Trigger memories
Sooze
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Vancouver, BC
Posts: 24
Trigger memories
I'm not sure this is actually a good thing to talk about. But don't you all have trigger memories? Really great memories in your life that happened to have booze in them? As you know, I'm a widow and some of my best, most loving memories I have with my husband, happen to have some booze in them, even though, back then I wasn't quite the alky I am now.
For example, a friend wrote me recently for advice of places to go in Scotland since he knows I go there a lot. Well, for the first time since my hubby died, I pulled out a DVD of the two of us swanning around in the Highlands. We were in a fabulous little hotel in the Hebrides, and had had a bottle of wine to split between us ( how quaint -- I can drink at least a bottle and half on my own now!) I had the video camera going. Then we lurched off to a pub, really late at night and I have a vid of my husband singing "come on Eilleen" at the top of his lungs with a bottle of Glenmorangie two-thirds empty in front of him. Damn, I guess what I'm saying is that this is a GOOD memory for me, not a BAD one. Yes, there's drink involved and it later became a problem for me. But it is right to demolish all of our pleasureable memories, just because they have booze in them? Does this make any sense at all to anyone?
S
For example, a friend wrote me recently for advice of places to go in Scotland since he knows I go there a lot. Well, for the first time since my hubby died, I pulled out a DVD of the two of us swanning around in the Highlands. We were in a fabulous little hotel in the Hebrides, and had had a bottle of wine to split between us ( how quaint -- I can drink at least a bottle and half on my own now!) I had the video camera going. Then we lurched off to a pub, really late at night and I have a vid of my husband singing "come on Eilleen" at the top of his lungs with a bottle of Glenmorangie two-thirds empty in front of him. Damn, I guess what I'm saying is that this is a GOOD memory for me, not a BAD one. Yes, there's drink involved and it later became a problem for me. But it is right to demolish all of our pleasureable memories, just because they have booze in them? Does this make any sense at all to anyone?
S
same planet...different world
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Butte, America
Posts: 10,946
Yes.
The way to think of it is more that it's not some memory to be put away, because you are not remembering it because of alcohol.
Alcohol didn't make that happen.
Love and companionship made that happen.
You're remembering being with someone you loved.
And remembering that they loved you.
Alcohol might have been there
but it didn't cause the light of the memory.
And it surely doesn't keep that memory as a living moment in your present.
The love does.
"We do not regret the past, nor wish to close the door on it."
The way to think of it is more that it's not some memory to be put away, because you are not remembering it because of alcohol.
Alcohol didn't make that happen.
Love and companionship made that happen.
You're remembering being with someone you loved.
And remembering that they loved you.
Alcohol might have been there
but it didn't cause the light of the memory.
And it surely doesn't keep that memory as a living moment in your present.
The love does.
"We do not regret the past, nor wish to close the door on it."
Old & Sober Member of AA
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Nursing Home in Brick, New Jersey
Posts: 5,174
Clarification: A "trigger memory" is a memory that would trigger the desire to drink. I don't interpret your memories this way at all.
I was married for twenty-five years...we met in a bar, and a good portion of our lives together were spent drinking. I have many good (as well as bad) memories...it just so happened that we were both alcoholics and practically everything we did involved alcohol. Thankfully, we both got sober through AA...after we split up. He passed away with over 20 years of continued sobriety, and I have 26+ years.
None of the memories I have would cause me to start drinking again...on the contrary, it's remembering how it was and what happened that keeps me sober.
I was married for twenty-five years...we met in a bar, and a good portion of our lives together were spent drinking. I have many good (as well as bad) memories...it just so happened that we were both alcoholics and practically everything we did involved alcohol. Thankfully, we both got sober through AA...after we split up. He passed away with over 20 years of continued sobriety, and I have 26+ years.
None of the memories I have would cause me to start drinking again...on the contrary, it's remembering how it was and what happened that keeps me sober.
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