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Early Morning Thoughts in Soberland

Old 06-05-2013, 01:38 AM
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Early Morning Thoughts in Soberland

I went to bed early last night. I slept fairly well, although I had the sweats so bad I thought I might have wet the bed when I first woke up. My body still rejecting the liquor, I suppose.

I am anxious today. I don't want to go back to work. I took two sick days. The well-wishers will ask after me, and I will have to lie. Not looking forward to that.

I also still do not understand how I lost my resolve to stay sober, and that concerns me. I do not want to repeat that meltdown, and if I don't understand it I don't know how to fix it or prevent it from happening again.

I have thought for months that it should be easier for me to defeat my addiction than it is for most of my fellow alcohol addicts here. Many of you drink to self-medicate for depression, anxiety, horrific personal traumas, or other actual medical conditions. I don't have any of that. I just feel like my mind races a bit and alcohol slows it down. I like that feeling. I drink so much that I rapidly pass through soothing to oblivion, now, but that's why I'm here.

So many of my fellows here get sober and then start their real work of feeling better without alcohol in their lives. I don't have that to do. My life is pretty darn close to everything I ever wanted. I hope that I don't sound douchey by saying that, but it's true. I have a beautiful wife and children. Everyone is healthy. By any reasonable measure I am wealthy. I have a lucrative job and am highly thought of by my colleagues.

I don't have any reason to drink, so I don't know what to work on when I stop. Does that actually make it more difficult? It seems absurd on the face of it, but I don't know any more.

Now that I've written it all out, I can also see that it doesn't matter. Whether my journey is harder or easier than the next guy's is immaterial. It's my journey - the one God/the Universe assigned to me. I have to make it. No one else can.

I'm glad I don't have to make it alone.

Good morning, Sober Friends. Let's do this.
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Old 06-05-2013, 02:15 AM
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Good morning non! I too have so much to live for and my life is just about perfect. Great family, two awesome kids, awesome house, job etc. I am a single mom of two kids, so their are issues from my divorce, but other than that things are perfect. I too drink to slow my mind down or even just check out for a night. I will break open a bottle of vodka and go on a cleaning spree or knock down my "to do list". Wake up the next morning and start the day over. Until the night comes again when I can let go. Sometimes that night turns into the next day or the next two days. I usually only buy enough liquor to last for my "allotted drinking time." It's when I stock up for a few nights that things turn from hours into days.

You're not alone. I fully understand. Never before have "I" wanted to stop drinking. Usually the trauma of coming off of a bender wears off after about 3-5 days and I think just a few more times. I'll just make a resolution to never buy more than enough for that night. Time to get off of this hamster wheel though, don't you think?
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Old 06-05-2013, 02:19 AM
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Maybe you just need to look at alcohol more as the actual drug it is and it's toxic effects rather than why you drink.

Think about the fact you may simply drink cus you are addicted. end of.
Then think about the damage it does to your body. Read read read about it.... ends up scaring the hell out of you! Read about the brain damage it can cause, if you don't have mental health problems you do increase your chances of dementia and other problems.

Then maybe eat more bacon.
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Old 06-05-2013, 02:38 AM
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Good Morning
I fell somewhere in between perfect life and depression. Alcohol leeched into me when i ended a LTR with his own gambling addiction issues and i was watching my mother die....i still remember that awful time, but i saw light at the end of the tunnel....life still throws some whammys at me, (work issues have been going on for18 months with a huge merger, i work in state govt). But i find i am much more flexible and a whole lot calmer and logical when i am sober...the 2 years i have put into recovering my life are worth it.
I've changed my priorities, been forgiven by family, been helpful to them and my brother is no longer carrying my responsibilities...i came full circle to repair a 5 year rift with my adult daughter (who comes with her own full complete set of issues that need tissues).
I made a lot of slips, minibinges when i first decided to stop booze....also the sick day thing was used....but in your own mind you know the booze is keeping you trapped in this awful holding pattern, you are circling the drain...just because you can bounce back now, does not guarantee you will always do so.
You might wake up dead...(like the first Mr.Fandy...found by his mama dead in bed age 54).
Nons...it will come to you..be cauteous and remember how awful you feel.
Mag, welcome...
Hope you both have a great day too.

I am loving the precooked defatted bacon with cream cheese and sliced cumcumbers on 8 grain toast....how healthy is that?
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Old 06-05-2013, 02:58 AM
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I know people with several millions , i know people with not very much . The fight is the same , a fraternal bond .

Externally , materialy my life as a non-drinker might look the same , the work has gone on inside my head , changing and challenging my experience and perception .

For me 125 IQ and a quick brain that could think it's way round a corkscrew isn't always an advantage in staying sober .
Learning how to turn off , let go of all the big "stuff" was quite important , take time over the small pleasures , get out of thinking my way through life , the future , the past , and into observing myself and experiencing it as it's served up , fresh .

Thinking about the decision i'm making now and enjoying now is how i maintain my sobriety .. all the rest is speculation seen through the warped lens of our own memories and notions .

Stay strong , nice to have you back .

M
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Old 06-05-2013, 04:20 AM
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Originally Posted by Nonsensical View Post
I don't have any reason to drink, so I don't know what to work on when I stop. Does that actually make it more difficult? It seems absurd on the face of it, but I don't know any more.
Nons my story is similar -- there was no big reason to make me drink but a too quick, never-stopping mind liked the oblivion. At the moment I am on the run-up to 100 days and I think I am now understanding 'what to work on when [I] stop' and I think I'm doing it.

I hate to use the word as it's so hackneyed at the moment but what I've found is that I'm mindful and thinking outside my concerns. I do what I have to do for myself -- eat well, exercise, deep breathing then I am concentrating thoroughly on my family, my household, my work, my volunteer work. I'm working on (here's another hackneyed word) a better version of my life. By removing alcohol I'm able to fill my life with what I am already committed to. I can do things well and thoroughly and make room for more. I can go ahead with my life because I've taken off the shackles and I'm not looking back at them.

That's there for you too: you can work on your life, unshackled.

Alcoholism really made me insular, sobriety frees my mind and opens it so I can work on what's here now and what's possible.
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Old 06-05-2013, 04:41 AM
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You have been so blessed with a wonderful family and job. You have accomplished a lot and are very fortunate, but please remember, structures built on a deck of cards can crumble with one slip.

Not trying to be mean, but what I am trying to say is that alcohol has a sneaky way of creeping up on us and will eventually take all the happiness and goodness out of our lives. You might have it all today, but you could lose it all tomorrow.

Please continue to fight this battle everyday.
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Old 06-05-2013, 05:13 AM
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My suggestion, if your mind races and you drink to slow it down, is to find healthy ways to relax. Meditation can be learned and it's a great way to slow down your mind and relax your body.

I'm glad you're continuing to work on your recovery.
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Old 06-05-2013, 05:22 AM
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I was just going to address what Anna wrote. You posted you drink because your "mind races a bit". Give that some thought. What might help your mind slow down other than drinking? It's difficult to find alternatives at first, but so worth it. For me, I changed my routines, took walks, ran errands etc......anything to get through the time my mind was racing. You can and will do it....keep trying
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Old 06-05-2013, 05:24 AM
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Your story sounds a lot like mine , nonsensical. On paper, it would sound and read like I have everything I could possibly want and need ( and I do), and therefore would seemingly have no real reason to drink....But even though I drank all my adult life, my alcoholic drinking started when I stopped sleeping. I drank to calm down and to simply sleep. And the rest is history. I have to ditto pretty much everything Mecanix said..... " the fight is the same". It doesn't matter if we have " everything we want" if we are too drunk to appreciate and absorb it. When we are drinking we have nothing.
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Old 06-05-2013, 05:42 AM
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Sometimes we find it's not that we are not comfortable with our lives (spouses, job, finances) it's that we are not comfortable in our own skin. So we seek to self medicate, escape, etc.

We have all the outer earmarks of happiness and success but inside something is missing or not right.

I discovered what that something was, and how I could address it through spiritual and 12 step programs. There are other means as well.

Ha ha, now my outside situation is pretty crazy, but my inside situation is pretty OK, and I haven't relapsed for a long time. Go figure!
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Old 06-05-2013, 05:54 AM
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Originally Posted by Nonsensical View Post
I don't have any reason to drink, so I don't know what to work on when I stop.
Work on not picking up that first drink, then the "reason" is immaterial.
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Old 06-05-2013, 06:25 AM
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What are the percentages in AA membership or any program , percent wealthy = , percent poor = . I take offense to why you would even mention your financial situation. I'm a poor drug addict , sure it's depressing , but it's the hand I was dealt. I eat jumbo , you eat bacon. Because of my addiction , it's this way . It's getting better. Having a hard time hitting send but here goes
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Old 06-05-2013, 06:34 AM
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Originally Posted by trikyriky View Post
I take offense to why you would even mention your financial situation.
No offense intended. Financial difficulties are often associated with stress and distress. I just wanted to point out that I lack those potential triggers. It was part of a longer littany as to why I have no apparent excuses to drink.
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Old 06-05-2013, 06:42 AM
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I wish you the best in your journey , try not to pick up that next drink. You can do this my friend
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Old 06-05-2013, 06:49 AM
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Originally Posted by Nonsensical View Post
I went to bed early last night. I slept fairly well, although I had the sweats so bad I thought I might have wet the bed when I first woke up. My body still rejecting the liquor, I suppose.

I am anxious today. I don't want to go back to work. I took two sick days. The well-wishers will ask after me, and I will have to lie. Not looking forward to that.

I also still do not understand how I lost my resolve to stay sober, and that concerns me. I do not want to repeat that meltdown, and if I don't understand it I don't know how to fix it or prevent it from happening again.

I have thought for months that it should be easier for me to defeat my addiction than it is for most of my fellow alcohol addicts here. Many of you drink to self-medicate for depression, anxiety, horrific personal traumas, or other actual medical conditions. I don't have any of that. I just feel like my mind races a bit and alcohol slows it down. I like that feeling. I drink so much that I rapidly pass through soothing to oblivion, now, but that's why I'm here.

So many of my fellows here get sober and then start their real work of feeling better without alcohol in their lives. I don't have that to do. My life is pretty darn close to everything I ever wanted. I hope that I don't sound douchey by saying that, but it's true. I have a beautiful wife and children. Everyone is healthy. By any reasonable measure I am wealthy. I have a lucrative job and am highly thought of by my colleagues.

I don't have any reason to drink, so I don't know what to work on when I stop. Does that actually make it more difficult? It seems absurd on the face of it, but I don't know any more.

Now that I've written it all out, I can also see that it doesn't matter. Whether my journey is harder or easier than the next guy's is immaterial. It's my journey - the one God/the Universe assigned to me. I have to make it. No one else can.

I'm glad I don't have to make it alone.

Good morning, Sober Friends. Let's do this.

Alcohol is funny that way, it doesnt care how much money you make, your gender, your social status, or anything like that. It can effect anyone. Its an addiction that can strike anyone, anytime. Trust me, I have seen all kinds of people caught up in the cycle of alcoholism.
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Old 06-05-2013, 07:53 AM
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Drinking becomes a recognised problem when we have every intention to quit and find ourselves drunk again and again. The existing external circumstances of our present lives is always secondary to how the internal realities within our respective selves are lived and experienced.

When we continue to drink after promising to ourselves we have quit, then we are indeed self-medicating ourselves. Self-medicating ourselves does not require scientific/medical diagnoses of conditions, traumas, syndromes, etc.. -- it simply requires us to want to "feel and think and act" as we selfishly want. We become important to ourselves in a selfish fashion, and we nourish that selfishness more easily and with more intense self-gratification while drinking. Drinking becomes a highly desired reward in and of itself no matter even when drinking has realised clearly destructive consequences for being drunk. Selfishness slowly becomes the tyrannical master of the enslaved drinker.

It matters not if anyone experiences that selfishness as "good and/or bad" or as "right and/or wrong" or as "living or dying" -- what is important is that selfishness more and more continues to take over a drinkers life and as is well known, drinkers can literally drink themselves into horrific lifetime consequences all the while still making promises to quit drinking.

I think it important to realise selfishness alone is enough of a "reason to drink" when attempting to make sense of for what reason does a drinker still drink after swearing drinking off.

Funny thing about money/wealth -- wealth can too bring its own set of stresses and distresses. As well, being wealthy implies being happy with such a life, and this is not always so, since money of course does not secure happiness. In fact, unhappiness is often more keenly felt for those with wealth then those without. I speak from personal experience of having been extremely poor and now being wealthy. Whatever health, marriage, or family circumstances also do not keep a person to be sober or drunk either...

External circumstances can be allowed to affect us to the point of drunkenness or sobriety of course, but that allowance requires us to first empower it with our agreement to the conditional circumstances. We choose our personal justifications and they do not cannot exist without our ongoing acquiesce.

When we have all that life has to offer the common man or woman which defines the so-called "good life" and we still seek being drunk at the risk of losing all, we then indeed have a decidedly selfishness wanting which is personal to ourselves which is the greater challenge to meet and remedy then is what is demanded by quitting drinking.

In other words, neither sobriety or abstinence or drunkenness in themselves will ever be a remedy for selfishness. This is why quitting or drinking makes little difference with solving our life-long problems although with quitting we at least have chances, while with drinking, we have zero chances.

Hey Paul, you got it going on. Stay with it!

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Old 06-05-2013, 08:12 AM
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I don't have any reason to drink, so I don't know what to work on when I stop. Does that actually make it more difficult? It seems absurd on the face of it, but I don't know any more.
IMHO... no-one has or needs a reason to drink. Why drink? Why if things are perfect should one pick up a drink KNOWING it is going to make them feel terrible in the long run? Why if things are going terribly should one pick up a drink and make things a million times worse? You drink because....

You like getting drunk. That is also why I drank.

I too am in a "good spot" in my life financially, have a great boyfreind, good kid, a pretty "cushy" job... etc.... however, part of me REALLY liked getting drunk. You know that part I refer to.

You got this... you can do it... And from my experience, getting sober I found many issues to work on I didn't know I had...lol.
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Old 06-05-2013, 08:36 AM
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Just my opinion but maybe not everyone has something to work on. We do kind of live in a society of focusing on ourselves for improvement.

Maybe we need just need to be our best to help and to give to others who need it.

Maybe when I look at my life and see it is pretty wonderful maybe I need to understand that it may not feel that way to my loved ones in it. I should probably ask them what they are working on and see if there is anything I can do to help them.

I don't know that I can do that if I'm not at my best.

I'm just speaking from my experience that no matter how great I think my life is my older parents and mother with Alzheimer's isn't having so much fun. I can't help them if I'm not there to do it. That's what alcohol did to me. I wasn't there even when I was there.

Just me.
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Old 06-05-2013, 09:56 AM
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No one has a good reason to drink. Sure, people say they self-medicate for any number of reasons, but for all the people who use things like past abuse, depression, anxiety, financial trouble, relationship trouble, grief, loneliness, boredom, etc. as an excuse to remain addicted to a substance, there are an equal number of people with those same exact problems with the same or sometimes even greater severity who never become addicted to drugs or alcohol.

Two people can have the same horrific thing happen to them and respond completely differently.

Two people can also go through life and have nothing particularly traumatic happen to them, and they too can respond completely differently.

Hardship is not a precursor to addiction. Figuring out deep seated issues is not necessary for stopping either.

I think that you should arm yourself with a strategy for dealing with that moment when it comes. Expect that it will come and be ready, and you won't be blindsided.

ps you're not douchey xo
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