Imabuleva

Life may suck sober, but it sucks worse drunk.

least

Just because you're having a bad day doesn't mean you have a bad life. Bad days pass. You just have to wait it out. And yes, the foggy head feeling does get better with more sober time. Be patient.

Joe Nerv

That was great.

It's both interesting and common when we fall into a slump to think, "This is what it's like, and what it will be like for the rest of my life". We can so easily forget the times we were feeling positive and good.

Sobriety for me has been an everchanging palette of feelings and emotions. Some good, some not so good. They all pass however, and as long as I stay sober my life gets continually better. and if I pick up a drink, all bets are off.

sugarbear1

irritable, restless and discontent. whether I drink or not, although alcohol seems to arrest it for a while.....

I used those 12 steps and my life was saved from an alcoholic death....

Acheleus

I think (and this is an outside issue) that because I am quitting looking at porn and masturbation I am feeling bad, but I want more confidence socially and with women. So I am trying to not feel frustrated and alone. I am going to try and flirt with women sober. I am just reading a lot about how bad porn addiction is and I want to be the man I know I can be. Being sober really makes me look at myself, and I am not the grandiose illusion I thought I was.

shirlygirly

Have you tried AA? Every time I tried to stop drinking without it I was absolutely miserable. Finally I caved, showed up to a meeting, and gave into the program. I'm now nine months sober and I got my life back. No matter what you do, I guarantee you if you hang in there sober life will get so much better.

Mikie9

Go with this my friend. You are just bored right now. It is easy to entertain ourselves with meaningless activities, because it is easy. Drink, drugs, masturbation ALL fill us with endorphins that make us feel good. But we all come to the conclusion it isn't real contentment.

Acheleus

Yes I have a home group and a 30 day chip. Missed a meeting tonight. It bothers my dad that I go to meetings every night. He drinks every day. So yea, heading home back to my homegroup.

SteveJr

For me, I'll take any boring day sober ahead of blackouts, hangovers, jail, saying stupid things I later regret and damaging good relationships.

MythOfSisyphus

I know we say it all the time to the point that you're probably tired of hearing it, Ach, but it's true- it does get better. How long? That's the tricky part. I was an everyday-drinker; I drank around three bottles of wine daily. So my drinking was probably in the life-threatening range most/much of the time. When I quit even the first week was "better" because I was poisoning myself nightly.

At three months there was still a little bit of brain fog, by maybe nine months give or take I think the physical effects were pretty much gone. Behaviorally I'm probably not "normal" even now (but maybe I never was). But this probably doesn't have to do with booze and no one is "normal" at all. I still sometimes get bored or feel frustrated with my life, but that's just life! Everyone has bad days and $hit they have to deal with, and for the most part normal people don't deal by staying drunk for years at a time.

So I think you have a lot on your plate just with regular life. It's kind of a miracle to crawl out from under addiction but that miracle doesn't make everything magically better. I think we sometimes expect too much from sobriety, especially in the beginning. In a way it's like school. Think about it- when you first started college you didn't even have a clue about what you didn't know. After taking enough classes you begin to have an inkling of just how ignorant you were before, but you still aren't an expert. Life is like that.

Django

Thanks for that Kate i've just realized this the last few days.And now come to realize that all these bad feelings is because what drinking has done, not the fact i can't drink anymore.

Feel for everyone who is going through a rough time, i am as well and i have a lot of admiration that you have done 5 weeks. Don't let your AV get the better of you. All the best :-)

jade123

All I can contribute is what not to do. I was miserable when I first stopped drinking 20 years ago and ended up going back out after 12 years of abstinence. Here's what I did to make sure my sobriety did not last:

1. Don't go to meetings
2. Don't build a new life with healthy people... just ditch your old one and replace it with nothing, making sure you're lonely
3. Isolate, really making sure you're good and lonely and stuck with your own thoughts alone
4. Don't go for any kind of therapy (if you suspect you may need it)
5. Switch addictions. Eat. Spend.
6. Compare, don't relate.
7. Don't even attempt the steps.
8. Hide in the back of meetings, on the rare occasions you do go to any. Just go for the cookies.

That list was basically my idea of "sobriety", which wasn't anything of the sort and so I just stayed stuck and never grew.

This time I just started going back to meetings and have applied for a few volunteer programs to find out which one could be right for me.