psilyguy

There I said it! I've been fighting this for 14 months now, I have my stretches of sobriety, feeling great, eating well. Then the crash. But I am struggling to find the reason why sobriety is the best option. I know it is the right one. But lately it feels like I wake up drunk, start drinking and I feel sober. I have very deep conversations with people at night, they would never know I had been drinking, it just seems to shift my perception.

I don't do any other drugs and have no desire to. The last sober stretch was 3 weeks and I was told by my SO that I am boring, and kind of a dick when I'm not drinking. When I drink, she likes to smoke pot and we stay up for hours talking about some of the craziest stuff. We never fight, it is always a positive conversation and feels like it is the highlight of my existence, especially since I gave up all my friends cause all they want to do is drink.

I am doing much better at least, used to be 24-30 beers a day and whiskey. Gave up hard alcohol and at my worst it will be 12-18 beers.

So my post here is to shine light, as there is always hope, I have all the tools I need. So my question is simply, has it been too long with alcohol that I just function as a boring person without it? I assume many of you can relate. Thanks for reading!

Dee74

this is your first post psilyguy

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ml#post3030279

there are some pretty cogent reasons there for you to stay sober.

We all have the imagination and the opportunities not to be boring...if you feel boring without alcohol, maybe you need to look at your life and look at ways you could bring more fulfillment to it?

Maybe you need to think about not indulging in your wife's lifestyle either.
I dunno if it works for her, but I really doubt it's going to work for you for long, psily.

In the end tho, I dunno about you but I'd rather be sober boring than drunk boring, man.

whats happened to the probation?
D

LosingmyMisery

Yes, I prefer boring over drunk. I like to refer to it as quiet, balanced, peaceful and drama free.

least

my sober life is predictable, not boring, and I like it that way. No nasty surprises await me just round the corner, I know pretty much what's what and can actually make plans cause I won't be passed out or drunk.

ZenJen

How long were your other stretches of sobreity? Is 3 weeks about average before the crash you spoke of?

I ask because I learned in treatment that the inital, more pronounced physical and psychological withdrawl symptoms can present as late as two weeks after the last drink; and then after that, there's always a chance of PAWS (post-acute withdrawal syndrome). Iritability (being a "dick") is very, very common. The "boring" part? You're still getting your mental sober legs steady, so more philosophical or challenging thinking might seem too taxing or just straight-up disinteresting - at least until that inital brain fog of withdrawal passes.

I'm 40+ days sober this time around (relapse, relapse, blah blah blah ) and I gotta say, those first 12 days or so, mentally, I felt very lazy, and had difficulty commiting to focusing on one thing for too long. The situation is, of course, unique to everyone - and this is just what I went through (this time).

I hope you find the drive to stick it out for at least a solid 30 days, during which come here and talk! Join the November thread! Things go well with you and the SO? Come and tell us! Have a fight? Get support here!

Take care no matter what

ZenJen

LaFemme

Hi!

Since getting sober I have realized that when I was drunk I was only interesting to other drunks. Now I find people who are drinking to be tedious in the extreme.

I don't think I'm boring now, when I drank I sat around and talked about life, now I actually live life...I am taking an acting class on Broadway, I have art shows, I go to the Opera, I contemplate the universe while sitting on the beach with friends.

T

Itchy

I had these thpoughts today on your subject psilyguy:

From about six months sober I realized that we indeed need to start with a clean slate, and here it is before us, and many times we look at the blank canvas we asked for, and we see the paints we can use and choose, and that the brushes are all cleaned and ready, but for some reason we say we can't, when won't is really the truth we need to face. I was afraid I would bung it up again.

Imagine your life if you make a go of ten percent of the time you don't know what to do with, and learn to be excellent in each thing for the joy of it.

Boredom is wanting to do something, anything, as long as you don’t have to actually do something to do it. No, wait! That's drinking.

instant

Life may "seem" better under the influence but do you honestly believe alcohol has improved your life?

LoftyIdeals

Psily...I agree with Zenjen. You aren't giving yourself, or sobriety a fighting chance. I know, because I didn't either for 26 yrs. I'd take a break long enough to know I was miserable and bored sober, but I hadn't done as Le Femme, and given it long enough to discover what the real me, underneath all the years of BS I had piled up in my psyche, was like. I'm now 99 days, and that real me is starting to emerge. Plus, I'm finding that when I go out with friends, I was the catalyst to excessive drunkenness, giving not just myself the permission to get faced, but those around me. When I go to drinking events now, I can soberly see what an ass I was in those situations, and how much control others truly maintain in their social lives.

Based on this post, and your original, I'd give up any question about whether or not you have a problem, and get on the other side of it. Exciting? In its own way. Cutting edge? If you make it so. Boring? Only if you make it so. BTW...you didn't really say you were a boring dick, just that your wife thought you were. My wife was pissed that she lost her drinking partner too, and dropped quite a few latent bombs to **** me off or cajole me to drinking. I am not going back to that imbecilic drama of a life. It sucks.

SSIL75

Drunk people are v. boring, really. If you guys have kids is this really the life you want for them? Up half the night drunk/high talking shiit?

Nobody thinks you're sober after 18 beers, really.

If you're a dick maybe it's because you're tense b/c you have an alcoholic's (lack of) coping skills for real life? Those can be learned.

Or maybe you're just a dick but you can't drink that away. And I honestly don't think that's what's going on here.

Feeblemind

i struggled with this dilemma quite abit when i was new to recovery. while we share alot of similarities each of us quest to become sober for our own reasons. No one can tell you why you should. I for example had not been through enough pain at the beginning of my recovery. I needed to really be in a bad way before learned, of course i knew i should have cleaned up my act before hand, i saw the consequences coming, i just couldn't grasp it in my gut. it was too easy for me to rationalize it away. i would stop or cut down drinking only as a goal to keep life manageable so i could continue to drink more. As far as being a dick, i believe it is a common thread in most of our stories. typically it stems from being on a dry drunk, not actually drinking but not changing anything else about ourselves. since drinking was my way to "cope" when i wasn't useing the irritability that came with having to deal with situations was glaring. this for me was the part of recovery i didn't want to deal with, i wanted to have nothing change other than the drinking be removed, whitch as i discovered is immpossable. we all drink for a reason, and we need to fix that reason before any type of real sobriety can be attained, otherwise we continue to be miserable sobs. On a note about boring, i'm not sure if i struggled with this exactly, i did think i was boring , but it stemmed from a lack of interest in most things. i used to love fishing ...but you know fishing sober is different than not. the things i used to enjoy all seemed to lack the "fun" aspect and that led me to a state of apathy about life.
I hope my reflections can be useful and i really hope you can find your motivation before something outside your control forces the issue into the light as i had to. best wishes and hang in there

michelle01

I think we become so brainwashed into believing we need to have a drink to have fun, by media etc, we tend to assimilate it and act it out. I give myself permission to be silly while sober occasionally. And I have loads of laughs, just from everyday life.

Maybe though, there may be a few underlying personal reasons as people here have pointed out. We all need to put in some effort to reprogram certain attitudes and ideas sober, to learn a few new things (never too late to change some things in your life, I myself have seen some big turnarounds)... You can be sober and still as dysfunctional as hell. It's fairly inevitable then that you're going to be pretty much a pain both to yourself and others, or else end up drinking again.

I found myself pretty miserable too trying to walk the drunk/sober tightrope, as it never really gave me a chance to move further along the path to recovery to the stage where you are past the 'funk', and to see its possibilities.

onlythetruth

I've been assured by everyone in my life that I am far more interesting sober than drunk. I am a naturally witty person, but my wit is replaced by slurring, tears and bizarre behavior when I'm drunk.

Even if that were not the case, though, I'd rather be boring than dead.

Stride34

Many people are more enjoyable to be around when drunk. Alcohol loosens people up and can result in more open, interesting conversation and interaction. There's nothing abnormal or wrong with that. It becomes an issue when it causes problems in your life. Then you have to find other ways to replace the enjoyment you got from alcohol, or you will be miserable