daily, read all around the boards, read the Big Book and other AA literature (Living Sober is a particularly great one for the early days) I watched documentaries on alcoholism and read about alcoholism. I ate candy. I got a sponsor in AA and started working the steps.

I highly recommend getting to an AA meeting so you will at least be around other people with alcoholism who are sober or who want to get sober and keep posting and reading on here. It is a fantastic site with many recovering alcoholics who can share a lot of experience, strength and hope with you.

❤🙏❤

RecklessDrunk

Try a google search for aa near me. You will probably find some regional aa group site with a list of local meetings. I wouldn't worry too much about it being closed. Some meetings I attended I couldn't tell you if they were closed or not it never really crossed my mind. They're filled with people like us.

A light may come on for you at that first meeting, it did for me. I was in some pretty deep trouble. It didn't make the trouble vanish but I felt a weight come off my shoulders. Like I think I can do this, I'm ready to deal with whatever happens. I think I can see a way foward.

I know that fear of a new place, I can worry with best of them. Don't think of what can go wrong, think what might go right.

Dee74

Hi jessielynn

I talked myself into drinking a lot of times because I wasn;t ready to accept I couldn;t control my drinking.

Once I accepted that it was much much harder to make a case for more drinking?

D

faith823

Thanks for your post. When I am drinking or hungover the drinking use to be a must for me. I needed the drink to function or when the yearning and compulsion was to strong to deny. What baffles me is when there are times I am alcohol free and have no desire or need for to start drinking. Farthest think from my mind I am able to *convince* myself to drink. You better get your drink in before ABC begins and you wont have time, you feel content now but why not feel euphoria? I talk myself into a drink THEN it takes off. I do not get that?? Its like thinking of eating when you are not hungry or your belly is overly full! Maybe it is what the poster above explained with it being a mental obsession of not even able for me to just BE. Now that I have made the decision to stay Sober
I am able to squash these thoughts easily. Although there are urges/thoughts/cravings that I can not easily squash so I will ask for help.
I do not every want to fee the way I felt coming down from my last bender
I am glad you are with us. Great job on posting and recognizing your feelings

Jessielynn

You struck me with that I'm not in a lot of trouble but did some pretty disappointing things, I already struggle with anger and a few drinks in, my kids saw me get into a fight at his game just because I couldn't walk away , had to stand up , I say that in a way I could have walked away and maybe I would have if I was 100 precent sobar, it's hard when your trying to overcome wanting a drink and still feeling very terrible about the person you are .

Gottalife

Hi Jessielynn, AA was my path to permanent sobriety and it was exactly as you said in your first post, my thinking had to change.

If I never picked up the first drink, my problem would be solved, but unfortunately no matter how much or how determined I was to just not drink that day, I drank.

Often it was without any conscious thought, but when there was some thinking there was just this very mild insignificant thought of " a drink would be nice" . Nothing dramatic, though I suspect once that thought was in my mind, nothing would have stopped me. It was just a thought that I could once again enjoy the feeling of ease and comfort that used to come with a few drinks, but I generally overshot the mark and lost control.

The frightening thing was that this gentle low key thought had the power to completely obliterate any common sense arguments about the sane thing to do which was not to drink. The almost certain consequences were easily pushed aside in favour of the insane idea that a drink will be ok this time.

I was unable to change my thinking on my own power, nevertheless it was changed, almost in spite of me. As I worked through AA's steps, that deadly thought stopped coming, instead a whole new way of thinking took hold. So I didn't stop by bravely overcoming the problem so much as the problem was removed, which was exactly what AA promised.

brighterday1234

Nonsensical

You may want to read the explanation of AVRT posted several years ago.
https://www.soberrecovery.com/forums...ined-long.html (AVRT Explained (long))

In addition I will add that I had to learn A LOT about patience on my journey. If I didn't like the way I felt I wanted to change it, and I didn't want to wait one minute for that change to happen. Easiest and fastest way to change how I felt - pop a top and have a few sips.

When I started my sober journey I wanted to stop thinking about alcohol and I didn't want to wait one minute to stop thinking about alcohol. It doesn't really work that way. I spent decades thinking about alcohol; burning those thoughts into my neural pathways. Building new thoughts takes time.

You won't get good at being sober in a day. You can't build a life around alcohol and then change the way you think about it in a day. You can change it, but it takes time. Like anything else in life - if you want to get better at it you have to practice.

Best of Luck on Your Journey!

DriGuy

If you stopped talking yourself into a drink that would change the way you think. This is obvious, so the question is why do you think like that?

Maybe... the solution might be to stop thinking, rather than changing how you think. Bear with me, because I think I actually solved this problem for myself in early recovery. Obviously, you can't stop thinking. Humans have evolved to think, but sometimes we take it to the extreme. This is an obsession. If you want to arrest your alcoholism, you need to end the obsession. In early recovery, this isn't just some stupid head game you play with your AV. You are having a craving. Every craving I ever had was the same obsession you are having.

The solution was to distract myself with something else to focus on. I almost hate to mention this, because I know some people here disagree with this strategy, but it worked for me. Other variations of the same concept may also work:

I committed to an AA meeting every night. No excuses. No talking myself out of it. Every night for as long as it took. When the obsession would start, my very next thought was that I just had to wait for the next meeting in a few hours. That short term goal was enough to take the edge off the obsession, and it did so fast. [Poof!] it would go away. It's amazing how quickly such a distraction can act.

It helped that I enjoyed the social aspects of the meetings. It replaced my socializing bar time with far more intelligent conversation, and it was something to look forward to that I wasn't going to miss out on. Meetings became my lifeline, and even after the meeting was over, I was at ease long enough to distract myself from the next obsession with the same anticipation of the next meeting, and the next, and the next, etc.

Some people don't like meetings, but they must, in my opinion, use some other distraction to stop the obsessions. They may not even be aware of doing it, and I don't know what those other distractions would look or feel like. Mine was clear to me because it was so obviously connected directly to my recovery, and I could feel it work like taking an aspirin and having your headache disappear in two minutes.

The intentional distraction is clearly a way of changing your thinking. You're replacing one thought with another. It may take some practice. Although, it didn't for me, because I already had that part of the plan firmly in place with my meeting commitment, and I was stubborn enough not to deviate from it.

Eventually, you won't need the distractions at all. Your obsessions will diminish to a point where you can simply disregard them as silly thoughts.

I also made a secondary commitment for years down the road in case of an emergency. I promised that once I was under control and felt safe, even after years of sobriety, that I would haul myself back to meetings if ever the obsessive cravings started up again. So far in almost 25 years, no such obsessive cravings have returned. I'm at a point where I don't need any meetings and have been at that point for many years. But I'll be finding a meeting in a rush, if I ever start obsessing on drinking again.

August252015

Great posts above. My first thought to your OP was "because I'm an alcoholic." We have an insane disease and we do stuff that makes no sense in our quest to keep drinking. No matter what consequences we haven't had...YET.

And the yet part? It WILL catch up with us if we don't get sober.
I haven't lost a job...yet.
I haven't gotten a DUI...yet.
I haven't had a drink in the morning....yet.

Plenty of other "prices" to pay before we get to the "biggies." Stuff we do in front of our kids is big, too.

I noticed you said "closed" AA meetings. Just making sure that you know the difference between closed and open. Closed just means that only people there with a desire to quit drinking attend. I have found that's the mostly the same folks in open meetings, and while recovery professionals or drug addicts or spouses or friends can go, it's the same vibe as closed ones. In all meetings, anonymity and the principles of AA are upheld.

Open AA meetings are absolutely great - and usually more commonly held, and I have gone to mostly open ones along the way. They can be group discussion, or step meetings, or womens or....

You're posting threads we can all relate to - glad you are here and hope you make WHATEVER steps you need to not drink, today. Then look at tomorrow when it comes. And get to a meeting

Arbor

^^^ I love that.

Man, if you just commit to come to SR enough, daily even and read these posts as part of your daily ritual instead of drinking I swear things will change. Get this sober lifestyle ingrained...it’s possible with commitment. Do what whatever it takes to stay sober. A day at a time. It will happen. I’m proof of it.