Al34

I quit smoking 4 years ago this week. Haven’t had a single one since. I loved smoking, i smoked 40-70 a day! I honestly loved it. But i knew it would kill me. So i struggled for YEARS to stop. And after 4000 times of trying, i did!

Now i hate the smell of it. I don’t understand why i even liked it. I don’t miss it. I don’t think about it unless someone brings up smoking or it’s around the anniversary of me stopping. I can honestly say, i cannot imagine smoking again ever.

i just hope i get to the same place with alcohol, or at least similar.

i don’t my life to be about ‘being’ an ex drinker.

i want my life to be about many other things, and me being teetotal a foot note

tomls

I would rather be known as an ex drinker more than being remembered as a drunk or a person that somebody used to know that drank themselves to death at an early age!

Ringside

How long has your life been about recovery?

MLD51

You'll get there, if you work hard now and make your life about recovery for a while. When I was in early recovery, my life was all about recovery, all day every day. I needed to do that. Most people do. I had to work really hard and stay very vigilant in those early months - actually about a year and a half or so. Gradually, I thought less and less about recovery. It is always in the back of my mind that I'm in recovery. I always will be. But it does not dominate my life anymore. I still do recovery "stuff." I come here and read and post. I still go to meetings, but not as many. These things are for maintenance. I do not NEED to be here or in meetings, like in the beginning, I choose to be here and go to a meeting now and then. My life goes on pretty normally now. I go out with friends to dinner or whatever, they have drinks and I don't. It's that simple. Sometimes the subject comes up, and I just say that sobriety is going great, that I love being sober, and that I can't see myself ever drinking again.

brighterday1234

In my experience recovery from alcoholism
is a way of life. One has to live a life conducive to recovery as the drink is merely a symptom of many underlying issues for an alcoholic in my experience.

DriGuy

Recovery evolves. In the beginning, it's what your life has to be all about. It is by necessity. You must constantly be vigilant, learn to outwit your own head games, and retrain your habits. I had to make recovery the most important issue in my life at the beginning. It would be nice if it was easy, but it's not easy. It is rewarding, however.

I do agree that I don't want the whole rest of my life to be about recovery, and it's not. Most of my responses to alcohol are now automatic. I don't think about it much. Some people make the rest of their lives about recovery, and are happy doing it. In fact, it may be vital for some. You do what you have to do to stay sober. But you're right about other things to do out there. The choices are infinite. Even the number of good choices are infinite. There's a lot to do that can make your life more meaningful. The thing is, you can't unlock all the possibilities without sobriety.

Some people see recovery as never ending. Much of it depends on how each of us defines it, or if we separate personal growth from it. I consider my recovery finished. I'm still an alcoholic of course. I just decided to never act like one again.

PuckLuck

Wow, sounds like you quit smoking like I did. I quit after 15 years on New Years Eve. I just had enough of it. I wasn't smoking much prior, but I was drunk and when I was drinking, I was smoking. I can't explain how I quit either I was just was completely sick of the taste and smell. I'll never go back to it either. I too have no idea why I did it for so many years. Congrats on 4 years.

In regards to your life being about recovery. It doesn't HAVE to be. I know people who do their own thing after being sober a while who are still sober, but they all seem to still do something. Whatever it is that works for them.

In the beginning I think you probably need to be hardcore about it though, but after time you do not have to make your entire life about recovery. No one is forcing you to do anything. What you choose to do with your sobriety is your business.

I'm a strong believer there isn't a one size fits all recovery program or plan. Gotta find your own way. I personally think quitting booze and turning your life around is powerful (bleep). Hell of an opportunity to help someone who is going through the hell we all went through for years.

Thinking that your life must absolutely be about not drinking and nothing else is black and white thinking. It's just not true.

nez

My life is about life. Being the best version of me that I can. I am an alcoholic. I will never be an ex-alcoholic. Because I am working on being the best version of me that I can; I don't drink. The fact that I don't drink is not on mind every single waking moment, it is just natural like breathing. My life is about many things. I celebrate life, I don't just get through life.

At one point in my life, I used to wear diapers. I no longer do. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the fact that I am ex-diaper wearer. It is just part of the story of my life.

Anna

You can achieve that, if you stop drinking and work on recovering. I think it's very important to fill your life with people and activities that bring you joy. Your life doesn't have to be about 'not drinking'.

CRRHCC

You quit smoking when you, "Valued," your health more than smoking. The only way you will stop desiring heavy substances and change your behavior is by seeing more value in the change, than in the using. We stop abusing substances and other behaviors, when we decide (reason) abusing is not the best option for our long term happiness. When our values trump our addiction, there is no addiction. If this premise sounds to simple or unrealistic, consider this: So called normal drinkers do this all the time. They stop because they don't like feeling tipsy (lack control) or they don't want a hangover, etc. They stop because they value feeling normal over the alternative negative consequences. It really is a choice. We just have to, "Unlearn," our previously conditioned behavior.

PuckLuck

By the way! I have said the same exact thing myself a million times. I think we all have, really...

It's a normal fear. I also think you might relate it to being someone who goes to meetings everyday for the rest of their life. Not everyone who is sober does AA. I don't. I used to though. A LOT. I had a sponsor with 30 years of sobriety and he went to meetings like once every two weeks or so and his life seemed to be a lot more than not drinking.

TiredCarpenter

Al34:you’ve had some very good feedback here. These posts are outstanding.

Yes, immersion in recovery at first. Experiencing life to it’s fullest (with some maintenance of sobriety) next.

CRRHCC; I love your new avatar.

Have a great today!

fini

Al,
i quit smoking after many attempts, a couple of years before i quit drinking. i then figured that quitting drinking, which i had also tried to do many times, would be the same process, more or less, and i'd be done with it in a few months.
well, it turned out differently, and i think it is because drinking "touched me" in a totally different place than smoking ever did.

my life is not "about" recovery. at all. my life is life lived, with whatever it brings, as a recovered alcoholic. which means it is lived differently from the way i lived it before.

Kaily

Being in recovery will always be a part of your life but not all your life. Wear it with pride.

Continuing to drink would define your life (in a bad way) more than any type of recovery ever will.

Relax, embrace and enjoy life on life's terms.

least

I've been sober over 10 yrs now and my life is not focused on my recovery. Instead, my focus is on living a fulfilling life, of which sobriety just happens to be a big part. Living sober is my normal now and I don't give it a second thought, it just IS.

MaximusD

I quit for 7 years 2007-2012 and in all that time I remember one ALMOST relapse. Other than that, for most of that time I didn't even think about it. I do remember telling people that I quit drinking "Because I have drank enough for one lifetime" so I had accepted it.

Dee74

A lot of newcomers say they don;t want their lives to be 'addicted to recovery'. Most old timers don't say that.

I think it's because after a while you realise that recovery is important, but it's just like brushing your teeth, or breathing.

Noone ever worries about being addicted to brushing their teeth or breathing

D

MindfulMan

Been sober for 3 years as of May 9. I rarely come here, but every once in a while I browse for a half hour or so. Usually I no longer post but I thought I had something to contribute here.

I don't say I'm sober. I say I don't drink. After years of on-again-off-again (definitely mostly on) terrible drinking, leading to a hospitalization and medical detox, I just said enough was enough. I had also done that with cigarettes over 10 years ago...started smoking again in rehab. Smoked for four months and one day just decided to wait until later to buy my smokes, and later just never happened. VERY different than 10 years ago.

I did 5 weeks of inpatient rehab after detox, which was 12 Step. Continued with 12 Step for another 5 weeks after rehab, then went through a cognitive based outpatient program. Also saw a psychiatrist (got me into rehab in the first place), individual psychotherapy, started hitting the gym heavily and changed my diet. I was on disability for a year, and I considered getting sober (or not drinking) my full time job.

I really consider myself done about two weeks into inpatient rehab. I was starting to feel less ill (I had the beginnings of wet brain...dodged a bullet on that one, two out of three symptoms), and one day we did Step One. I said to myself "Self? I woke up in a room wondering when I put in fire sprinklers in the ceiling, wandered around for 20 minutes wondering where I was and who were all these people. There's no way I had any control over alcohol and NO WAY was my life manageable. I could no longer fake that bs.

I had been planning to take 90 days off drinking, because hell, I didn't have a drinking problem, I just had to detox and then I was OK to going back to a "normal life." I was at another meeting and looked at the people around me, some doing rehab for the 9th time on everything but the kitchen sink, who'd lived on the street or in jail, and I thought "Ya know what? The only way I'm never ending up back here is to just never drink again." That was pretty much that. The rest of the year was making sure I stayed that way.

Like I said, I'm not sober. I just don't drink any more. Life is far better than it ever was. And to be truthful, I can imagine what having a drink would feel like. It's not all that great.

Everyone is different. Your sobriety will probably look different than mine. WHATEVER WORKS to keep you off alcohol or whatever your DOC is.

Good luck and God bless. Just keep plodding alone and you will find that life is so much better without substance.

MaximusD

I just realized my dates add up to 5 years. I have been saying 7 years for awhile but its actually 5. Bottom line, I think this is individual for sure but for me and a lot of people the longer you are quit the less you think about it.

awuh1

I quit smoking years before I stopped drinking also. I was at about 50 per day, or about one every 20 minutes.

Quitting drinking was more difficult. I think in part because it was the last addiction I had to abandon. It was the last way I had of regulating my mood and I think that was at least part of what made it more difficult. But there was another aspect of it that took me totally by surprise..

I came to the realization that there was something that I was not addressing that made me want to drink. It was something totally apart from the physical addiction to alcohol. The alcohol was just a way to cope with that problem, and I was completely unaware of it initially. It's been described as "a thirst for wholeness". It was a sort of empty hole that the alcohol temporarily filled.

Addressing that was the key, and made alcohol, in the end, a footnote.