See I had an entire wordy response to your post warren. I deleted it and retyped it a few times.

All I will say are the following things:

Your sobriety is your own. Mine is MY only responsibility. Yours is none of my business. There's a few people on here that have really fuzzy logic about what it means to be sober or have sober time. To each his/her own! Not my interest.

Whatever works for you, works for you. What you've done so far hasn't seemed to work for you at all.

You refer to your battle with alcohol. Respectfully, this isn't a battle. Alcohol already won. Maybe thinking that you will defeat somethingabout it helps keep you stuck.

You also talk about not having another drink in regards to feeling like you're on a diet forever. I'm sad for you that alcohol is still so hugely important to you, and so deeply felt as something you enjoy, outweighing whatever negatives most all of us can predict it will bring. I don't know how much more any of 'us' here can tell you how helpful it is to have assitance with all this, but for whatever reason you've not explored it, and that again is your business.

Smacked said something in another thread that I really liked, something to the effect of "Abstinence has very little to do with recovery. Recovery however, has everything to do with keeping me abstinent".

I was reading in the Alcoholism forum, something I rarely do and came across this post. It's by Community Greeter Chip and I hope since I'm quoting and giving him credit it's okay for me to repost this! If not Dee, let me know =) I found it fitting considering what we've been talking about.

I want to respond to another thing I read but need to get my head straight first, long day and super tired! lol

it's fine Mariposa - it's a good post - a solemn reminder of whats at stake.

Thanks :)
D

Warren, how you live your life, and deal with your issues with alcohol is your own.. like I said.

I think we are at odds when it comes to this whole sobriety thing, and I always respect differences in opinions and approaches. It would be disrespectful to you if I were to be dishonest or give you a hug for 1. drinking, and 2. for not putting any tools together to support you in this 'battle' you feel you have going on.

I care about you, we differ in our thoughts and approach to this.. and that's ok. Isn't it?

You requested feedback, and I do not apologize that my feedback wasn't a virtual pat on the back. You should know me better than that by now, and I know you don't 'respond well' to tough love, and it's not even what my way is, I'm just honest.. maybe brutally honest.. maybe too blunt. I can't sugar coat over the tragedy of this stuff.

I wasn't even going to post, obviously I attempted, deleted, edited, tried again, deleted and came back and finally summarized some thoughts after thinking about it a bit further. I will never be anything but up front and honest with anyone here, or elsewhere in my life. Sometimes it doesn't come wrapped up in pretty paper and a song. This is life or death for the most part.. and that's what drives me sometimes. If you are hurt or offended by anything I said, do know that's not my intention.

That part was my only point.

Do what you will. I wish you luck, and health. I don't make comments here lightly or for my own entertainment. I'm sorry that you don't/can't find value in what I have said. I think for now, I'll leave this thread.. I'm not going to play into this back and forth of dissecting each line we write to each other. You have a lot of love and support here. I know you'll rally together and be great with each other. I don't fit here.

Take care, I'm done here... I know when to walk away.

Since this is a Sobriety forum I have to believe it should be common place that people would come in here and discuss their trials and tribulations with their S/DoC.

In my naivete, I never took Warren's open discussion of his thoughts and fears as true indicators for a eventual return to drinking.

I actually felt you (Warren) were being honest and forthright. I suspected this honesty was from your heart and that made it pure. I thought you were using the forum as it was intended.

Now remember, this is all through my filter.

Everyone else here sees their sobriety a certain way and have a whole value system perceived in their mind that keeps them in check and safe. Our dashboards have our warning lights in different places.

Some people seem to be able to walk away from it and their example is admired, while others struggle every single day. Some people who walk calmly away are just plain lucky and not gifted or skilled at working a program.

My recent thoughts about wine with dinner were not a surprise to me. I knew they would come. I have lived in my flesh and heard the BS my brain can come up with for almost a half century. Plus, you have to factor in my countless attempts to get away from drinking for 30 years.

This time with the "wine thoughts" it was different, but no credit to myself. For me, my sobriety is mostly luck. Sure, I doing some good things like therapy and adding positive sober activities in my life, but who the hell knows what temptation lurks around the next corner.

As soon as I got those wine thoughts, it was like white blood cells on attack of some "infection" in my brain. I bombarded those fleeting thoughts with a million examples of why I quit in the first place.

I went on attack like no other time, remembering hang overs, championing my current fitness, the way I feel every morning, the progress of therapy. I mean it was like rapid fire.

When the dust settled from that moment, I felt so loved. I didn't feel fear or like I had some close call. I felt like there was a part of me that was actually coming to my own defense. It was a beautiful moment.

The AA folks call what I experienced Stinking Thinking, but I have no idea what they call how my brain went on attack.

I don't have the Time in Ranks in the Sobriety Army, and I have 30 year history of failure, so I can't give you real advice either. But I can say you do appear to have been mostly on the right track.

Like I said earlier, if there is a second slip then YOU MUST face the truth if you are to succeed.

I do wish you would look into counseling ... and get a real bulldog who won't let you get away with rationalizations (and other synonyms for BS).

You have accomplished a lot, but there is much more work to be done.

Even those of us who have made our decision to stop, moved on in positive ways will all return to the gates of hell we remember as temptation. It will happen, it always does.

But when it is happening everyday, what we are doing is not working. It's like we are at a carnival on the bumper cars. We get knocked hard and the car faces a whole other direction, but we hit the pedal and the car takes off in the new direction. It could be right into another car, into a blocked jam of a group of stalled cars or out into a clearing with a temporary feeling of freedom.

Even with all these options we still have our hands on a wheel and our feet on the pedal to keep making decisions until we find one that works for us.

I'm mostly rambling now because I care about you. Don't take any of our words in any other way here but from a very caring place.

You have been most excellent at reading our words of encouragement or even tough love at times and not thinking of it as an attack.

Every day here is a form of intervention.

I think it's true what you say Charles - with very few exceptions, noone here on SR takes the time to write a post without it coming from a place of caring and, sometimes, concern.

I'm very happy to read statements like this from you Warren
I don't think anyone can argue with that :)

D

Bastards ... :react

[QUOTE=ExNavyInHouston;2347303] I have lived in my flesh and heard the BS my brain can come up with for almost a half century.

QUOTE]
Dammm, your old!

awww Jess, don't go, of course you belong here. Theres only a few of us left, we must all stay!!



[QUOTE=ExNavyInHouston;2347303] Some people who walk calmly away are just plain lucky and not gifted or skilled at working a program.
QUOTE]

This is along the lines of what I want to type. Sometimes when people talk about the type of people who quit "easy" being lucky (me), I start to feel offended. I want to say "my sobriety is every bit as hard won as anyones".

Thats not true though. This time around, it was easy. My personal
belief about that, is that it was my time, or meant to be. I do believe their is a higher power at work in our lives. I do believe there are things going on unseen which effect us.

People may think alcoholics have no value to society, but look at Bill whatever his name as, the founder of AA. He has saved millions of lives maybe, and all because he was a drunk.

All of our paths have value. For some of us, our paths have brought us to unerring sobriety, and further, to self discovery, spiritual awakening and even recovery.

I have learned so much from jess's determination and joy, charles's self discovery and softly spoken wisdom, sus's kindness and quiet struggles and warrens friendship and honesty in his quest.

I hope we all continue together, here, sharing what parts of our journeys we can. I'm not sure any of us would have made it this far without our group.

Ok ok, I am about to be 46 but I embellished for literary purposes.

I need to correct the wording of this sentence.

I'm not going to rewrite it, but just talk about it. Using the word NEVER was wrong because my natural tendency is to give alcohol a God-like power and know that if it really wants us, it will overcome any of our efforts to shun it from our life.

That's a little dramatic of course, but as a only-child I laid in my room many nights over thinking things.

The more honest comment from me would be, that I worried all the open talk by you Warren was you giving nervous chatter. I imagined Dustin Hoffman's character in Rain Man, "Not gonna drink, not gonna do it, I think about drinking, but not gonna do it."

But, I just thought to myself as I was reading it, this is this guy's way of getting away from it - to write a daily (or moment by moment) journal of everything he is thinking about his drinking.

We all arrive here on our Morning After DAY 1, pretty much the same. Then from that moment we all go about building our sobriety in our own "unique" way (not snowflake unique). In other words, some of us went to counselors, some of us went to meetings, some of us had life changing events, and some of us delved in to work (you all know I wasn't this one ;)).

As a Sobriety/Recovery Forum I like to know I can come here and read about people's struggles and know that when I get these scary days I am just a normal guy and not floating down Red Wine River (say that 3 times) headed straight for Getting Drunk Falls.

So Warren, I worried, but I wasn't convinced, so for me to say NEVER was not accurate.

Your daily devotion to the thread (early on) told me your in-depth postings were more about talking in your recovery diary, at least that's the way I took it. I tended to think it was the people who were slipping away who were more likely "up to something."

In my case, I can go a week or two and not post here. In a forum like this, it's easy to think I am making my way back to my old ways. Disappearing could be my way of getting out of the line of sight of the folks I would be embarrassed to fail in front of. Since I know this is not true in my case, I just assumed you were doing it your way too.

Warren, I want you sober, but more importantly I want you happy sober. One of us failing is too close to home. It's like being a soldier in a fox hole. You are in it to win and you look over and see your buddy laying lifeless, and you are supposed to turn back towards the enemy and keep fighting. I think this vision, makes us face our own sober immortality and realize we could take a bullet ourselves just as easily.

WOW, really need time to read these and catch up!

Just popping in quickly to post this link for Charles: The Best Volunteer Opportunities for Divers Worldwide

It's something I stumbled upon and I know your love for diving, so I thought I'd share it with you =)

Great website -- I wish I had the time to do it. I just can't get away for the minimum times required.

Haha, well I am so happy I thought of it too then silly. I spent the entire weekend in the waves. There was possible drama around me, a pull toward some guilt and misgivings over leaving and codie stuff, but I managed to deal with most of it as it came up, and get right back to the serious business of loving my now=)