ETA

Just the name "sober party" sounds lame. I certainly wouldn't judge the world of not drinking by that.

What I found that while drinking fun stuff was more fun, chores were easier, i was more charming... On the flip side - pain was more painful, mistakes were bigger...

It went from mostly fun & sometimes bad, 1/2 fun &1/2 bad, mostly bad & some fun, and then finally all bad.

I wish I would have quite before I put myself and family through so much crap but I hoped I could learn to moderate/control it. I couldn't - just got worse and worse until I screwed up big enough to accept reality.

sugarbear1

Illusion.

Alcoholism is a progressive disease wether i am drinking or not.

Today i can remember the fun.

25 years of in & out of aa, never once witnessed pie eatig... same drunks i know are wittier and funnier sober!

whiskeyman

you can do it. If i can you can. god i thought i was hopeless.

Itchy

What support exactly are you hoping to get from this group and website?

Dee74

This was the hook that kept me coming back for years.

I wanted to be that guy - 'the guy who could have a few beers with friends' - and the fact that I could do that, a handful of times over 20 years, helped convince me I could do it again.

I should have looked instead at the many many....many more times when I had those intentions, and I couldn't do that.

Today I accept - once alcohol enters my system, all bets are off - sometimes I had a 'good night', mostly a bad night - but it was never me who determined that...it was luck or circumstance - I had no real control.

I hope you work it out sooner than I did maningup.
D

Terminally Unique

It doesn't always happen quite as suddenly as they make it out to sound. More often, it goes something like this...
At this point, if you have abstained for a while, your liver and body have had time to rest/heal some, and your tolerance has gone down, so nothing really "bad" happens.
So, you drink again, and nothing really "bad" happens, certainly not like the doom-and-gloom story you were told in the rooms.
Slowly but surely, though, if you keep it up, the time between drinks shortens, your tolerance goes right back up, and you are back to your old tricks. Of course, I can't be certain, but you mentioned that you went from 60 days between drinks to two weeks between drinks. Keep an eye on that.

H3art

Yup AVRT, that is how I roll. I get sober for a bit, think I can have just a couple and over the next few weeks I am right back at it!

maningup

My drinking is like playing russian roullette, theres always that one time maybe once a month when it goes overboard and I drive drunk or spend more than I planned, thats why, I was bad when I was younger

maningup

I guess that was all i needed to hear, as simple as it sounds, you made me cry

maningup

someone who shares the same story, im not looking for someone to say, go out and drink have fun, I get that enough from people who I party with but have never seen me drunk

DisplacedGRITS

We can all do it, we all just can't help feeling like we can't from time to time. To always feel fine about our disease would be...unhuman.

michelle01

Speaking from my own experience, I relapsed at 1 month, 2 months, quite a lot. I could say to myself that wasn't bad, it was 'better' than my old pattern, but when I looked at the big picture, I think it definitely stopped me progressing in personal recovery. I'm better off with total abstinence, no more of it hanging over my head, obsessing, etc. After awhile, that took a mental toll too, the bouncing back and forth between being sober and being drunk. And I could see that only leading to bad places, getting completely out of control again.

I didn't always drink too much during relapses either but often felt like a ticking time bomb afterwards. If I did drink too much, it was complete blackout mode again and regrettable/dangerous behavior.

The telling yourself you just can't do it is the disease talking I think, what help are you getting to stay sober?

maningup

AA, sponser, and this site

IndaMiricale

Thank you Dee,

That was the stinking thinkin I had in my brian also.

Would i love to be able to have a "couple" sure, just not the "case" lol

Best wishes in where you go , and from a life long partier sober parties are fun, just like yoga said been to drinkin ones that blew. Ha more than i could count !!

Fenris

So far I have yet to run into anyone who quit drinking because their life was better drunk than sober. As long as the positives of drinking outweigh the negatives, I have my doubts that anyone would chose sobriety -- if I could drink without experiencing any of the consequences that inevitably come along with it, that's what I'd do, but I've done enough "research" to know that this is not and never will be the case.

Maningup, only you can decide when and if you reach the point where enough is enough. I can only speak for myself, but I would happily choose a sober pie-eating contest over nine-tenths of my drunken experiences in the past decade (fortunately I haven't had to put that statement to the test so far). For me, if I had known sobriety could be as fulfilling and enjoyable as it is, I would have quit drinking years ago.

--Fenris.

keithj

The Big Book contains specific and precise directions for how to recover from alcoholism. That book details what the authors did to end that cycle of relapse/sober/relapse that they all found themselves in.

'What Step are you on?' is the most important question in AA.

maningup

back at 1

DisplacedGRITS

I've gone out with friends to bars and order virgin drinks or just sodas. It may garner an odd glance from the bartender but i'm not there for him. I think the doubts you're having are a big sign. I think many of us are looking for justification for a few drinks. I know i've wanted someone to tell me I was good and I could have a few but the guilt for me would still be there. We're all different but I started as an occasional drinker and now here I am. I wish i'd never touched the stuff.