raindancer11

I've relapsed many times. Insanity describes it perfectly. It was very hard for me to understand that simply chasing a buzz could be so completely destructive and that there was a much better alternative to this dangerous lifestyle. But thanks to the people on this website, I get it now.

My relapses were very unexpected, someone hands me a drink at a party, wine was on sale, I finished a big chunk of work...and a bunch of other reasons. I felt as if I was cornered and left with no choice but to drink. I forgot that I could choose. I haven't felt cornered like this since the last relapse (23 days) but I expect to at some point and this time I'm not scared of it.

40creek

I feel more like it' s a demon than a child. I am spending 20 hrs a day right now fighting to get it in the room. When I made a decision last night to give in the demon seemed to calm right down. Even without a drink I actually felt well for the first time in days. I got my head together though and didn't do it and once again the fight was on.

40creek

Yes, a demon who just wants it's precious. It has to be patient and tricksy to get it.

iliveforyou

So very accurate, painful and well articulated. Thank for sharing this. I've chronically relapsed over the past 10 + years and I'd refer to mine, not as an angry child but as a demon set out to destroy me and eventually kill me.

-Jess

wpainterw

Actually the dog training analogy may be of some value. Might it be something like this: Years ago I got a little dog (maybe I was a little dog). This dog, like all kids, was greedy, obsessed with getting what it wanted, getting it right away. It cried and banged its spoon on the table when that didn't happen. I figured that I'd just have a drink when this happened. I drank and drank, for years, without really doing much about that screaming kid. When the time came when I finally started to sober up, there was the kid, still untrained, still angry, not just about not getting its bottle but about a lot of other things, like "getting it all right now and getting it perfect". So now, with some sobriety I have to make up for lost time, look inwards and try to understand that kid, help him to mature, make him a happier and less destructive kid by kindly teaching him patience, humility, understanding, forgiveness (not only to forgive himself but to understand and forgive others). To do this I may need the help of other dog trainers. There are lots of them out there. You meet them in AA and in all sorts of other groups. They've learned how to retrain and mature their inner dogs. Maybe with their help I can too.

W.

ulverston

i know with me ..if i have just one drink and get away with it/what i have done is light a fuse ..and i dont know how long that fuse is........
but attached to it is a great big stinking dirty bomb. full of misery and lonliness ,regret and shame and possibly worse...
so taking that one or two drinks with impunity is a very very stupid thing for me to do

Murray4x5

As I understand it (which may be inaccurate but works for me) is that little voice comes from the top of my brain stem and limbic system. When there was alcohol pouring into my brain on a regular basis my brain was only too happy to sprout up a garden of dopamine receptors to revel in it all. When I stopped drinking, those receptors got cranky...very very cranky!!!

In the last year most of the extra receptors have faded away, but there are still some in there. They have this annoying ability to fire up an urge to drink when they recognize old triggers. What's amazing to me is how such an ancient, evolutionary reptilian holdover bit of brain matter can try to lead the cognitive / reasoning part of my brain around by the nose.

I mean really, what an idiot I would be to step back on that one-way dead end slope of alcoholism with nothing at the bottom but a shattered life and an ugly, painful death.

In the battle between the basal instinct, reptilian portion of my brain and the thinking, human portion of my brain, my money is on me

wpainterw

Murray4X5: This physiological interpretation has always intrigued me. I am no scientist and am unfamiliar with the latest research. But I do gather that, to accommodate itself to alcohol, the brain undertakes various physiological and chemical changes, probably, as you say, in the receptors. And dopamine is one of the neurotransmitters which accounts for the "rush" and the high. On the other hand, it is likely that, even without an alcoholic history, every human also has primitive, child like aspects to the brain. Although the theories of Freud may have now been largely discounted, I believe that it is still respectable to consider that a significant part of what goes on in the brain is beneath the conscious level and some of that is likely to be of a primitive nature. I like to call this the little child within. Drinking alcohol over a long period of time seems to impede the maturing process, what I have called the gradual "training" and "civilizing" of the little child, or untrained dog, as it were.
Well some may say that this is too much speculation, philosophizing or, as they say in AA "intellectualizing". To the extent that this emphasizes the importance of not talking about drinking but doing something about it, stopping the drinking and then discuss the other aspects later if at all, then I heartily agree. On the other hand, it is appropriate and helpful, once sobriety has taken effect, to gradually begin to talk about ways of coping with what may be called the more primitive parts of one's nature, to make up for lost time in maturing- in short, to begin to grow up.

W.