Quandary
Member
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Colorado Prairie
Posts: 1,417
Instant Gratification is what all alcoholics are after. We want what we want right now. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way and we don't get sunshine, flowers and a cartoon bluebird sitting on our shoulder just for the simple act of quitting drinking.
I'll guarantee that every issue you have in life is self induced and I'll also guarantee that alcohol was involved somehow. Remove the alcohol and these issues will stop coming up. To a point. Life still happens whether you're drunk or sober. That's a fact. We just don't sensationalize these occurrences like we used to. In short, they weren't problems to begin with.
This is the real reason that AA is a lifesaver to so many. We don't go to AA to get sober as the common misconception goes. We go to AA to get rid of the person that we had become. We go so we can put things away where they belong.
This is from "The Family Afterwards" in The Big Book. I was going to copy a couple sentences but there's too many to copy. Therefore you get the whole thing.
Whether you like AA or not the information contained in this chapter can not be disputed.
AA Big Book -- Chapter 9
I'll guarantee that every issue you have in life is self induced and I'll also guarantee that alcohol was involved somehow. Remove the alcohol and these issues will stop coming up. To a point. Life still happens whether you're drunk or sober. That's a fact. We just don't sensationalize these occurrences like we used to. In short, they weren't problems to begin with.
This is the real reason that AA is a lifesaver to so many. We don't go to AA to get sober as the common misconception goes. We go to AA to get rid of the person that we had become. We go so we can put things away where they belong.
This is from "The Family Afterwards" in The Big Book. I was going to copy a couple sentences but there's too many to copy. Therefore you get the whole thing.
Whether you like AA or not the information contained in this chapter can not be disputed.
AA Big Book -- Chapter 9
Heathen
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: La La Land, USA
Posts: 2,567
Instant Gratification is what all alcoholics are after. We want what we want right now. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way and we don't get sunshine, flowers and a cartoon bluebird sitting on our shoulder just for the simple act of quitting drinking.
Live still happens. When I sobered up and worked on recovery, the person I became during THAT process became better equipped at dealing with life as it was handed to me, and as I made it. Life still happens.
Member
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Pugetopolis
Posts: 2,384
Fill In The Blank
Originally Posted by thirtybubba 
What happens when drinking doesn't work for you... but sobriety doesn't make it better?
I give up... almost.
I give up... almost.
You are experiencing what some of us call the second half of Step One and finding out that having an unmanageable life has nothing to do with drinking unless you are still drinking. You see I used to think that the dash in the First Step meant "fill in the blank." I am powerless over alcohol and that is why my life is unmanageable." But at six months away from my last drink, I found myself frustrated, miserable,restless, irritable, and discontent. Farther away from my last drink than I'd been in seventeen years, I was in worse shape mentally, emotionally, and spiritually than I was when I got sober. Everyday was a struggle. My f'ing head wouldn't shut up, it just went. It constantly played the "Drink Don't Drink" game. I was ready to blow my head off just to get it to shut up. And all that most people could give me were cliches. If one more person would've have said "This too shall pass," I was gonna grab them by the throat, because it wasn't passing. Not long after that is when I met a man in Alcoholics Anonymous that had a real answer.
This man showed me something. He had me turn to page 52 in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Take a look at the second full paragraph, the one that starts with "We had to ask ourselves..." Look over that list of human problems and ask yourself if alcohol used to kind of make those things better. And now ask yourself is just not drinking makes those problems better, or do they seem to intensify?
These human problems are the problems that need to be addressed. And strangely enough, there is a spiritual answer for human problems.
If an alcoholic can't get to a place of being able to live in the human condition and be reasonably comfortable, he will probably always have to drink. Or worse.
Jim
Big Book references from Alcoholics Anonymous, First Edition
same planet...different world
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Butte, America
Posts: 10,946
We don't realize in early recovery
the amount of time it took
for us to destroy ourselves.
At least allow an equivalent amount of time
to rebuild. to renew.
We all get these 'why am I bothering' moments
remembering that these will pass
just as the obsessing and craving did when we first quit.
When *I* get in that mode
*I* know for *ME* that ....
I'm no longer in alignment with 'WHAT IS"
I'm back in the mode of
manipulating the world expecting *what I want* to be.
I'm no longer lettring Life happen all around me
I'm 'playing God' and trying to force
everything and every one in my world
to give me what I expect
to be rewarded with
because I'm 'being good' by not drinking, or working hard.
And that , for me....
is a disgusted, cynical state of mind.
And I'm so dang sneaky and underhanded....
I don't even let myself know that *I* am the one holding me back.
I have to stop and FORCE myself
to remember that
When I quit drinking,
I promised I'd do whatever was shown to me.
It's not *my* life any more.
I gave it, and my own 'expectational' will
to the Infinite in that third step.
the amount of time it took
for us to destroy ourselves.
At least allow an equivalent amount of time
to rebuild. to renew.
We all get these 'why am I bothering' moments
remembering that these will pass
just as the obsessing and craving did when we first quit.
When *I* get in that mode
*I* know for *ME* that ....
I'm no longer in alignment with 'WHAT IS"
I'm back in the mode of
manipulating the world expecting *what I want* to be.
I'm no longer lettring Life happen all around me
I'm 'playing God' and trying to force
everything and every one in my world
to give me what I expect
to be rewarded with
because I'm 'being good' by not drinking, or working hard.
And that , for me....
is a disgusted, cynical state of mind.
And I'm so dang sneaky and underhanded....
I don't even let myself know that *I* am the one holding me back.
I have to stop and FORCE myself
to remember that
When I quit drinking,
I promised I'd do whatever was shown to me.
It's not *my* life any more.
I gave it, and my own 'expectational' will
to the Infinite in that third step.
Looking For Myself...Sober
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Where the heart is
Posts: 10,209
I am totally with Dee on this too.
My life recently was the best it has ever been and I still managed to not be happy with my life.
Actually. I was happy. I dont know why I went back out.
But like Dee said. Things wouldnt have gone as good as they have had I been using. And all it took was a few hours to destroy it all.
Being clean helped make it happen. But it was the changes I made inside and the thinking that changed that really set it in motion. Somehow I stalled. I slid back fast. And now its all gone again.
But I never made efforts within myself as I did this last attempt. And they made all the difference in the world.
But we have to continue to work on that stuff. I didnt. I got comfortable. Thats where I lost it. I lossened my grip and it fell away.
But thats on me.
Any one of us can put the stuff down. And I dont know jack about staying clean..Obviously. But I do know that what you do from that point on, menaing within yourself. Emotionally, menatlly and even physically. Thats where the difference is made.
I should add spiritualy too. I never really knew what that meant. But I am getting a feeling for it. And yes..It does play a role in the whole scheme of things. Whatever that spirituality may be. There has to be bigger things working here. I have seen too much not to think so.
My life recently was the best it has ever been and I still managed to not be happy with my life.
Actually. I was happy. I dont know why I went back out.
But like Dee said. Things wouldnt have gone as good as they have had I been using. And all it took was a few hours to destroy it all.
Being clean helped make it happen. But it was the changes I made inside and the thinking that changed that really set it in motion. Somehow I stalled. I slid back fast. And now its all gone again.
But I never made efforts within myself as I did this last attempt. And they made all the difference in the world.
But we have to continue to work on that stuff. I didnt. I got comfortable. Thats where I lost it. I lossened my grip and it fell away.
But thats on me.
Any one of us can put the stuff down. And I dont know jack about staying clean..Obviously. But I do know that what you do from that point on, menaing within yourself. Emotionally, menatlly and even physically. Thats where the difference is made.
I should add spiritualy too. I never really knew what that meant. But I am getting a feeling for it. And yes..It does play a role in the whole scheme of things. Whatever that spirituality may be. There has to be bigger things working here. I have seen too much not to think so.
Owner of a strange glitch.
Thread Starter
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: midsouth
Posts: 2,331
Dot.
Somehow that seems like as appropriate of an answer as any (although I do realize you just deleted whatever you wrote
).
Ago... that one caught my eye, re the "don't think this is what you wanted to see" (I'm paraphrasing). I don't know what I expected to see.
I suppose I expected to see new ideas--or just bopped upside the head, like I need--I got some, and got bopped upside the head, and I thank y'all kindly for both.
I hope I can get through this.
Thank y'all for being here for me. One day I'll be a better 'bubba... In the meantime... Um. It's a sad existence for me. Tonight's about a breaking point though... I hope. Don't think I can hold on if it gets much lower... how's that for sad?
Somehow that seems like as appropriate of an answer as any (although I do realize you just deleted whatever you wrote
).Ago... that one caught my eye, re the "don't think this is what you wanted to see" (I'm paraphrasing). I don't know what I expected to see.
I suppose I expected to see new ideas--or just bopped upside the head, like I need--I got some, and got bopped upside the head, and I thank y'all kindly for both.
I hope I can get through this.
Thank y'all for being here for me. One day I'll be a better 'bubba... In the meantime... Um. It's a sad existence for me. Tonight's about a breaking point though... I hope. Don't think I can hold on if it gets much lower... how's that for sad?
Grateful to be free
Join Date: May 2009
Location: Arizona
Posts: 3,680
Originally Posted by thirtybubba
Tonight's about a breaking point though... I hope. Don't think I can hold on if it gets much lower... how's that for sad?
You haven't really given up your will, you just shortened it's leash a little, put it in the back room, ready to let it out as soon as you decide that recovery isn't what you want it to be.
I've caught myself playing this same game with recovery. I take it on a test run...ride it down the roughest most impossible roads I can find and the second I feel a bump declare it a failure...and say I may as well keep my old rusty rattling death trap of addiction..since recover CLEARLY has nothing better to offer me...
I did that and danced the relapse boogie for better part of a year.
Then I said...OK, where do I sign? And I BOUGHT relapse, traded in addiction and now recovery is the only ride I have. NO GOING BACK...because addiction has been sent to the junk yard and dismantled.
As long as any of us keep allowing for some level at which we know we will break, can't hold out, etc, then we are doomed because we all know from experience that YES, life will reach that level.
Deciding to live sober is committing to live sober...no matter what. No matter what life throws at us, to trust that sobriety can and will get us through and is up to the challenge, that we no longer need our addiction ever again. NO EXCEPTIONS.
I am not pointing fingers bubba...I saw, in what you posted, the things I had been saying to myself over the past several months, the bargains I made with sobriety, the deals I cut...I never really gave sobriety a fair chance...when things got hairy...I'd say "it's not working" and use again..so how could I ever really know?
Member
Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 3,095
Originally Posted by thirtybubba
What happens when drinking doesn't work for you... but sobriety doesn't make it better?
I was a pretty miserable alcoholic, drinking or not. And as long as I still had an alcoholic mind, eventually I looked to alcohol as my only solution, for many years even after it stopped working.
When Carl Jung is working with Rowland and telling him that alcoholics like that simply don't recover, with the exception of phenomena that
Originally Posted by AA BB, 1st Ed.
They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them.
The last time I drank, years ago, was in the form of a 6 month bender of drinking 24/7. It followed 7 or 8 months of not drinking, but not doing much else except going to meetings and hanging out with sober people. I remember beating my head off the wall shocked and demoralized that I had, once again, dug myself into a hole that I couldn't seem to get out of. A guy looked at me and asked me why I was surprised. He said something to the effect of, 'Well, duh, of course you're drinking. You haven't done anything to treat your alcoholism. You haven't had a spiritual awakening.'
And then he offered to show me how to have one.
not little, a stranger no more
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: in the crowd
Posts: 410
Hello TB,
I see a lot of similarities between your age and current situation and mine. Some of the feelings you expressed about sobriety in your posts mirrored the thoughts I had lately.
Even though I have been constantly working on myself, sobriety doesn’t come easily every day. The person that emerged from the haze of alcohol is not always the pleasant one I imagined myself to be and often has virtually no (sober) experience of dealing with problems, stress or even boredom. So yes, sometimes I didn’t like very much what I saw and hat to learn to adjust to this new me.
But once I removed the booze from the equation, I at least gave myself a chance to learn to handle all this stuff and all my emotions in a different way than numbing them out or pass over them. (I don’t make a difference between “good” and“bad”ones here, because its important to finally experience all of it)
Sometimes it is hard to find a positive attitude when you are depressed and sad and frustrated but I experienced that these feelings pass and are easier to handle once you identify them.
The crap is, as unpleasant as it is, in a way necessary for the learning and growing and for acquiring coping mechanisms. I strongly suspect that it is there all the time, even while people were still using, and one was so caught up in one’s own hell that it was just not the priority to deal with it. Sometimes it requires to have patience and the solutions sometimes aren’t quick or easy, but thankfully, most of it is only temporary.
You can have the courage and perseverance to work trough this, please don’t give up. I experienced firsthand that these feelings pass and can be dealt with, that adressing them seems to be a part of recovery and that it gets better. Hang in there, it is worth it. Hugs, take care and I’m sending lots of courage your way,
S.
I see a lot of similarities between your age and current situation and mine. Some of the feelings you expressed about sobriety in your posts mirrored the thoughts I had lately.
Even though I have been constantly working on myself, sobriety doesn’t come easily every day. The person that emerged from the haze of alcohol is not always the pleasant one I imagined myself to be and often has virtually no (sober) experience of dealing with problems, stress or even boredom. So yes, sometimes I didn’t like very much what I saw and hat to learn to adjust to this new me.
But once I removed the booze from the equation, I at least gave myself a chance to learn to handle all this stuff and all my emotions in a different way than numbing them out or pass over them. (I don’t make a difference between “good” and“bad”ones here, because its important to finally experience all of it)
Sometimes it is hard to find a positive attitude when you are depressed and sad and frustrated but I experienced that these feelings pass and are easier to handle once you identify them.
The crap is, as unpleasant as it is, in a way necessary for the learning and growing and for acquiring coping mechanisms. I strongly suspect that it is there all the time, even while people were still using, and one was so caught up in one’s own hell that it was just not the priority to deal with it. Sometimes it requires to have patience and the solutions sometimes aren’t quick or easy, but thankfully, most of it is only temporary.
You can have the courage and perseverance to work trough this, please don’t give up. I experienced firsthand that these feelings pass and can be dealt with, that adressing them seems to be a part of recovery and that it gets better. Hang in there, it is worth it. Hugs, take care and I’m sending lots of courage your way,
S.
Owner of a strange glitch.
Thread Starter
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: midsouth
Posts: 2,331
Reread these tonight with clearer eyes. Actually, they're tired eyes and having trouble focusing altogether. Maybe a withdrawal, symptom, I don't know.
I have decided to take some kinds of steps. I talked to a psychologist this morning and she called around to rehabs... I'm going to go on Thursday to sign up. It's a 60-day wait, maybe sooner if people get off the list. I learned there is no publicly funded services in this county, and that was a major issue with trying to find a place that would take me.
Housing, well y'all, finally get to transfer rooms. But it's as scary as hopeful... what if the same thing happens again (it's already been surreal twice... of out two).
And I talked to the housing people about rehab too... in case someone doesn't follow through... which is usually what happens to me lately. I chase them down, they're busy... look, I still have my bitterness!
And I talked to some of my teachers, no real problems there. The first medical note did help (from the flu) and I'll get on to fixing all my school problems... soon as I move and go to the rehab and go to my court class and got to 8 more classes this week. And sleep and eat and stuff... but on these busy days I *normally* don't want to do extra stuff... no choice this week, and lovely, I'm detoxing hard.
Well, that actually was a plus 'cause I'm pale and shaky, and I suppose a few people listened to me that might not have otherwise.
Take care y'all, thank you all for your continued support... I know I'm not doing it very good, but my intent is there... Mens rea...
I still have a hard time accepting that other people had a hard time too... seems like everybody should just up and get sober, because everybody I talked to in real life seemed to do just that. Here, that doesn't seem so common...
And I'll be talking to the dean... either leave of absence, or I'm out of here in the spring. I cannot do this again... another semester like this and I don't know where I'd be. I cannot comprehend any lower, although I know from experience that in a year, I will be living there. That's pretty much been my life for a while now. I don't worry about that, just current stuff for the most part.
Guess this is a little longer than I meant to write, I'm sober but not thinking real clear so I apologize for lack of topical cohesion...
I hope it gets better... I'm afraid to.
If this doesn't work, I don't know what else to do.
I have decided to take some kinds of steps. I talked to a psychologist this morning and she called around to rehabs... I'm going to go on Thursday to sign up. It's a 60-day wait, maybe sooner if people get off the list. I learned there is no publicly funded services in this county, and that was a major issue with trying to find a place that would take me.
Housing, well y'all, finally get to transfer rooms. But it's as scary as hopeful... what if the same thing happens again (it's already been surreal twice... of out two).
And I talked to the housing people about rehab too... in case someone doesn't follow through... which is usually what happens to me lately. I chase them down, they're busy... look, I still have my bitterness!
And I talked to some of my teachers, no real problems there. The first medical note did help (from the flu) and I'll get on to fixing all my school problems... soon as I move and go to the rehab and go to my court class and got to 8 more classes this week. And sleep and eat and stuff... but on these busy days I *normally* don't want to do extra stuff... no choice this week, and lovely, I'm detoxing hard.
Well, that actually was a plus 'cause I'm pale and shaky, and I suppose a few people listened to me that might not have otherwise.
Take care y'all, thank you all for your continued support... I know I'm not doing it very good, but my intent is there... Mens rea...
I still have a hard time accepting that other people had a hard time too... seems like everybody should just up and get sober, because everybody I talked to in real life seemed to do just that. Here, that doesn't seem so common...
And I'll be talking to the dean... either leave of absence, or I'm out of here in the spring. I cannot do this again... another semester like this and I don't know where I'd be. I cannot comprehend any lower, although I know from experience that in a year, I will be living there. That's pretty much been my life for a while now. I don't worry about that, just current stuff for the most part.
Guess this is a little longer than I meant to write, I'm sober but not thinking real clear so I apologize for lack of topical cohesion...
I hope it gets better... I'm afraid to.
If this doesn't work, I don't know what else to do.
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