Fighting Yourself
 

Do you find that in many ways one of your hardest battles involves fighting yourself? The fight within? The more rational part of your brain fighting for control against the more primitive part, the AV, which, in the early stages of recovery, seeks to have its way. And, even after extensive sobriety, it's still there, waiting to trip you up in so many ways.
Is this so with you? It is with me. What are your thoughts on this?

W.

Thanks for this post today, wpainterw. I can completely relate and sometimes I think it's going to drive me insane. And I know it has kept me out. Even as I write this, I hear that incessant nagging voice saying 'you're not really alcoholic...'. BUT today, I choose to change. I can't go on like this. I am beat. And reading your post shows me there is someone else who thinks the way I do. And we're both on a Soberrecovery forum. So what are the odds that the voice that wants us back out there is the right one? Thanks very much for your post, it really helped me to read that this morning.

I am with you here, WpainterW.

My major battle is within. And it's not just battle, it's all out war.

But for me it's my rational mind that is fighting against me, providing me with thousands of excuses why I can't do something, appealing to "common sense" and past experience, dogmas and conventionalism, playing cards of guilt and perfectionism.

I am learning to trust more my self now. It's hard, but that's what I finally got chance to do when got sober.

William, i thank you for this. Yes, it is there, waiting for the moments of weakness that we as humans will always have. For 30 yrs it has overtaken me. The battle within is the ultimate test. Overcoming it has been my continuous, repeated downfall. Like a golfer, we are playing against ourselves; its a mental, yet deeply spiritual, realm we play in. I know you know this, and I thank you for sharing. It means a lot to a person like me to be able to converse about this with a person of longstanding sobriety such as yourself.

Some days I look at it as a fight - a struggle - but only on days when I am exalting in my victory. After getting my butt kicked by my addiction for so long it feels good to sometimes think of myself as kicking back.

Most days, though, I am at peace with it. My AV IS, and life goes on. Just another emotion. I often feel like flinging poo at my moronic boss, seeing the hot girl naked, or eating the entire package of bacon. I don't act on those emotions, but I also don't go to war with them. They are, and life goes on.

:ring

The only time I find myself fighting myself is when I am trying to assert my will, can’t accept something or I am doing something I know is wrong but I am doing it anyway.

Then I am again, restless, irritable and discontent.

When I get these feeling today, I know that I have to look at the situation and the reason I feel this way. Most of the time I am trying to control something. Once I can identify that, I can stop whirling and go back to letting go.

In my early days of sobriety, yes, is was an all out battle. The AV usually won, too.
Man, this brings back memories of how hard it was to just stop.
The good news is, after over three years of sobriety, the voice has all but left.
I hope this isn't unique to me because I wish you all weren't struggling.
All I know is it got better for me, and I wish the same for everyone.

The longer I am sober, the less I feel that internal struggle. :)

I think most of our greatest struggles are with ourselves. Even the really biggies that we have to face (death of family members, serious illness) are mostly defined by how we deal with them. You can have two different people both facing the same kind of crisis but each will deal with it differently. So yeah, I think you're right- the main battles are with ourselves.

As you know, I am still recovering from the aftereffects of a bladder infection acquired in a hospital as a result of non invasive aortic valve replacement surgery.This has required the use of a catheter for several weeks and has deepened my depressive state. Poor food in these facilities has led to rapid weight loss. Often my spirits have been low and I could sense my AV crying out, not for booze but for things that infants like. Cookies, for example. I have often subsisted on a diet of cookies and fruit juice. with a bit of protein now and then.
Why the cookies? To placate the AV I thought. Although the days have long past when I would do this with booze, the AV still has to be dealt with and one way of doing this to give it cookies, ice cream, etc., as you would give a child. Thinking this over I suspect that this is why persons with long term sobriety often seem grossly overweight. Having given up drinking they may be using cookies, candy, etc. to placate their AVs. AVRT teaches us just to ignore out AV's. I wonder whether we can really do this. It is primitive and, like a dog or a little child, can hardly be ignored. It must be put on a leash, put in a dog crate if necessary. Controlled and carefully monitored by the more rational part of the brain.

W.

I did not place my alcoholism in a box and stick it on the back of a closet shelf.

I had to face it. I have to admit I am an alcoholic and then accept it. Once I could accept that I had this malady, this disease, this allergy, then I could learn to live without drinking. To live a sober life took work. I had to learn to deal with life a new way. Instead of going to the bottle to escape I had to learn to reach out and ask for help. Instead of reaching for a drink to drown the pain of the past I had to list the pain and resentments, see my part in them and then let them go for good. I have to continue to keep my side of the street clean so it does not get cluttered again with resentments, anger, fear and unresolved issues or situations. Those will eat away at me.

I had to believe that I was not running the show. I could not force or manipulate the world and the people in it to do what I wanted. I had to learn to live life on life’s terms. Accept what I was dealt rather than trying to change it or run from it. I also had to find the courage to change things that I could and recognize them. They do not come often and I also have to accept responsibility for my choices. We all have the right to choose but we are not immune to the results of those choices.

I live a sober life. I am happy, joyous and free. I am not peeking in a box checking to see if my alcoholism is still in there. I carry it with me always because I will always be an alcoholic. I do not ignore it, I have learned to live in spite of it.

My battle and frustration is "WHY CAN'T I DRINK LIKE EVERYONE ELSE"?? It kills me to know that there is something I can't handle. I usually can handle everything. Acceptance that I can't handle it is hard. But I HAVE to do it. I have no choice because if I don't stay sober I will die with the amount of alcohol my body progressively over the years has demanded.

I have a sports car with a high horsepower motor I built. As much as I'd like for it to be the most powerful car in town it never will be. There is always someone with more money to make theirs faster and more powerful. Just like there are people that will always be able to have that one drink and I cannot! I hate that. But it's the reality. Acceptance is a real bear to deal with. Every day I'm sober I look to comparisons and this is just one of them.

I couldn't agree with you more. I also experienced this same "inner turmoil" when I quit smoking. And even over a decade after quitting I will get a whiff of a cigar/cigarette and that "thought" will pop up ---its easier and easier however to laugh it off and replace it with the rational "really ??lol NO WAY" And I am assuming that alcohol will be the same way.
But I too am new to this and am just speaking from my experience.

It was good to read this thread just now.

I had a fight come up from nowhere today. My fights are rare and have changed now. They used to be the bratty, "why can't I drink like everyone else"....whereas now I have the deeper exploration of "why do I want to drink"?

What in me is not being met. Why aren't I valuing myself enough that I've even let the AV think it's an option.

I've moved past thinking I "need" or even "want" to drink....but that my AV pops it up as a potential coping option. Like, "hiiiii!, remember me!"

Reminds me of a girlfriend I had years ago before I got remarried. She ended up cheating on me and breaking my heart. I missed her badly for a couple years even after all the hurt she caused me. I realized that what I missed was the person she was...not the person who broke my heart. Just like I miss the way alcohol was kind to me in the beginning but now realize it slowly has tried to destroy me life. I don't miss her anymore...and I don't want to miss alcohol either. It was hard getting over her but I did. It will be hard leaving alcohol...but I will!

You can't control what your AV *thinks*. It's a reflexive impulse created in an area of the brain that doesn't process thoughts.

You CAN control what you do. Some Buddhist monks have calmly burned themselves to death. They hadn't trained themselves not to feel pain, they trained themselves not to react to it.

Keep on keeping on! :ring

Thanks Tim - I actually nearly described it as the temptation of an old lover when I posted. You are exactly right.


Yes, agree. But to clarify, that was the frustrating thing....that here I was having all this internal turmoil over something I consciously do not "want" to do. The fight itself annoyed me, if that makes sense?

There's a lot of insight and good stuff on this thread! The problem, as I see it, is that two parts of the brain, one primitive and the other rational, fight for control. Alcohol numbs the rational part and makes it vulnerable to the primitive part, which craves alcohol because of the body's having "adapted" its chemistry and physiology to create an alcohol based environment. Freud, now in large part discredited, sensed this in speaking of the ego and superego (rational) and the id (primitive). It's there and always will be there, with alcoholics and non alcoholics. It's just part of the territory.

W.

Very true, but only one of those two parts has the ability to pour alcohol in my face. I put him on a steady diet of positive thinking, self-improvement, and productivity and that primitive one is no match for it. :)

I agree. I call that "the monkey part" of me.:lmao The "higher" part of me is rational, considerate, liberal, charitable and kind. Ah, but the monkey part...It's anger, ego, envy- all the parts of us we sometimes dislike. I think we need the monkey part of us to survive. It's the essence of our drive to survive and overcome. Most of the time it's healthy but the problem is that it's very difficult to turn off. We don't need the monkey part all the time like we probably did 50,000 years ago.

The strongest part of my monkey brain is anger. If someone unexpectedly gets in my face of gets too close in an aggressive manner, even a friendly aggressive manner, the monkey part bares its fangs. That's another reason I'm glad I quit drinking. I was never a violent drunk by any means but that's probably partly due to the fact that I normally drank alone. As you say, alcohol anesthetizes the rational part and liberates the monkey part. It opens the door of the cage.