suncatcher

Hi Raider, I appreciate your honesty. I cannot speak from a former alcoholic point of view but I enjoy drinking once in a while. I used to drink daily with my XABF. That was probably not healthy for him or myself but I did it partly to feel close to him and partly to tolerate him? I admit I still go see him and have a few beers with him. Hey alcoholics are some fun, charming folks! He is quiet, withdrawn and irritable when he is sober. I don't know where I am going with this but I remember you helping me with some of your posts a while back and I wanted to thank you. I don't think everyone feels wonderful when they get sober, at least not at first. I think I would miss it if I had to stop altogether. Probably more so if I drank heavily for a long time.

EndGameNYC

I might be more concerned if you didn't miss things about drinking after seven weeks. At seven weeks, I was still plotting about how I'd resume my drinking, once I got back on my feet again. Time was a vital ingredient in my healing. Time, and a commitment to not drink no matter what. And it stayed that way for months. As has been said, remember...the tortoise won the race.

In the end, drinking only brought heartache into my life, the kind you never get over. The kind that only heals with time and lots of work at living a better life, that is only possible with sobriety. The kind that never completely melted away, but that I learned to live with in a sober life.

I've experienced heartbreak during my many years sober as well, but it never killed me, not the way it did while I was drinking. And, much to my surprise, working through it always brought me to a much better place, something that would never have happened had I not been sober. None of this was earth-shattering, but my world was in tatters much too much from my drinking, and I needed to learn how to be still, to appreciate the silence in my mind.

For me, it wasn't so much about all the wonderful things that I did or that happened by virtue of my being sober (and there have been many) as it was about the opportunity for a more mature appreciation of what life could be for me. As Dee likes to say, I was able to build a life for myself that I didn't want or need to run away from.

My own variation on an old saying: Alcoholism shouts; sobriety whispers.

MythOfSisyphus

In the movie Her Theodore Twombly (played by Joaquin Phoenix) confides to his computer Samantha that he's afraid that he's "already felt everything I'm going to- that from here on out it will just be lesser versions of things I've already felt". That really floored me! I walked out of the theater at the end of the movie, but instead of going home I just drove around for awhile. The movie really affected me, and part of it was that line.

It's really scary when you first quit drinking to think that you'll never feel that rush/high/euphoria that you got from drinking...that the rest of your life might just be watching the months fall of the calendar until you die.

Well, thankfully that's not how it goes. Strip away the being drunk and you just have life. It really is two different, unrelated issue. Drinking- FULL.STOP. Living- FULL.STOP. The two are unrelated. The former can ruin the latter, but the latter has to be tackled on its own terms.

I guess that most of us let the bottle become our whole life. A little bit of this go get me up, a little bit of that to bring me down. It can be pretty baffling to sober up and realize that maybe you haven't done anything to build up a real life. But honestly, you can't blame sobriety for that- you gotta blame drinking. Sobriety is just the innocent child that points out that the Emperor is naked.

I really wish I could tell you there was a shortcut, Raider. I don't think there is, or if there is I haven't found one. I'm in the same boat; some days are pretty great, some are pretty lousy. Often within the same day! Walking out the door I was in a pretty sour mood, but on the way back I marvelled at how much I really love being alive. Sometimes I wanna be like a bird, just sitting on a door sill watching the arc of the sun as it passes through the sky- to just be, to absorb one day of life fully. Other days I just wanna go back to bed.

Finally quitting drinking is like getting off a ship that's sinking. At first you're really glad you didn't go down with the ship and drown. But after you tread water for a few minutes you realize you're still in the middle of the ocean. And that sucks, but it's better than being in the boat on the bottom of the sea!

It probably gets annoying to hear us keep saying this, but please let me say it once more: It gets better! Or at least it can be better. It will take some work to make it so. I know it's hard to be patient but at least remember you're not on the ocean floor in a busted up boat!

mecanix

I think a depression caused by alcohol didn't go away until after about 6 months of total abstinence ,
7 weeks was ok , but 7 months blows the sock off it … You and i both know what another 4 months of drinking would be like, Yer ?
Neither of us know what 4 months of sobriety will bring for you , there is only one way to find out …
Stay sober , work your program like you life depends on it (it does)

budha said all in life is death , pain and destruction accepting this sets you free , Jesus had to bare his cross to golgotha .
My "burden" of staying sober is a small one and it gives me the freedom to change things and deal with stuff in my life , drinking is a way of not dealing with anything .

Accept your pain , it inspires us to change and grow and work at making life better . Pain and hardship means i'm living it fully and not a drunken zombie trying to kill his feelings , walking dead .

Keep on Raider

Bestwishes, m

Leshar

To MythofSisyphus,

Thank you for an absolutely brilliant post! Beautifully put!

Holli

I completely agree. In fact, the whole thread has been outstanding to read.

GreenEggsAndHam

I agree with Holli and want to thank everyone for the thoughtful and articulate posts. Early sobriety can be confusing and even frightening at times and it's nice to know I'm/we are not alone in our feelings.

KateL

The missing does fade. xxxxx

SoberLeigh

Zip-lining really sounds like a lot of fun AND it also sounds like something where my extra eight thumbs wouldn't get in the way.

SoberLeigh

Ditto; thanks

AND

Thanks, Raider, for the self-realization that prompted you to create this post - just further evidence that you/we will succeed in this journey and find the contentment and joy we all desperately seek.

Kris47

We're all walking with you today.

How ya doing, feeling?

NoelleR

Well, Raider, you won't hear me say that (pssssst; it's a lie). There's a circuit speaker from CA who I really like----Patty O, and she says it best.......: When I don't drink, I don't get drunk, and my life gets..............BETTER!!

(o:
NoelleR

IWillWin

I appreciate this thread - very fitting for me right now. I do NOT miss alcohol, I miss the fun times I had while I was drinking before I crossed the invisible line. Listen, I had some if the best times of my life before alcohol took me down and I'd be lying if I said I don't wish for those days.

I'm learning to love and live sober. Slowly...very slowly, I'm making baby steps if progress. I don't ever want to go back to the life I wound up in but I sure wish I had a time machine. Sigh.

That said, nothing changes if nothing changes. I accept my choice and will solider on knowing that there is a happy and fun life in my future. Alcohol may have won the battle but I will win the war.

Raider

Not long ago, I posted that I don't always put stuff out here that may harm or deter new folks from seeking sobriety. SR said I need to put it out anyway. So here I did. And glad I did so. Thank you all so much for the great responses. I have read and re-read. It is nice to know my feelings aren't out of the ballpark and that others feel it also. I don't know if I will never drink again...but I can assure myself I will not drink today.

As for my husband giving up the drink...we talk about it from time to time. He says he misses it but can live without it. That he feels so good in the morning, it's not worth it to him to pick up. Pffffffft. So much for the non-alcoholic. I am great full he doesn't drink.

Again thanks. Love ya' bunches! Saving my naked twerk for the 2 month mark next Tues. woooooooohooooooooooo!!!!!!!!

AuntieSoso

Raider, I really don't have any words of wisdom to offer you. But I wanted to let you know how I see you in this forum. I've only been here a short time, but even the first time I saw one of your posts, I could tell that you are a leader, a supporter, a friend, and a woman of wisdom. You have a lot of support here from others whom you've helped along their paths. I'm sure a lot of people want to return the favor.

Best to you.

songthread

Raider,

Great to see your post just now! Makes my day to know that you're okay and that you won't be drinking today.

I relate to a lot of what you say in your original post. Sure I miss it sometimes because I stupefied myself for years with it. Any joy and fun in drinking always fleeted away, for years. I have found joy since becoming sober but it's definitely not always rosy all of the time.

Regarding joy: will a buzz or drinking really bring me or anyone else true, lasting joy? Does alcohol cause joy? We all know the answer to those questions….

I always love to read your words on this forum. Thank you for this! All of the encouragement and sharing you have done here has helped me out, and I bet a lot of others, too. Peace to you.

Raider

I am humbled..... Thank you very much.....

MemphisBlues

Post away, Raider.

I come to SR daily to remember where I was, and in a somewhat evil, vicarious way, to view the struggle, the fight, the gut-wrenching angst we were all once in as we clawed our way out of the pit of active addiction. It reaffirms how far I have come, or at least it's a sharp slap in the face to remind me how far backwards I can go.

And I've snuck this in a couple of posts in the Newcomers forum about early recovery: My. First. Year. Sucked.

A year of wallowing in despair, dealing with the physical horror of protracted withdrawal from a decade run on benzos and booze, a decade ending with a few years on a dosage of Klonopin that would sedate a horse. I've found only one other SR player who could relate to my benzo tale: I was prescribed 20 milligrams of Klonopin a day, and readily added five to 10 milligrams here and there to wash down with beer on a routine basis. Twenty milligrams of Klonopin equals 400 milligrams of Valium, for those who may or may not relate, and the only SR member who surpassed that dosage hasn't posted here in years (Where are you, Peter G?) and makes me worry he may not have climbed out alive.

The mental anguish was indescribable, but I'll try: I went cold turkey from benzos and booze. After being released from the hospital after a 10 day stay, three of those unconscious in ICU n four-point restraints, I was deposited in my high-rise condo in a Southeast Asian city, a pristine, luxurious, modern alcove surrounded my jungle green mountains, looking out from my 25th floor window at an expanse of one of the most densely populated cities in the world, watching normal people living normal lives with normal smiles go about their day. The square mile of opulence I lived in was surrounded by a packed urban landscape of grime and poverty you can only imagine; I was a very damaged stranger in a very strange land. In my insulated cocoon all I could contemplate for hours at a time was the five or six moves it would take to climb over my balcony rail and plunge head first towards the cement surrounding a lavishly landscaped olympic-sized pool.

That was me for a year. And I would love to tell you that it rained ice cream, rainbows, pink unicorns and unending ograsms beginning on day 366, but it didn't. But I relished in one fact, clinged to the realization that each day or pain and despair was worth it because drinking a beer or smoking a joint or taking a benzo meant one of two possible paths: I would either have to endure that one year of hell again or I would never get sober and die the horrid death of an alcoholic or a drug addict or the combined hell of both.

I didn't experience a shred of laughter, any kind of joy, not one itch of physical pleasure. At year two a good day was scoring a pack of cigarettes and being able to walk down the mile or so of an open-air urban mall with its fountains and street performers and top-tier European and American retailers while beautiful smiling families pushed $500 strollers stuffed with perfect brown Asian babies. It took every fiber of strength I had to not drop to my knees in utter despair.

To garner a shred of gratitude for my situation I had to venture out of my protected environs into the roar and diesel fumes of the city, where naked children played in the street with filthy chickens and dirty dogs among a sea of traffic of pedal and motorized tricycles. Everywhere I looked I saw a happiness and contentment I couldn't fathom. A pack of Marlboros cost a buck and a fifth of rum cost a buck and a half. Each day I wanted nothing more than to score a bucket of ice (10 cents) and $1.50 of rum and ease the quaking pain inside me while watching this swirling urban madness around me. I could kill myself for $10 if I wanted to. I could taste the iced rum and inhale a cheap Marlboro along with the diesel fumes and try to contemplate how this mass of humanity could cope with their lives and I couldn't handle mine.

Cue the pity pot music here.

I couldn't grasp how this brown nmass of humanity, skirting about in their shorts and 50-cent flip flops, could happily spend their day hustling about to earn a dollar to buy a kilo of rice and half a chicken to feed a family of six living in a concrete-block house with a tin roof while I couldn't drag my ass out of the morass. All I could think of was my losses: Career, homes, cars, not to mention family and friends. Aside from a guaranteed monthly direct deposit that allowed me to live a blessed life in this foreign country, my material life consisted of a few hundred books, a laptop and clothes that fit in a backpack and two suitcases.

For some of us sobriety is just going to suck, and the suckage can be overwhelmingly intense, but if I ever had a moment of clarity it was when I saw a row of bottles of rum shining like jewels on the shelves of a open air street stall, and then looked across the narrow street at the withered, dirt-encrusted body of a half-naked man whose face could be that of someone 30 or 80, lying in road scum, open sores running up and down both legs, holding out a black, skeletal arm with open palmed hand as hundreds of people walked by ignoring him. I walked over and put the equivalent coins of $5 in his filthy hand -- enough money to get drunk twice in this crap hole -- and his toothless smile nearly destroyed me.

Everything is relative. Everything is subjective. All of life boils down to perspective, and sometimes you have to look deeply into a dank dark hole at the pitiful plight of someone else to realize how blessed you really are.

Raider, you want to drink at seven weeks after several months of struggle, including a stint in rehab and a couple of relapses. I've been sober for 1,259 days and there isn't a day go by when the thought of the fake but numbing bliss being drunk or stoned would provide doesn't rear it's head.

Find your own point of no return, whether it's that drunken, sobbing call to aged parents in Alaska, or the day you woke up in rehab, or that last nauseating hangover wake up, and wallow in that the next time that siren song of drink starts playing in the back of your head. Or just read here and vicariously experience the bottom so many of us hit and keep diving back into again and again and realize you may not have reached how low you can possibly go.

Find your own turning point and pivot. For me it was that choice at over a year sober opting to plunk $5 bucks in a filthy hand instead of buying a pack of smokes, a bucket of ice and two fifths or rum. I have to reach my turning point every single day. Sometime today I'll walk outside into this cool California day and look up at the receding snow on a nearby mountain and the first thought will be of an ice-cold beer and the skunk smell of a well-rolled joint. And if it wasn't for a toothless smile I saw in a place 10,000 miles away two years ago, I'd cave.

Pivot, Raider, pivot.

NoelleR

Guess I'm gonna have to try again. My previous post lost it's last sentence..........: Patty O, and she says it best.......: When I don't drink, I don't get drunk, and my life gets..............BETTER!! Oh NOT true...........

The truth is.......: When I don't drink, I don't get drunk, and my life gets..............DIFFERENT!!

Raider

Memphis thank you. All of you, thanks.