tootsl1

MITA, I hate it at Christmas time where everyone is so sophisticated and having a wonderful time, all because of some liquor or another - yeah right! I even got a craving with some woman pouring herself a 'crisp Chardonnay' in a book I was reading. That AV is one sneaky critter!

Welcome Rose and well done on two months, I remember how each of those early days felt like a victory, two months felt like a mountain climbed!

As we have a few new faces here ( thanks Purp! ) I'd love to hear a bit about you all and your journeys. I'm an 'Undie-Graduate' meaning I have passed that blessed 12 month mark. I stick around here because I feel you all can do with knowing from one who has been there, that sobriety truly does get easier the longer you have under your belt.
I have found that those who succeed, are those who embrace their opportunity to throw off the mantle of reliance and learn the true freedom of removing alcohol from the menu. That seems an insurmountable challenge in the early days, I know I couldn't initially conceive of never, ever drinking again.
But as I found my sober legs and found activities to replace drinking, I began to remember what I had wanted of my life before drink took on so much importance. I've said before, sobriety doesn't make life better, but it certainly gives you the chance to do it for yourself.

I'm on SR daily, and like Mags, it's armour against complacency, but it also means I'm here to listen and support in any way I can. As are countless other here. Thing is people can only help if you open up that you are struggling.

ManInTheArena

Hi Toots!! I've been on SR for a while too, but found my home in the March 2016 class (along with Purps). I still struggle a bit, but I do manage to string together multiple months of sobriety at a time. I guess I've been sober at least 75% of the time since March 2016. I'll never give up, and this time I think I have some better understanding and better support outside of SR. I really want to stay sober for the rest of my life.

Time2, I hear you on many of those points. Good luck with your situation - put yourself first and then go from there!

Dee74

welcome time2LLL60

D

Mags1

Welcome Time2, and hello
I know alcohol muddled my brain so much, I got quite paranoid and anxious and I thought booze took it away, but it was the opposite, I only know the best thing I did was stop, I got my life back.
Staying stopped was what SR helped me do, along with all the people here who ‘get’ me, being in the same situation.

tootsl1

Hi Timeto, I think our posts crossed. So much of what you did resonated with me. My first husband was an alcoholic and I was a codependent enabler for much of that. Circumstances gave me the strength to walk away from that relationship and actually begin a new and better life for myself. Unfortunately, I hadn't dealt with a lot of issues or learned to deal with aspects of my current life that I was not happy with. I drank more and more and in the last 18 months of my drinking it escalated. I knew without doubt I was heading down a path I needed to get off, and with the love support and help I've found here, and from my current husband, I've made it this far.

It took me a while see that we get one shot at this life and it is up to us to make of it what we can. No one will do it for us, no one else can take our bull by the he horns. They can be there though to support us as we do. It is scary making those big life decisions without knowing what is round the corner. But I do know that a good decision, a right decision won't kill us, it will eventually make us stronger. And in my case, it did save my life, or at least give me many more and better years than I would have had.

Purplrks3647

Welcome to the thread Time2!!! Glad to see you ~ hope to see you again on the Soberbus thread as well

^^^I'm beginning to relate to this ^^^

ManInTheArena

Hi Unders.

I don't have much to add to Toots' comments, other than I'm learning that I was just flat out wrong about drinking making things more fun or better. There is a funny quote in Annie Grace's book "This Naked Mind" that goes something like this ... "Dear Alcohol. You were supposed to make me sexier, funnier and a better dancer. I've seen the video. We need to talk."

Enjoy your Friday everyone (or maybe it's already Saturday where some of you are)!!

time2

Hello everyone (Unders) I like that nickname. Thank you for welcoming me.

I was pacing and full of anxiety yesterday and I kept saying, I am not going to go buy booze, I am not going to go buy booze, and then my thought went from, I am not going to buy booze, to; I’ll let my husband decide if we drink tonight, he can make the decision for us and buy it. These are the crazy thoughts and obsession in the early days that just want to make me pull my hair out! I figured I’d let him make the decision for me. Putting the blame on him instead of myself was easier. Typical drinker sneakiness.

You are right, I am the only one that can make this happen or not make this happen, it is in my hands.

Well, he bought booze, and I was just an edgy mess, but I am still here today, it wasn't easy, but I am here. Didn’t help watching tv last night. Everyone is always holding a drink in their hand, laughing and having intelligent talks. Yea right, from my experience anyone talking after having a drink is far from having an intelligent conversation.

I also read Annie Grace’s book and did her 30 day experiment quite awhile back, it really made sense and gave a different way of looking at drinking. I did graduate her class, lol, but the idea came back in my head after a few months that I could be a normal drinker again.

My brain wiring is just so changed from years of abuse, I need to teach and train my brain responses and actions to react differently.

It is embarrassing, yet I know we slippers are always welcomed back with open arms, but it is embarrassing to keep saying the same things that I will change, I am going to do different and also just repeating the quitting process again.

Quitting again is hard, but staying quit after achieving a few months seems harder, it, is like, what do I do now? I need to make some life changes, ah heck, I’ll just have a drink and not think about it.

Thank you for letting me ramble on again. 😊

I read this whole thread and all your opinions, views, your experiences that you are sharing are extremely helpful and I hope that you continue to offer your guidance, your input here as people who have traveled this road and found your way, it really does help, a lot more than you may realize. The reading I have been doing here lately on SR before I decided to come back, IS what made me come back. 😊

ManInTheArena

This is a huge success, Time2, way to go!! I don't have any special words of wisdom. It's simple, but not necessarily easy You can do it.

Mags1

Time2, you did great, and I know what you mean about programmes on tv and everyone seems to be drinking. I stopped watching so much when I stopped drinking as all I saw was people drinking.
My brain picked out all the ads and drinks and that’s all I seemed to see. I had to prise myself away from those habits.

Our AV has a crafty way of making us think it’s ok to have one....but with time we can put it in its place, so it’s voice won’t be heard or important.

We know as alcoholics that it’s never ever just one or two drinks. It’s not in our makeup. Playing the tape forward right to the end, was a good sober tool I used.

tootsl1

Time2, I have friends here who are trying to get/remain sober and living with a drinker. ( my Hubbie drinks but is a 'normie' and it doesn't bother me this far down the road other than the occasional wish to be able to have an adult drink!) it is not easy, in fact I often feel you have the hardest path of us all, with active temptation in front of you.
As far as quitting drinking was concerned I was so fortunate Mr T was as understanding and supportive as he is. For the first 6 months he hid the booze ( I guess I could have found it if I looked) and refused to drink in front of me - again folks, obviously a normie, what drinker could or would even do that??
But when I was with my first husband, I wanted to quit smoking, another addiction with another Active Voice, and he couldn't, so I had to go through stopping smoking with him actively smoking in front of me. So in some way I can relate.
Perhaps also Time2, you could check out some of the Friends and Family threads here. It may help you with your emotional responses towards your husbands active drinking. It helped me to deal with a lot of the residual anger I held against my first husband that he effectively chose alcohol over me, the woman he professed to love for 12 years.
We don't and cannot be in a relationship with an addict without being affected by it. I know myself that my drinking make me a selfish, self absorbed sneaky liar who cared only for my next drink. I count my blessings that I stopped when I did and still have a good relationship with Mr T. But I also know that I was emotionally bruised and battered and left vulnerable by the alcoholism that wrecked my first husband. I left him, but he only lived about another ten years, alcohol took him aged 57. Yet when I met him he was such a different man ( though the signs were there if I'd known to look) .
Alcohol is poison. Clear and simple. But it doesn't just poison the body, it poisons the mind, it warps emotions and it wrecks lives, not just that of the addict but those who love them. Those who have to make hard choices around them.
We have a chance here, in SR, to stop our addiction from causing more harm.

Time2, I quit more times than most normies pick up, eventually my lack of self control and the self-loathing it caused was what drove me to do something more to find a way to stop. I knew I wasn't going to do it alone, or in secret. I had to own my drinking, first to my doctor and then to my husband and then begin to find the best tools here to prevent the backslides of the past.
I feel, for myself, I could only get on and remain on the right path, by taking on board something Dee said at the time. 'Take alcohol off the table'. Remove it as an option, remove it as a future consideration. Then and only then could I work at ignoring my AV and recognise it for what it was.

But I'm talking of my way, and what helped me. We all have as many paths to sobriety as we had to the bottle, and we have to find what works best for us.
Don't be despondent if someone makes finding sobriety seem easy, we all know it's not, they maybe found the right tools for themselves a little earlier.

But there is a world of wisdom and advise here, not to count the support, so we can find what suits each one, find what resonates.

Alcoholism, addiction, is lonely, because even if we drink with others, we hide the depth of our dark desires. To get better, we need to open that dark room and flood it with light, we need to share our worst, own it. Then we can begin to rebuild ourselves into the person we should always have been. Or just the 2.0 we can be from here on in, with the wisdom learned from our time in the dark.

Purp, I am so happy to see you beginning to find your sober legs! I know you too struggled for a long time with the concept of 'never again'.

ManInTheArena

Good Saturday Morning, Unders!!

Toots, that is one of the best posts I've read in quite some time - thanks for those thoughts

Have a great day everyone!

time2

(My brain picked out all the ads and drinks and that’s all I seemed to see.)

So true Mags. I never notice what they were eating, could be wonderful lobster, but I wouldn’t see it. They could be in a beautiful setting/place and my mind would think, see, it’s ok to drink and have fun in a beautiful location. Selective perception ☹

MITA, Dee, Purps, Jen, Briansy, CK, JJ, melski, Rose, everyone, Hello!

Toots, thank you for your post. You gave me more thoughts to think about, and also explained more clearly feelings I have inside but couldn’t seem to express. Thank you again for taking your time to say so clearly what not just I needed to hear, but also others that may be lurking and reading needed to hear. It is posts like this that have opened my eyes even more and helped me to understand more and in a different way, when I am so confused.

Thank you everyone for your support!

I have actually slept through each night the past few days, which is unusual for me, something I haven’t had in my past quits. My sleep feels calm, maybe my soul is guiding me too.

Have a great weekend unders and overs.

Rose335

Dear Unders - having signed up to this very helpful thread I then ended up with an unusually busy few days so I couldn't easily find time to post. Glad to have the chance to say hello again now and to say thank you very much for your welcomes. I don't have a very interesting, or, luckily enough, too terrible a back story given the price that alcohol can demand of us and the damage it can cause. But it is a story of gradually increased and excessive drinking and morning after morning of miserable and guilt ridden awakenings.

I come from a large, heavy drinking family so alcohol was a fairly normal companion growing up, and subsequently. And for many years whilst I definitely drank too much it didn't seem outside the norm nor did it totally rule my life. In fact there was never really a point at which I couldn't function at work because of drinking. And I'm retired now so that's a lot of time of steadily drinking too much whilst still sort of keeping it together. But, as is the way with excessive drinking, it got less and less enjoyable whilst at the same time increasing in volume. And I got more and more miserable and more and more remorseful.

Two things I cannot now calculate, however hard I try: (1) when my drinking really got out of control and began to average a minimum of a bottle of wine a night a night and (2) how many day 1s I've had. I know the first was some years ago and the last were just too numerous to count. Finally I found the strength or desperation or both to do something about it and that something was to sign up to SR about 10 weeks ago after months of just lurking and reading. Because I hid my drinking fairly well, because I'm married to an (admittedly more normal) drinker, and because I include a number of drinkers in my immediate social circle, not many of my friends or acquaintances guessed my problem. The social acceptability of drinking is now, for me, quite staggering. I've definitely encountered some surprise since I stopped and maybe a little irritation when I've declined my 'usual'.

It's almost possible from the perspective of 10 glorious weeks of being freed from alcohol and its effects to remember just how awful it made me feel. But there's the danger and I absolutely don't intend to allow that to happen. I will not allow myself to forget how alcohol shaped my every single day - for at least the last five years and that's a conservative estimate - in the most depressing, negative, boring, anxiety and paranoia making way possible. The fact that I continued to function is irrelevant because I still felt totally wretched until around 6 pm each day when I gave in, bought a bottle or two, 'enjoyed' maybe one glass and then steadily drank the rest before falling asleep only to wake up in the early hours with the immediate and horrifying realisation that yet again I'd given in. I actually feel embarrassed writing that because it seems so pathetic! Why would I do that to myself? No wonder non-alcoholics don't get it. But that's neither here nor there of course since I am an alcoholic and I do get it. I know it's that first glass that delivers the deadly blow and takes you to that dark place that you've all talked about here one way or another.

This is the longest post I've written on SR and it's been helpful to me. Thank you Unders group for that and also for helping me in my resolve by sharing your own thoughts, ideas and suggestions.

And toots1 - you've passed the 12 month mark! I am in awe and determined to get there too.

Purplrks3647

Rose I can pretty much relate to your entire post! Thank you for sharing

time2

Rose, I could feel your post, and as you mentioned, those of us 'drinkers' that have been to that dark place know the frustration and the middle of the night, Why did I do that to myself!

This is the longest post I've written on SR and it's been helpful to me

I am glad you shared, it also gives us all a better understanding of what you have gone through. And, I agree, it does feel good to write it out, to actually 'see' your feelings and life written down and how REAL it really is.

Mags1

Rose, great post, thanks for sharing.

Most of my life I loved what alcohol gave me....escaping reality. All the rubbish from my childhood forgotten, all my insecurities forgotten too. I was in a happy state.

Thing is it didn’t stay happy long...yes, I fed my addiction and tried to hide it, I was life and soul of the party. I needed more and more drink to get to that happy state. Comotosed or blacked out.
Not so good after all, so why did I go back for more, insisting to myself I hadn’t got a problem, when I knew I was really kidding myself, but didn’t dwell on those thoughts.

When I look back I wish I could’ve talked to the younger me, given her some strength, shown her where she was heading if she carried on like this....I’m not sure she would’ve listened to me, she was headstrong and perhaps stubborn, she had to find out for herself, put herself through shame, remorse, regret, the happiness seemed to have been replaced with them.

So here I am today...Sober and at peace with myself and dare I say, happy. A true happiness, not forced by booze messing my brain up. I can hold my head up, it took a long time to realise this and I don’t ever want to sit on my laurels.

I’ve appreciated all I have learnt from Sober Recovery site, people here who know what we’ve been through, some still going through. A psychologist couldn’t give me personally what I’ve learned here.

So that’s why I’m still here, visiting every day, vowing my sober ness, being accountable....hoping I can help someone who was like I was once....because I don’t ever want my life ruined again by, as my mum called it ‘the demon drink’

tootsl1

Rose, that was a great post and so much resonated again with me, as it is really how I got towards the end. I am fortunate that like you, my drinking wasn't dramatic, didn't stop me functioning, didn't lead to losing job, family, house, health. But I know without a doubt, with the insidious increase in more recent years, it would absolutely have cause all the above.
Thank you for being brave enough to put yourself out there so we can understand you and know you better
You might also want to print your post and keep it handy as a reminder in case you are ever tempted to believe you could 'moderate' .

tootsl1

Mags my friend, shoulda, woulda, coulda. I doubt there's a drinker who doesn't feel just like that and has that 'if only' moment.

Mags1

So true my friend x, I don’t look in the rear view mirror much nowadays.