This road looks rough..
 

But it doesn't look nearly as rough as the one that I've been on for nearly a decade now. I'm only twenty-seven years of age and have been consistently drinking for the duration, and no months off for good behavior either. In recent years, the absence of such "good behavior" has been increasingly more apparent as I have begun to lose control of my anger excessively. I have fully come to the realization that this is a beyond a problem. I joined this forum this evening, sober, clear minded and finally ready to take the first steps necessary to managing this addiction. I have to admit that I feel pretty lost. It doesn't seem like there is anyone in my daily life that can offer me good solid advice on how to change my life, but I still retain confidence that with the right helping hand, I can find my way and some courage. I was hoping that some of you out there would just be able to provide me with some general advice on what steps I should take to get the ball rolling, maybe share with me some of your own personal experience so that I might perhaps gain a better perspective on my own situation. I sincerely appreciate any and all help and look forward to participating here frequently.

Welcome MahCat :)

You're certainly right about it not always being an easy road getting started, but yeah - it was nowhere near as rough as the life I was leading as a drinker.

You'll find a lot of support and ideas here :)

D

Welcome MahCat,

I don't have any advice as I am only 2 days sober. Let's wait for somebody who is more successful in maintaining sobriety. I just want to say you should be proud for taking the first step.
My plan for start is not to drink, no matter what and I know it will just get better in time, the help will come in many ways and from many directions when you take the road of sobriety...and this I may say as I was sober for 8 months and life was getting better and better...just be strong and don't give up.

Hugs,

M.

MahCat - I'm also 27 years old and I was a daily drinking for 6 years. I found sobriety to be a little rough starting out but with the support from SR I made it through. I found that positivity helps a lot and going for walks / jogs helps extremely well. I was drinking a lot of water, I think I was drinking about 4-6 quarts of water a day in early recovery which helped me.

Days will not always be good but you have to try staying positive through them, If you're always bringing yourself down and / or reflecting on your past with alcohol - I believe there is a greater chance of returning to the bottle.

Turn negatives into positives, it's not easy but it's possible.

Around this time of life is a great time to get sober, I had my last drink or drug at 28 and found I could resolve the damage I'd done to that point in my life within the first few years, leaving open a lifetime unaffected by the kind of drinking drama I'd earlier experienced.

Just the kind of good life that would have been available were I not alcoholic. Beats all to hell suffering through ever-worsening experiences for the next 10-30 years and deciding after the fact that you should have done something earlier.

We get to keep what we've learned and experienced to this point which in my case was oh, plenty enough. All the old painful crap becomes useful as you go forward.

Welcome MahCat, you have made a positive step in the right direction by opening up to the people at SR.

You will find a lot of support here and will be amazed at the amount of people that are and were in your same situation.

Check out this link for some recovery programs that many of us use.

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...formation.html

I use AA and have had great success with it. I was a hard core drinker for 22 years and wish I had made changes when I was 27. I could have saved myself a lot of broken relationships and bad decisions.

I also hang out here as much as possible. Get your thoughts and feelings out there and let the good people here guide you.

I wish you well on your road to recovery and learning how to live a happy life sober.

Big love.

I second this! Changing at 27 would have saved a whole lot of money, heart-ache and grief!

Welcome to the family.:ghug3 I too wish I'd quit when I was younger. I've been sober now for two years and tho the first few months were kind of rough, the reward for staying sober is great.:) I'm enjoying my life for the first time in a long while.:)

Welcome!

In early recovery I found gratitude to be extremely helpful. Also, visiting here. And thirdly I worked with a thrPiat to resolve some issues that I had buried under gallons of wine.

This site an AA are great places to start.

Like MANY people, I knew there was a problem-age 25.

Fast forward 25 years-I have a lot of "I wish I had stopped at 25" thoughts.

I currently have 7 months of continuous sobriety.

Want to ruin your dreams & life? I didn't.

At 25, I had it ALL going ON!
I wasn't yet drinking daily, nor having many problems, yet.

Today, I have Not Yet gone to jail nor have I died....Not Yet have I been caught driving under the influence.

I DID ruin my dreams & the life I had...

Mahcat, Welcome!

A useful tool for recovery is trust. While using our DOC (I'm a recovering addict and I like to use inclusive language cause sometimes I feel left out since most of the threads are about alcoholism)

Anyway, Trust. While using, I didn't trust myself to be able to address life without my DOC. I didn't trust that I had any other tools available in myself or my life that would allow me to succeed at anything. I didn't trust the people around me. At first I trusted my DOC, but then it turned on me as well.

The fear and loneliness were overwhelming. I used my DOC compulsively hoping that somehow I'd get back to the point where it DID seem to help me. Then one day I screamed, there has to be something better than this.

I had to trust that somehow, somewhere, there was something, that I could trust would get me out of this mess. I found that something in recovery. Sometimes, the suggestions people made seemed pretty "out there" but as they say in the cartoons "it's so crazy it just might work!"

Discernment wasn't one of my strong points when I got into recovery, and coming here and listening to people further down recovery lane gave me some idea of what might work and what might not.

I hope you hang around. We do recover.

Welcome Mahcat. Glad you're here. I can definitely relate to the anger issues. I've never been a particularly angry person, but in the past year or two I'd go into a red rage over the smallest things. After about three months sober, I can honestly say that I've gone back to being that very-slow-to-anger person I used to be. Hopefully, you'll have the same experience. Aside from SR, AA and the Twelve Steps have made my recovery...not quite painless...but much easier. I think the best advice I can give you early on is to just stay involved in your recovery. Come here and post/read, try an AA meeting and make contact with people who've been where you are and know how to get through it. Keep your focus on the here and now. You can do this. You never have to drink again.

--Fenris.

Having a recovery plan and knowing about addiction helps me. Here are some of the things I find useful in my daily addiction treatments

Alcoholism Isn’t What It Used To Be

SMART Tools and SMART Articles

Rational Recovery: The New Cure for Substance Addiction. By Jack Trimpey.
(Google book preview including the Addiction Voice Recognition Technique or the AVRT)