For those of you who slipped over and over
 

what finally happened that made you able to be sober day after day for so long? As a person who has had so many failed attempts I truly want to know. Was there some sort of physical or psychic shift? Can you pinpoint anything?

I tried and failed over and over. I was near to giving up, but I was so damn sick and tired of always being sick and tired that I gave it one last try... and that was the one that worked. :)

If you are having trouble staying sober, keep trying. Never give up! :hug:

Aa.

well... for me it was simply finally giving up. Reaching a point where to continue the madness of trying over and over again to allow drinking to be part of my life was just too damn exhausting. Trying and failing, trying and failing, finally getting to the point that I had to admit to myself - finally - it wasn't going to work.

Having the benefit of several attempts where there were at least good stretches of sobriety. Seeing the differences sobriety brought. Beginning to embrace the good things about it. It was a psychic shift I think - but I'm a stubborn, slow-learning guy I suppose. So, it took a while. It was a protracted psychic shift of incremental changes.

It was watching the improvements in my health from sobriety.... getting in the best shape of my life... then ruining it and wanting it back. It was being miserable time and time again. It was hiding my problem from those I cared about, but then having it revealed and having to take ownership of that. It was rejecting AA and then realizing what a powerful tool it was. It was giving up the illusion of control. It was becoming more and more willing to ask for help from whatever power that thing I call "Spirit" or "The Universe" or sometimes "God" may actually be. It was being grateful. It was being open to guidance and signs. It was valuing health and exercise and life over being hazed out, phazed out, drunk and / or hungover too many times to count.

It was all of it, and finally reaching my point of readiness and acceptance.

it was coming to truly value sobriety and my life over booze and the darkness it brings.

I think the switch was from I NEED to be sober to I WANT to be Sober.

How many threads are started with the statement how will this affect my social life, life will be boring or can I moderate, these statements are from the category of knowing you NEED to stop drinking but not really WANTING to stop.

It's a chore and a battle to do anything in life when you don't really WANT to do it, focusing on the benefits, being exciting to have a new Sober life and becoming happy to get rid of the old life I think is a very important part of recovery.

Shifting my mindset to looking forward to and wanting to do it was key for me!! :)

For me, my relapses all happened because I was not one hundred percent committed. For me, when I made the decision that alcohol was never an option for me, ever, my mind shifted. It was quite wonderful because my mind began to formulate different ways to deal with life, rather than using alcohol. Commit to it, and it will work.

Sure, when I stopped going to AA I was drinking in my former manner in short order.
With all my best intentions, I couldn't stop on my own.
I slipped hundreds of times. Pouring the booze down the drain, solemn oaths and horrible hangovers. I'd stay sober until I felt better and do it all again.

What stopped me was a mild withdrwal. I still drank after that, but with what I learned in AA, when you have a belly full of beer and headful of AA, I started to think about it.
I decided to remember all the horrors alcohol had wrought on my life. Think about it every day.
I Come here and read from newcomers what it's like out there. And sober memebers who have found a way out.

This has been working for over three years and I'm forever indebted to AA and the people here.

I was the queen of slips. I should of had a tiara. Granted, it would have been all banged up and missing rhinestones and sideways on my head... :)

I did have a psychic shift of sorts. But I continued to drink for a few years after that. I thought I need to find just the right formulation of red to white to grape to grain. A science experiment if you will.

I would get so frustrated and lament and complain to DH how "Gosh, I didn't even DRINK THAT MUCH last night and I feel like hell on wheels." Every drink I took, with every slip, made my life a living hell on earth.

Didn't know at the time I had subtly (and without my permission) shifted from hangovers to withdrawals.

For me, what finally made it stick, was I had become borderline suicidal. The alcohol had taken such a toll on my brain that I was starting to have psychotic episodes. And I wanted out of the pain. And ending it was becoming more and more appealing.

It owned me.

So after getting on my knees and begging for mercy, I knew I had to make a radical change.

There was no more "if" or "when".

IT WAS *NOW* or *NEVER*.

Mercy and grace working overtime in my favor. Because I begged for it.

I finally gave up for good when I felt like I was going mentally insane. I had such terrible anxiety and I was hungover everyday. Actually I wasn't having ANY fun drinking anymore. What really has always been at the back of my mind was my mother. My mom has been an alcoholic my entire life (she still drinks). But I used to beg her to stop when I was a kid. I never felt safe in my own home when I was a child. Well now, I have a toddler and being a stay at home I ended up taking drinking to a whole new level. I knew that I would never put my son through what I went through as a child so I decided that was it. But it wasn't just for him, ultimately it was because everything in my life was failing because I was a drunk. My mind, my health, my hygene, my relationships, happiness- EVERYTHING. I have only been sober for a few months now but I have no intention of going back. Now I keep thinking of all the great things I want to do and to see how far I can take my life now.

I was really scared at first because drinking had been so far immersed in my daily life that I wasn't sure how things were going to go. So far it's had it's ups and downs but life is nothing like the life I was leading before. Now it's really improving. I was so terrified all of the time that I basically had a relationship with google's symptoms because I was convinced I had given myself some terrible disease for being so toxic for so long.

Last September I finally lost it after yet another night of heavy drinking when I was away at a cottage with family and friends and told my husband I felt suicidal and I couldn't go on this way. He thought I was being dramatic. FINALLY after a few months of trying to cut back I finally weened myself off alcohol.

I am always around alcohol (my husband still drinks) and my family and friends all drink. I think once I realized it just wasn't an option for me anymore there is no temptation to ruin all of the good things happening now. I love the idea that there is nothing holding me back anymore. I feel lucky that it got as bad as it did because it forced me to quit. In the end it was either I drink and end up dying- or choose to live.

This

All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals-usually brief-were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.

From more about alcoholism from the big of Alcoholics Anonymous .

I could have written all of this.

Not long ago in my drunken-ness...one of few where I wasn't blacked out.... I can remember hearing myself beg my boyfriend to help me die. He knows people...I told him to help me where no one would know. Pathetic, but I was so depressed and I couldn't stop how I was feeling.

I could have written it, too. :(

I think it was the fifth time I was arrested that I knew I had a very serious problem. Here I was in my 30's and waking up in jail with other drunks/criminals. During this time, I also made 3 trips to the ER. All this occurred within a 3 yr period before which I had never been arrested or even seen what an ER looks like.

I drank while I was in AA for almost 2 years. There were times when I thought it was pointless to keep on going.

In answer to the question, yes, definitely, I had a MAJOR psychic shift. But it did not happen like a flash of light or in a dramatic moment. My shift was slow and gradual. It built up as I made the personal development recommended by the step work in AA and by independent spiritual study outside of the AA program.

I guess if I could describe a pivotal moment it would be this one:
one day, like thousands of other days, I wanted to have a drink as a cure for panic and anxiety. But I finally believed that I could live with that crappy 20 minutes
of panic and anxiety, I could actually live with it. So many people had mentioned just that: the feelings will pass.
I could survive, I didn't have to run away from the feelings. And I experienced that the feelings did pass, after about 20 minutes. And I didn't die from my feelings.

The next time I had that feeling for a drink again, I reminded myself that I could make it, I did it once, I could do it again. It's been one day at a time, and the days added up to weeks, then months, then years.

I quit because of a sudden mental shift in the way I saw my drinking. I was horribly depressed but I still saw my drinking as not that big of a deal. I realized that this was really happening. I was actually about to surrender to this addiction and let it run me.

Yup this was me. I was mentally and physically exhausted of being sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Something just clicked in my brain and I realized that in order to stop this cycle I had to change ME.

At that point I was willing to do ANYTHING to stay sober. Counselling, daytox, AA, absolutely anything and with an open mind. I have so gone out of my comfort zone.

I have to put as much effort into staying sober as I did into staying drunk. And I put a lot of effort into staying drunk. It was exhausting! All the things I wasn't willing to do in the past I turned it around and asked myself "if I would have had to do this to get my booze would I have done it?" and the answer was always yes. If I am willing to do it for the booze I have to be willing to do it to stay sober. That is basically what sealed the deal for me.

Just put a little buzz on, it'll be fun, it said.

I woke up at about 10:30 pm after drinking most of the day and passing out at about 6. Everyone else had gone to bed. I remembered arguing about handing over my keys. I remembered telling my daughter to mind her own business, I was fine. The house was quiet. I had 9 beers left. I hated what I had done. I hated myself. I hated those beers. I cried, and drank them anyway.

Just put a little buzz on, it'll be fun, it said. Only the sickest sadist would call that fun. This was total misery.

The liar living in my head can never fool me again.

I woke up from a nap at 2pm, after sleeping off yet another hangover. I remember sitting in bed with the shades drawn down in the middle of the day. I could hear people in my house (we were under construction). There I was on a sunny day, locked away in my bedroom. My days had become managing hangovers, procuring more liquor and trying to maintain some semblance of being a wife and mother. For a while I had been seeing myself as if from above, a bad made for tv movie, but all of a sudden that day it hit me. I realized that there wasn't going to be a seismic movement involving trumpets and clouds…no one could do this for me. I had changed, I had gotten used to evading, canceling, disappointing, delegating….but this wasn't something I could hire someone to do for me. I didn't know what sobriety would bring but I knew that the bleakness of sitting in bed in a dark room on a sunny day was as crushing as sitting in a drunk tank.

I called an addiction specialist and within a few weeks I was on a plane to rehab. For me, it was surreal, that whole experience was like being water boarded. Going shopping because I was going someplace really hot and I had gained weight from drinking. Being alone in a dressing room buying godawful depressing clothes for rehab. Standing in line paying for those clothes. It was hard for me to believe that I had let it get to that. I had had big jobs, with suits and boardrooms…and now I was buying pants with elastic waistbands…for rehab. Sitting on 2 planes and walking into the rehab lockdown unit, having my luggage searched, not having razors or tweezers or even mirrors….

But, I will never regret going to rehab, it probably saved my life, my marriage and my ability to be a good mother. There was a self flagellation about it, it was hard at age 48 to go to a strange place voluntarily and relinquish all control. Strangely, every night now when I go to sleep, I appreciate the fact that I am in my bed, with familiar noises and that if I want to pluck my eyebrows in the middle of the night I have tweezers and a mirror. Those 30 days I will always count as among the most important in my life because I saw both people I wanted to be and people that scared me because they didn't understand the seriousness of what we are dealing with… Giving up drinking is such a small part of it, for me it really has been about self awareness of why I had gotten used to blurred edges.

Getting sober feels like restoring an old house. The bones are good, they were just covered with cobwebs, and each day brings more and more revelations to light. I now make a point to put the shades in my bedroom up each morning, it is a little reminder of where I am at now compared to the dark days. There is nothing inside a bottle that is going to bring the sunshine in anymore for me, those days are behind me.

I felt that if I continued drinking at my current rate of a bottle a night I would cross a line somewhere and start drinking in the morning, or hiding it. That wasn't my picture of myself.
The actual final motivation was that my DIL was trying to quit smoking, and I've always been very judgmental of smokers. It occurred to me that if I was going to judge others for smoking I'd better be able to give up something I loved. So I did. (It took my DIL another 2 years to stop smoking).
Short story long - I already knew it was bad for me, but I finally found a motivation that worked.

Raising my hand, I was the slip Queen too, at one point, I thought I was working on a Guinness book of records, that's how nuts it was. Too many years WASTED, decades.

Not today 2B, I gave up the fight. :truce It's taken more than enough from me. Not anymore. You can give up the fight too :)

Pinpoint? Guess, I was so damn tired of self loathing myself. A huge shift has happened with me, I wish I could explain it to you.

Are you working on changes? I know you're putting a big effort into AA, bonus for you. That's half the battle using a program.

You're doing great, talking things out.