I keep talking myself out of quitting
 

How do you deal with it when you keep talking yourself out of quitting? Sitting here today, I am absolutely convinced that I need to quit (after drinking last night). I was absolutely convinced last Sunday that I need to quit too. By Wednesday I wasn't so sure, and by Friday I was ready to party. How do you deal with this?

And also, I know there is never a good time to quit, there's always going to be some event coming up that you feel like you need to drink at, how do you deal with the timing of quitting?

Any advice is much appreciated

To paraphase WC Fields: quitting is easy, I've done it lots of times.;) I quit and started back up over and over. Quit and start. Each time the withdrawals got worse, each time drinking made me sicker. I finally said "NO MORE" and haven't had a drink in 14 months, 14 wonderful happy months, I might add.

CarolD says: you have to want to be sober more than you want to drink. I found that to be true. My attempts at quitting were really just attempts to 'control' my drinking, not give it up for good. But now that I have, I wish I'd done it sooner.:)

Hi spiriteyes

That was never my strong point either....three days after I 'quit for good', I'd always be back at it.

Eventually I got myself in real trouble....the sooner you can break this cycle the better in my opinion.

I don't know whether this strikes a chord with you, but I think a large part of my problem was I didn't want to quit, I simply wanted to control my drinking.

I had to accept that simply wasn't possible before I moved on into recovery.

D

That's the cunning nature of addiction, to make us forget the reasons we wanted to quit, forget the turmoil our drinking caused, forget how sick we were during the last hangover. Anything to get us to resume our ways. This is the addictive voice, the one that overrides our rational mind.

What worked for me was to write out exactly what my intent was, to quit drinking FOREVER. It was important for me to put forever because the first time I quit...forever...I forgot, did I meant forever? or until I was feeling better?

As for when, there is no time like the present. Setting a date is just you putting off what you don't want to do, which is quit.

when that voice starts trying to convince you its ok to drink, try to replay the last terrible feelings you had hungover, sick and anxious, sometimes it works for me!

Sorry I missed the timing question....the best day is always today - seriously.
Why put off making improvements to your life and health?

Like you say - there's always something coming up that you can rationalise as a reason to keep going.

D

MIght have been Mark Twain, actually, but he was talking about smoking tho the principle is the same.



Why not quit today? One of our members has in her signature line: "I have never woken up sober and hangover-free and wished I'd been drunk the night before." I totally agree.:)

There are so many reasons to not drink... it takes reminding yourself each and every day that your goal just for that day is to not pick up the first one. Do whatever it takes to stay sober for that 24 hours..... I found that reading the posts here gave me the reminder I needed and the hope that if others could do it, so could I.

It always gets worse unless we stop the cycle. The good news is that each time you deny the urge, you'll get a little bit stronger. Hang in there!:grouphug:

My alcoholism is a nasty condition - when I was actively drinking, I had about a thousand reasons to keep drinking: a party on the weekend, exams coming up, a vacation coming up, football season, sunshine, an overcast sky, being happy, being sad...

There's this story about a someone whose hair is on fire. If my hair's on fire, I don't sit around saying, 'I'm going to wait two weeks until I put this out.' The thing is, I never saw my drinking like that, until I did. And then it was just a matter of getting help.

I dunno if your situation is/was like that - but that was the reality for me.

The problem is alcoholism causes us to forget quickly. We forget what alcohol has done TO us and we only think about what alcohol will do FOR us. I look back on some of my "bottoms" and I think "man, I'll never do that again". But when the idea of a drink come in my head I never think of those bottoms. I think of the ease and comfort that comes with those drinks.

The only way I ever got past that cycle is to get into recovery. It allows me to live life without the need for those first few drinks. Hope this helps...

At least your are thinking about it. I won't pretend that I was able to successfully quit after thinking about it my first time (hah im only day two!)....It was when I started thinking about it more and more. Each time I drank the guilt was more powerful. Finally, to agree with spiriteyes1350, I wanted to be sober more than drunk.

Keep thinking...a lot.

Stop talking yourself out of quitting.

The answer is simple..(not easy though). :grouphug:

Unfortunately some of us haven't seriously tried to quit until we've hit rock bottom several times. If you're thinking about it often then it must be causing some sort of problem. Personally I can't come up with any valid reason to drink

Alcoholism is the only disease that tells you you don't have it. :jail