TOPIC: "I'm Gonna Quit!" Why Haven't You? Explain.
 

Hi Im Sharon and Im an alcoholic.

By the grace of my HP and people
l8ike u here in SR I havent found
it necesary to pick up a drink of
alcohol since 8-11-90.

For that and u I am truely grateful.

How may times have you told
urself this line?

"I'm gonna quit!"

If so why haven't you?

Quit what, u ask?

There are lots of things we promise
ourselves and we try and try but
something happens to stand in the
way to stop us.

We try to quit drinking, drugging,
eating, lieing, being unfaith-
ful, being cruel, stealing and
so on. Right?

If you want to quit something
why don't you? What are you
afraid of?

For me I tried to quit drinking
and couldnt on my own because
I was powerless. I was weak.
Afraid of my vunerability.

I eventually quit drinking with
help from the program of Alcoholics
Anonymous and for that I am
truely grateful and living life happy
joyous and free.

I have quit many other things
in my life....those pesky character
defects that kept poping up to
haunt me.

As long as I apply the principles
of my recovery program to my
life and everyday affairs then quiting
most things is pretty easy.

How about you?

For me, a lot of what drinking tapped into was this "fun" "party guy" image I had of myself, an image I've clung to for a really long time.

Never mind the fact that when I really overdid it, I was anything but fun...to myself and the people around me.

A lot of this I'm trying to overcome by talking with my friends and family about my sobriety. Slowly, I'm learning that these folks care about me for who I am, not the fact that I used to drink.

Another milestone in my life that got me thinking was my wedding last year. I don't consider myself a particularly religious person, but my wife and I had my sister read 1 Corinthians 13 at the ceremony, because we both love that passage so much.

"When I became an adult, I put my childish ways behind me."

In the last year or so, this particular verse really started to resonate with me. Time to put up or shut up, I thought. I want to be a man in whom my family can be proud, in whom I can be proud. I want to make better use of my time and money to give people around me the gift of my comfort. I want to be there, physically and mentally, for the long haul.

So that's how my thinking started to change and my conviction was strengthened. Great topic!

I think you nailed it, Sharon: fear. It took me a long time to quit because I was scared. I feared failure, changing, success, facing my issues sober, the unknown... the list is endless, LOL. So, for me, it all (mostly) boiled down to fear. There are other things, too, but the fear factor was the biggie.

I'm still working on it, BTW - exploring how different fears still run my life, and trying to change this.

I guess as of right now. I am doing that with cigarettes. I did quit for 2 mos back in April. But when I was out for that month for my surgery. I started again the last week Iw as out. I guess I got bored. My cousin moved in and he smokes and I just wanted to smoke just one. Well that turned in to a couple then a pack. And now I am right back where I started. I hate smoking. It is expensive and I feel like crap sometimes from it.
So wy dont I quit? I dont know. I kinda panic thinking about quitting. Its almost like "Dang, I cant get high, dont drink, What else is there?" It calms me and is liek a security blanket right now.
But I am getting more and more disgusted with it and I know if I did it once. I can most certainly do it again. I just have to do it.

I didn't know I had a problem with drugs until I tried to stop, so there was no question of "why didn't I quit". I believe this is true for many addicts. Using was as natural as breathing.

The more useful question for me was how do I put the drugs down and then leave them down?