Hey All .
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Nov 2011
Posts: 79
Originally Posted by failedtaper 
Even though I don't go to NA or AA, I think it is worth going to a few meetings just to see if it is for you or not. I went to quite a few meetings years ago, and I found them fascinating, and humbling, because of the commonality we shared in substance abuse.
Years later, I still have fond memories of my favorite meeting, an inner city place that had wide diversity. I found some of the most valuable insight came from the observations of people I never would have thought to speak to "out there" in general society.
These days, I do my own form of independent, and private, recovery. I am very outgoing in other areas of my life, but I prefer my recovery to be private. It is not a trigger for me, and I have never felt stronger in my recovery. But if that changed, I would go back and check out the rooms.
Good luck to you.
FT
Years later, I still have fond memories of my favorite meeting, an inner city place that had wide diversity. I found some of the most valuable insight came from the observations of people I never would have thought to speak to "out there" in general society.
These days, I do my own form of independent, and private, recovery. I am very outgoing in other areas of my life, but I prefer my recovery to be private. It is not a trigger for me, and I have never felt stronger in my recovery. But if that changed, I would go back and check out the rooms.
Good luck to you.
FT
Self recovered Self discovered
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Toronto Canada
Posts: 5,148
Congratulations to you, Robbie, I bet that you are feeling justifiably proud of yourself, and starting feel the euphoria that results from being sober for more than a week.
While SR was (and still is) very important to my sobriety journey, this link accurately describes the initial process of quitting for me. How Freshstart57 quit drinking
Getting and staying sober is our favourite topic around here, so keep posting.
While SR was (and still is) very important to my sobriety journey, this link accurately describes the initial process of quitting for me. How Freshstart57 quit drinking
Getting and staying sober is our favourite topic around here, so keep posting.
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Nov 2011
Posts: 79
Originally Posted by freshstart57
Congratulations to you, Robbie, I bet that you are feeling justifiably proud of yourself, and starting feel the euphoria that results from being sober for more than a week.
While SR was (and still is) very important to my sobriety journey, this link accurately describes the initial process of quitting for me. How Freshstart57 quit drinking
Getting and staying sober is our favourite topic around here, so keep posting.
While SR was (and still is) very important to my sobriety journey, this link accurately describes the initial process of quitting for me. How Freshstart57 quit drinking
Getting and staying sober is our favourite topic around here, so keep posting.
Re-Member
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado
Posts: 7,583
Robbie,
First off congrats on your ten days, that is huge!
It does sound like you have a handle on your recovery right now. I did AA counseling a 7 day in hospital detox, and worked with my main Doc and the addiction doc at the hospital and a few days of rehab which I found absolutely was not for me.
I continued with AA for three months or so, and had by then only been here on SR and AA with just medical visits for blood tests and other medical visits.
Like R&A and Tin Man already said so well all I wanted was a detox and the poison out of my system for that 7 day detox and I would never drink again. I made that decision before I made the arrangements.
I can see it here even though it is only the spoken word. There comes across the sense of the folks that want to drink again, but are taking a vacation from it with a caveat that they can always relapse and start over. That is absolutely true, but that isn't quitting to me. Being in a relapse cycle or focusing on being deprived instead of glad to be survived is just another form of drinking cycle to me.
If you haven't ever really read them look up the lyrics to the song I want a new Drug by Huey Lewis and the News. That is the relapse anthem IMHO.
The author does not want to live life sober. Is not content with health and endless possibilities. The author does not want to get off his dead axe and live life, do things. The author wants to have a drug that relieves him of the effort of doing well for kicks, and doing poorly for balance and perspective.
Perhaps only folks trying to get and stay sober can understand why that song is so deadly to one of us. When I see the conditions people put on their recovery I know what is coming and hate it because they have to get it, no one could get through to me until I had had enough and got it for myself. I and no one else can make them get it. They have to understand it themselves and that can come hard won or in a flash.
I am not hearing that cycle in your post, and that makes me feel good too, and is my support. There is much to be said for helping others to make it by being a part of it with a bit of posting and telling them they aren't the first nor the last. I certainly wasn't. But I have made it. Thanks to SR and AA and family and friends, and my docs and the folks who cared for me in hospital detox.
At some point we stop thinking about triggers and start dealing with life directly without any anesthetic needed. Some work hard to get there, others like me seem to be able to reach a point where we seem to flip a switch, and know from day one that we will never drink again. Others hang in there and it comes with a few months of sobriety.
So rather than ask if we think you can do this with only SR instead ask yourself if you are willing to do whatever it takes. Be that going to AA meetings, face to face counseling. Talking honestly with your, or a, Doctor about it and saying what you really consume not the standard 3 or 4 most say.
If you have hopes of conquering it and becoming a normal drinker again, odds are it is only a matter of time before another one bites the dust.
For me, i found it easier to do everything at the start, and then eliminate those I felt I didn't need anymore.
So with no one forcing me. No police issues ever in my life. NO drinking and driving ever. And to the utter shock of my friends and two grown boys and family, I made it public knowledge before I went in to Detox that I had a problem and needed to quit forever. Only my wife of 39 years knew how bad it was getting. That I was drinking 30 plus a day, and smoking 3 packs of cigarettes to boot every day.
See I was completely in control to the very end. I never got drunk as in slurring, stumbling, blacking out, or becoming angry or mean while drinking. I really kept it to just keeping the buzz as I hated the feeling of out of control drunk. Yes I could slow down or stop for a few hours if it got a bit more tipsy than my normal gentle buzz. Then resume the drinking to keep the buzz. No one I worked with or family ever saw me "drunk." I thought I was smarter than alcohol. But alcohol had me by the short hairs and the patience of a saint. It took more and more for the buzz to be normal. Then the hangovers got so bad I started pouring a shot or two of scotch in my first morning coffees to get normal. I went from 6-12 a night after work to retiring and starting at 12 noon and drinking one to two an hour till midnight and bed. Then it was two to three an hour and still no drunkenness, just that buzz that was getting elusive. Then the horrible mornings and drinking from 8 AM till midnight. And having to stay home and drink. Oh I had company some of whom drank, and I went out with my wife as designated driver occasionally. But I had to chug a bunch first so i didn't appear to be drinking as much around others, and had my buzz good for at max three hours of one or two an hour. I wasn't a hider and drank openly, just moderately. It is just that my tolerance climbed year by year.
I was lucky. I didn't really drink much until my mid to late thirties. A six pack would be in the fridge for a month or two. A fifth would last a year in the cabinet. It was my late thirties and forties that I started needing more and became the guy who doesn't drink to excess but always has a drink in his hand. I still had the respect of my peers and family and made my mark in my world. I retired at 45 and started drinking a bit more, and by the time I was 52 I was unable to stop. I quit my last job so as not to be drinking and driving to work. Or working with a buzz on. The last two years were 24/7 with bad mornings and I had to drink to be normal. The last year I prayed for the strength to quit and every morning said I would that day and skipped a scotch in my first coffee, and celebrate with a double in my second coffee, deciding I would quit the next day as I now knew I could do it.
My health began to decline with the abuse of the chain smoking and drinking. I thought it was too late but decided I needed help to get it out of my system and if i could just get detoxed i would take it from there and never be a slave to alcohol or any other substance again. Before I detoxed I also decided that I was not going to waste a perfectly good detox on only one of my two problem drugs and quit smoking then too. That was 21 September 2010. I have not wavered. I have no cravings at all and didn't per se from the beginning. Yes I had horrible Post Acute Withdrawal Symptoms (PAWS) and thank God for AA, and here to let me know I wasn't losing my mind or dying just healing.
I love life now. I barely got out of alcoholism alive. My morning nausea and brutal coughing and pain is gone. I feel better than I have in years. But if I hadn't gone on another six months I don't think I would have survived. I do have one minor problem that is permanent but I can live with that.
So after all that I hope you realize that I am saying that for me, no exemptions, no can'ts, no conditions on what I would or would not do to get and stay sober. No fooling myself that I would ever drink again. If the man upstairs told me I could drink normally again as a miracle I would decline as I already had thousands of drinks and am not missing any experiences there, nor need it. I am not staying away from drinking because I can't. I am sober because I won't. A subtle, but significant difference that does not need fancy labels or terms or this recovery way is the only way. You do need a recovery plan, but be assured if you have that decision made firmly, that you won't, not will try, not will hang on for years minute by minute until you have a bad thing happen, not that you can handle hanging out with the same friends and things, but a firm commitment that you choose not to, ever again, then any recovery plan will work won't it?
It isn't hoping to get over reasons and triggers to drink. It is being determined to not drink period. Ever. Then cravings aren't temptations but like a cut that started bleeding again. You just slap a band aid on it and press on. Eventually it heals and stops itching right?
Don't eliminate any possibility until you have your sobriety well in hand. Don't hang on to ones that you outgrow. And only you can determine that.
Once again congrats on your great start. Now don't waste it.
First off congrats on your ten days, that is huge!
It does sound like you have a handle on your recovery right now. I did AA counseling a 7 day in hospital detox, and worked with my main Doc and the addiction doc at the hospital and a few days of rehab which I found absolutely was not for me.
I continued with AA for three months or so, and had by then only been here on SR and AA with just medical visits for blood tests and other medical visits.
Like R&A and Tin Man already said so well all I wanted was a detox and the poison out of my system for that 7 day detox and I would never drink again. I made that decision before I made the arrangements.
I can see it here even though it is only the spoken word. There comes across the sense of the folks that want to drink again, but are taking a vacation from it with a caveat that they can always relapse and start over. That is absolutely true, but that isn't quitting to me. Being in a relapse cycle or focusing on being deprived instead of glad to be survived is just another form of drinking cycle to me.
If you haven't ever really read them look up the lyrics to the song I want a new Drug by Huey Lewis and the News. That is the relapse anthem IMHO.
The author does not want to live life sober. Is not content with health and endless possibilities. The author does not want to get off his dead axe and live life, do things. The author wants to have a drug that relieves him of the effort of doing well for kicks, and doing poorly for balance and perspective.
Perhaps only folks trying to get and stay sober can understand why that song is so deadly to one of us. When I see the conditions people put on their recovery I know what is coming and hate it because they have to get it, no one could get through to me until I had had enough and got it for myself. I and no one else can make them get it. They have to understand it themselves and that can come hard won or in a flash.
I am not hearing that cycle in your post, and that makes me feel good too, and is my support. There is much to be said for helping others to make it by being a part of it with a bit of posting and telling them they aren't the first nor the last. I certainly wasn't. But I have made it. Thanks to SR and AA and family and friends, and my docs and the folks who cared for me in hospital detox.
At some point we stop thinking about triggers and start dealing with life directly without any anesthetic needed. Some work hard to get there, others like me seem to be able to reach a point where we seem to flip a switch, and know from day one that we will never drink again. Others hang in there and it comes with a few months of sobriety.
So rather than ask if we think you can do this with only SR instead ask yourself if you are willing to do whatever it takes. Be that going to AA meetings, face to face counseling. Talking honestly with your, or a, Doctor about it and saying what you really consume not the standard 3 or 4 most say.
If you have hopes of conquering it and becoming a normal drinker again, odds are it is only a matter of time before another one bites the dust.
For me, i found it easier to do everything at the start, and then eliminate those I felt I didn't need anymore.
So with no one forcing me. No police issues ever in my life. NO drinking and driving ever. And to the utter shock of my friends and two grown boys and family, I made it public knowledge before I went in to Detox that I had a problem and needed to quit forever. Only my wife of 39 years knew how bad it was getting. That I was drinking 30 plus a day, and smoking 3 packs of cigarettes to boot every day.
See I was completely in control to the very end. I never got drunk as in slurring, stumbling, blacking out, or becoming angry or mean while drinking. I really kept it to just keeping the buzz as I hated the feeling of out of control drunk. Yes I could slow down or stop for a few hours if it got a bit more tipsy than my normal gentle buzz. Then resume the drinking to keep the buzz. No one I worked with or family ever saw me "drunk." I thought I was smarter than alcohol. But alcohol had me by the short hairs and the patience of a saint. It took more and more for the buzz to be normal. Then the hangovers got so bad I started pouring a shot or two of scotch in my first morning coffees to get normal. I went from 6-12 a night after work to retiring and starting at 12 noon and drinking one to two an hour till midnight and bed. Then it was two to three an hour and still no drunkenness, just that buzz that was getting elusive. Then the horrible mornings and drinking from 8 AM till midnight. And having to stay home and drink. Oh I had company some of whom drank, and I went out with my wife as designated driver occasionally. But I had to chug a bunch first so i didn't appear to be drinking as much around others, and had my buzz good for at max three hours of one or two an hour. I wasn't a hider and drank openly, just moderately. It is just that my tolerance climbed year by year.
I was lucky. I didn't really drink much until my mid to late thirties. A six pack would be in the fridge for a month or two. A fifth would last a year in the cabinet. It was my late thirties and forties that I started needing more and became the guy who doesn't drink to excess but always has a drink in his hand. I still had the respect of my peers and family and made my mark in my world. I retired at 45 and started drinking a bit more, and by the time I was 52 I was unable to stop. I quit my last job so as not to be drinking and driving to work. Or working with a buzz on. The last two years were 24/7 with bad mornings and I had to drink to be normal. The last year I prayed for the strength to quit and every morning said I would that day and skipped a scotch in my first coffee, and celebrate with a double in my second coffee, deciding I would quit the next day as I now knew I could do it.
My health began to decline with the abuse of the chain smoking and drinking. I thought it was too late but decided I needed help to get it out of my system and if i could just get detoxed i would take it from there and never be a slave to alcohol or any other substance again. Before I detoxed I also decided that I was not going to waste a perfectly good detox on only one of my two problem drugs and quit smoking then too. That was 21 September 2010. I have not wavered. I have no cravings at all and didn't per se from the beginning. Yes I had horrible Post Acute Withdrawal Symptoms (PAWS) and thank God for AA, and here to let me know I wasn't losing my mind or dying just healing.
I love life now. I barely got out of alcoholism alive. My morning nausea and brutal coughing and pain is gone. I feel better than I have in years. But if I hadn't gone on another six months I don't think I would have survived. I do have one minor problem that is permanent but I can live with that.
So after all that I hope you realize that I am saying that for me, no exemptions, no can'ts, no conditions on what I would or would not do to get and stay sober. No fooling myself that I would ever drink again. If the man upstairs told me I could drink normally again as a miracle I would decline as I already had thousands of drinks and am not missing any experiences there, nor need it. I am not staying away from drinking because I can't. I am sober because I won't. A subtle, but significant difference that does not need fancy labels or terms or this recovery way is the only way. You do need a recovery plan, but be assured if you have that decision made firmly, that you won't, not will try, not will hang on for years minute by minute until you have a bad thing happen, not that you can handle hanging out with the same friends and things, but a firm commitment that you choose not to, ever again, then any recovery plan will work won't it?
It isn't hoping to get over reasons and triggers to drink. It is being determined to not drink period. Ever. Then cravings aren't temptations but like a cut that started bleeding again. You just slap a band aid on it and press on. Eventually it heals and stops itching right?
Don't eliminate any possibility until you have your sobriety well in hand. Don't hang on to ones that you outgrow. And only you can determine that.
Once again congrats on your great start. Now don't waste it.
Self recovered Self discovered
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Toronto Canada
Posts: 5,148
Great post once again, Itchy. I liked this Thanks.
It is being determined to not drink period. Ever. Then cravings aren't temptations but like a cut that started bleeding again. You just slap a band aid on it and press on.
Re-Member
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado
Posts: 7,583
Thanks,
In an hour I go to Thanksgiving dinner at my SH's parents place with our kids and G'Kids and other relatives. Now MY SH can have a few drinks and I am the designated driver. I love it!
Everybody have a happy Thanksgiving, and get off focusing on our shared addiction to alcohol. I honestly won't think about it again until I come back here to see how all my friends are doing, and get a charge out of their daily successes. This is going to sound funny, but i look at those early days of sobriety and learning as the good old days now. Just like when I think of us first starting out, with little money and a new baby, and had to give blood to make a few gifts on Birthdays and Christmas possible. We look back on the trying times as the good times because we never took anything for granted. We were insanely alive, sober, and made it.
No I would not like to go back to those days and live them over again, not today unless I get to be that young again.
But we do think fondly of the hard times years later because of the effort, and working together, and friends, and lessons good and bad, that brought us here, to a day we can give thanks for all those wonderful days, and start working on any current lessons we have learned.
I wish for each of you, the ability to look back on these days for you as the good old days when you conquered that which you thought you never could. Once you do, these days are days of connection and joy.
This is my second sober thanksgiving in several decades. I have so much to be thankful for today, there is no room for even thoughts of alcohol.
Robbie thanks for posting a post that made me think of myself at your stage in sobriety. Hope you made it today as fine as I did.
In an hour I go to Thanksgiving dinner at my SH's parents place with our kids and G'Kids and other relatives. Now MY SH can have a few drinks and I am the designated driver. I love it!
Everybody have a happy Thanksgiving, and get off focusing on our shared addiction to alcohol. I honestly won't think about it again until I come back here to see how all my friends are doing, and get a charge out of their daily successes. This is going to sound funny, but i look at those early days of sobriety and learning as the good old days now. Just like when I think of us first starting out, with little money and a new baby, and had to give blood to make a few gifts on Birthdays and Christmas possible. We look back on the trying times as the good times because we never took anything for granted. We were insanely alive, sober, and made it.
No I would not like to go back to those days and live them over again, not today unless I get to be that young again.
But we do think fondly of the hard times years later because of the effort, and working together, and friends, and lessons good and bad, that brought us here, to a day we can give thanks for all those wonderful days, and start working on any current lessons we have learned.
I wish for each of you, the ability to look back on these days for you as the good old days when you conquered that which you thought you never could. Once you do, these days are days of connection and joy.
This is my second sober thanksgiving in several decades. I have so much to be thankful for today, there is no room for even thoughts of alcohol.
Robbie thanks for posting a post that made me think of myself at your stage in sobriety. Hope you made it today as fine as I did.
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Nov 2011
Posts: 79
Originally Posted by Itchy
Robbie,
First off congrats on your ten days, that is huge!
It does sound like you have a handle on your recovery right now. I did AA counseling a 7 day in hospital detox, and worked with my main Doc and the addiction doc at the hospital and a few days of rehab which I found absolutely was not for me.
I continued with AA for three months or so, and had by then only been here on SR and AA with just medical visits for blood tests and other medical visits.
Like R&A and Tin Man already said so well all I wanted was a detox and the poison out of my system for that 7 day detox and I would never drink again. I made that decision before I made the arrangements.
I can see it here even though it is only the spoken word. There comes across the sense of the folks that want to drink again, but are taking a vacation from it with a caveat that they can always relapse and start over. That is absolutely true, but that isn't quitting to me. Being in a relapse cycle or focusing on being deprived instead of glad to be survived is just another form of drinking cycle to me.
If you haven't ever really read them look up the lyrics to the song I want a new Drug by Huey Lewis and the News. That is the relapse anthem IMHO.
The author does not want to live life sober. Is not content with health and endless possibilities. The author does not want to get off his dead axe and live life, do things. The author wants to have a drug that relieves him of the effort of doing well for kicks, and doing poorly for balance and perspective.
Perhaps only folks trying to get and stay sober can understand why that song is so deadly to one of us. When I see the conditions people put on their recovery I know what is coming and hate it because they have to get it, no one could get through to me until I had had enough and got it for myself. I and no one else can make them get it. They have to understand it themselves and that can come hard won or in a flash.
I am not hearing that cycle in your post, and that makes me feel good too, and is my support. There is much to be said for helping others to make it by being a part of it with a bit of posting and telling them they aren't the first nor the last. I certainly wasn't. But I have made it. Thanks to SR and AA and family and friends, and my docs and the folks who cared for me in hospital detox.
At some point we stop thinking about triggers and start dealing with life directly without any anesthetic needed. Some work hard to get there, others like me seem to be able to reach a point where we seem to flip a switch, and know from day one that we will never drink again. Others hang in there and it comes with a few months of sobriety.
So rather than ask if we think you can do this with only SR instead ask yourself if you are willing to do whatever it takes. Be that going to AA meetings, face to face counseling. Talking honestly with your, or a, Doctor about it and saying what you really consume not the standard 3 or 4 most say.
If you have hopes of conquering it and becoming a normal drinker again, odds are it is only a matter of time before another one bites the dust.
For me, i found it easier to do everything at the start, and then eliminate those I felt I didn't need anymore.
So with no one forcing me. No police issues ever in my life. NO drinking and driving ever. And to the utter shock of my friends and two grown boys and family, I made it public knowledge before I went in to Detox that I had a problem and needed to quit forever. Only my wife of 39 years knew how bad it was getting. That I was drinking 30 plus a day, and smoking 3 packs of cigarettes to boot every day.
See I was completely in control to the very end. I never got drunk as in slurring, stumbling, blacking out, or becoming angry or mean while drinking. I really kept it to just keeping the buzz as I hated the feeling of out of control drunk. Yes I could slow down or stop for a few hours if it got a bit more tipsy than my normal gentle buzz. Then resume the drinking to keep the buzz. No one I worked with or family ever saw me "drunk." I thought I was smarter than alcohol. But alcohol had me by the short hairs and the patience of a saint. It took more and more for the buzz to be normal. Then the hangovers got so bad I started pouring a shot or two of scotch in my first morning coffees to get normal. I went from 6-12 a night after work to retiring and starting at 12 noon and drinking one to two an hour till midnight and bed. Then it was two to three an hour and still no drunkenness, just that buzz that was getting elusive. Then the horrible mornings and drinking from 8 AM till midnight. And having to stay home and drink. Oh I had company some of whom drank, and I went out with my wife as designated driver occasionally. But I had to chug a bunch first so i didn't appear to be drinking as much around others, and had my buzz good for at max three hours of one or two an hour. I wasn't a hider and drank openly, just moderately. It is just that my tolerance climbed year by year.
I was lucky. I didn't really drink much until my mid to late thirties. A six pack would be in the fridge for a month or two. A fifth would last a year in the cabinet. It was my late thirties and forties that I started needing more and became the guy who doesn't drink to excess but always has a drink in his hand. I still had the respect of my peers and family and made my mark in my world. I retired at 45 and started drinking a bit more, and by the time I was 52 I was unable to stop. I quit my last job so as not to be drinking and driving to work. Or working with a buzz on. The last two years were 24/7 with bad mornings and I had to drink to be normal. The last year I prayed for the strength to quit and every morning said I would that day and skipped a scotch in my first coffee, and celebrate with a double in my second coffee, deciding I would quit the next day as I now knew I could do it.
My health began to decline with the abuse of the chain smoking and drinking. I thought it was too late but decided I needed help to get it out of my system and if i could just get detoxed i would take it from there and never be a slave to alcohol or any other substance again. Before I detoxed I also decided that I was not going to waste a perfectly good detox on only one of my two problem drugs and quit smoking then too. That was 21 September 2010. I have not wavered. I have no cravings at all and didn't per se from the beginning. Yes I had horrible Post Acute Withdrawal Symptoms (PAWS) and thank God for AA, and here to let me know I wasn't losing my mind or dying just healing.
I love life now. I barely got out of alcoholism alive. My morning nausea and brutal coughing and pain is gone. I feel better than I have in years. But if I hadn't gone on another six months I don't think I would have survived. I do have one minor problem that is permanent but I can live with that.
So after all that I hope you realize that I am saying that for me, no exemptions, no can'ts, no conditions on what I would or would not do to get and stay sober. No fooling myself that I would ever drink again. If the man upstairs told me I could drink normally again as a miracle I would decline as I already had thousands of drinks and am not missing any experiences there, nor need it. I am not staying away from drinking because I can't. I am sober because I won't. A subtle, but significant difference that does not need fancy labels or terms or this recovery way is the only way. You do need a recovery plan, but be assured if you have that decision made firmly, that you won't, not will try, not will hang on for years minute by minute until you have a bad thing happen, not that you can handle hanging out with the same friends and things, but a firm commitment that you choose not to, ever again, then any recovery plan will work won't it?
It isn't hoping to get over reasons and triggers to drink. It is being determined to not drink period. Ever. Then cravings aren't temptations but like a cut that started bleeding again. You just slap a band aid on it and press on. Eventually it heals and stops itching right?
Don't eliminate any possibility until you have your sobriety well in hand. Don't hang on to ones that you outgrow. And only you can determine that.
Once again congrats on your great start. Now don't waste it.
First off congrats on your ten days, that is huge!
It does sound like you have a handle on your recovery right now. I did AA counseling a 7 day in hospital detox, and worked with my main Doc and the addiction doc at the hospital and a few days of rehab which I found absolutely was not for me.
I continued with AA for three months or so, and had by then only been here on SR and AA with just medical visits for blood tests and other medical visits.
Like R&A and Tin Man already said so well all I wanted was a detox and the poison out of my system for that 7 day detox and I would never drink again. I made that decision before I made the arrangements.
I can see it here even though it is only the spoken word. There comes across the sense of the folks that want to drink again, but are taking a vacation from it with a caveat that they can always relapse and start over. That is absolutely true, but that isn't quitting to me. Being in a relapse cycle or focusing on being deprived instead of glad to be survived is just another form of drinking cycle to me.
If you haven't ever really read them look up the lyrics to the song I want a new Drug by Huey Lewis and the News. That is the relapse anthem IMHO.
The author does not want to live life sober. Is not content with health and endless possibilities. The author does not want to get off his dead axe and live life, do things. The author wants to have a drug that relieves him of the effort of doing well for kicks, and doing poorly for balance and perspective.
Perhaps only folks trying to get and stay sober can understand why that song is so deadly to one of us. When I see the conditions people put on their recovery I know what is coming and hate it because they have to get it, no one could get through to me until I had had enough and got it for myself. I and no one else can make them get it. They have to understand it themselves and that can come hard won or in a flash.
I am not hearing that cycle in your post, and that makes me feel good too, and is my support. There is much to be said for helping others to make it by being a part of it with a bit of posting and telling them they aren't the first nor the last. I certainly wasn't. But I have made it. Thanks to SR and AA and family and friends, and my docs and the folks who cared for me in hospital detox.
At some point we stop thinking about triggers and start dealing with life directly without any anesthetic needed. Some work hard to get there, others like me seem to be able to reach a point where we seem to flip a switch, and know from day one that we will never drink again. Others hang in there and it comes with a few months of sobriety.
So rather than ask if we think you can do this with only SR instead ask yourself if you are willing to do whatever it takes. Be that going to AA meetings, face to face counseling. Talking honestly with your, or a, Doctor about it and saying what you really consume not the standard 3 or 4 most say.
If you have hopes of conquering it and becoming a normal drinker again, odds are it is only a matter of time before another one bites the dust.
For me, i found it easier to do everything at the start, and then eliminate those I felt I didn't need anymore.
So with no one forcing me. No police issues ever in my life. NO drinking and driving ever. And to the utter shock of my friends and two grown boys and family, I made it public knowledge before I went in to Detox that I had a problem and needed to quit forever. Only my wife of 39 years knew how bad it was getting. That I was drinking 30 plus a day, and smoking 3 packs of cigarettes to boot every day.
See I was completely in control to the very end. I never got drunk as in slurring, stumbling, blacking out, or becoming angry or mean while drinking. I really kept it to just keeping the buzz as I hated the feeling of out of control drunk. Yes I could slow down or stop for a few hours if it got a bit more tipsy than my normal gentle buzz. Then resume the drinking to keep the buzz. No one I worked with or family ever saw me "drunk." I thought I was smarter than alcohol. But alcohol had me by the short hairs and the patience of a saint. It took more and more for the buzz to be normal. Then the hangovers got so bad I started pouring a shot or two of scotch in my first morning coffees to get normal. I went from 6-12 a night after work to retiring and starting at 12 noon and drinking one to two an hour till midnight and bed. Then it was two to three an hour and still no drunkenness, just that buzz that was getting elusive. Then the horrible mornings and drinking from 8 AM till midnight. And having to stay home and drink. Oh I had company some of whom drank, and I went out with my wife as designated driver occasionally. But I had to chug a bunch first so i didn't appear to be drinking as much around others, and had my buzz good for at max three hours of one or two an hour. I wasn't a hider and drank openly, just moderately. It is just that my tolerance climbed year by year.
I was lucky. I didn't really drink much until my mid to late thirties. A six pack would be in the fridge for a month or two. A fifth would last a year in the cabinet. It was my late thirties and forties that I started needing more and became the guy who doesn't drink to excess but always has a drink in his hand. I still had the respect of my peers and family and made my mark in my world. I retired at 45 and started drinking a bit more, and by the time I was 52 I was unable to stop. I quit my last job so as not to be drinking and driving to work. Or working with a buzz on. The last two years were 24/7 with bad mornings and I had to drink to be normal. The last year I prayed for the strength to quit and every morning said I would that day and skipped a scotch in my first coffee, and celebrate with a double in my second coffee, deciding I would quit the next day as I now knew I could do it.
My health began to decline with the abuse of the chain smoking and drinking. I thought it was too late but decided I needed help to get it out of my system and if i could just get detoxed i would take it from there and never be a slave to alcohol or any other substance again. Before I detoxed I also decided that I was not going to waste a perfectly good detox on only one of my two problem drugs and quit smoking then too. That was 21 September 2010. I have not wavered. I have no cravings at all and didn't per se from the beginning. Yes I had horrible Post Acute Withdrawal Symptoms (PAWS) and thank God for AA, and here to let me know I wasn't losing my mind or dying just healing.
I love life now. I barely got out of alcoholism alive. My morning nausea and brutal coughing and pain is gone. I feel better than I have in years. But if I hadn't gone on another six months I don't think I would have survived. I do have one minor problem that is permanent but I can live with that.
So after all that I hope you realize that I am saying that for me, no exemptions, no can'ts, no conditions on what I would or would not do to get and stay sober. No fooling myself that I would ever drink again. If the man upstairs told me I could drink normally again as a miracle I would decline as I already had thousands of drinks and am not missing any experiences there, nor need it. I am not staying away from drinking because I can't. I am sober because I won't. A subtle, but significant difference that does not need fancy labels or terms or this recovery way is the only way. You do need a recovery plan, but be assured if you have that decision made firmly, that you won't, not will try, not will hang on for years minute by minute until you have a bad thing happen, not that you can handle hanging out with the same friends and things, but a firm commitment that you choose not to, ever again, then any recovery plan will work won't it?
It isn't hoping to get over reasons and triggers to drink. It is being determined to not drink period. Ever. Then cravings aren't temptations but like a cut that started bleeding again. You just slap a band aid on it and press on. Eventually it heals and stops itching right?
Don't eliminate any possibility until you have your sobriety well in hand. Don't hang on to ones that you outgrow. And only you can determine that.
Once again congrats on your great start. Now don't waste it.
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Join Date: Nov 2011
Posts: 79
Originally Posted by Itchy
Thanks,
In an hour I go to Thanksgiving dinner at my SH's parents place with our kids and G'Kids and other relatives. Now MY SH can have a few drinks and I am the designated driver. I love it!
Everybody have a happy Thanksgiving, and get off focusing on our shared addiction to alcohol. I honestly won't think about it again until I come back here to see how all my friends are doing, and get a charge out of their daily successes. This is going to sound funny, but i look at those early days of sobriety and learning as the good old days now. Just like when I think of us first starting out, with little money and a new baby, and had to give blood to make a few gifts on Birthdays and Christmas possible. We look back on the trying times as the good times because we never took anything for granted. We were insanely alive, sober, and made it.
No I would not like to go back to those days and live them over again, not today unless I get to be that young again.
But we do think fondly of the hard times years later because of the effort, and working together, and friends, and lessons good and bad, that brought us here, to a day we can give thanks for all those wonderful days, and start working on any current lessons we have learned.
I wish for each of you, the ability to look back on these days for you as the good old days when you conquered that which you thought you never could. Once you do, these days are days of connection and joy.
This is my second sober thanksgiving in several decades. I have so much to be thankful for today, there is no room for even thoughts of alcohol.
Robbie thanks for posting a post that made me think of myself at your stage in sobriety. Hope you made it today as fine as I did.
In an hour I go to Thanksgiving dinner at my SH's parents place with our kids and G'Kids and other relatives. Now MY SH can have a few drinks and I am the designated driver. I love it!
Everybody have a happy Thanksgiving, and get off focusing on our shared addiction to alcohol. I honestly won't think about it again until I come back here to see how all my friends are doing, and get a charge out of their daily successes. This is going to sound funny, but i look at those early days of sobriety and learning as the good old days now. Just like when I think of us first starting out, with little money and a new baby, and had to give blood to make a few gifts on Birthdays and Christmas possible. We look back on the trying times as the good times because we never took anything for granted. We were insanely alive, sober, and made it.
No I would not like to go back to those days and live them over again, not today unless I get to be that young again.
But we do think fondly of the hard times years later because of the effort, and working together, and friends, and lessons good and bad, that brought us here, to a day we can give thanks for all those wonderful days, and start working on any current lessons we have learned.
I wish for each of you, the ability to look back on these days for you as the good old days when you conquered that which you thought you never could. Once you do, these days are days of connection and joy.
This is my second sober thanksgiving in several decades. I have so much to be thankful for today, there is no room for even thoughts of alcohol.
Robbie thanks for posting a post that made me think of myself at your stage in sobriety. Hope you made it today as fine as I did.
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