Serper2014

I know it's a provocative title. What I'm referring to is relapse-- it seems as though the less sober days I have, the easier it is to relapse. I really believed with all my heart a month ago that I would be celebrating 40 sober days tonight. I am not. It was my first real shot at recovery and each train of sober days since then has been shorter and shorter. The title also refers to a parallel idea that both Lays and Pringles believe that you can't just have one potato chip-- and I can't just have one beer. Once you pop the fun don't stop and the fun isn't really fun at all-- it sucks.

A little background for newcomers and people that don't know me.
I'm 25 and I started drinking heavily a little under 3 years ago. I spent the 2 of those years drinking daily with higher and higher amounts per night. It got out of control and I couldn't quit because of the withdrawals. I was way too afraid. Toward the end I could barely make it untill 5pm without having a panic attack. I decided to taper. I did 7 beers the first night, 3 the second night, 3 the third night, by the 4th morning I got so scared I went to the hospital. They gave me 5 pills of xanax (plus 1 in the ER) . One for each night to get me through the withdrawals. They said come back if it got worse. I took the 5 pills over 5 nights and I had almost no withdrawals. That ended my daily drinking and I was through the withdrawals. I never had to drink again for physical reasons! I thought I was good! I thought I beat it! However, next I had to deal with the psychological addiction to drink. I didn't know this would be an even harder beast to tackle because there aren't drugs that exist that can directly deal with this problem. Yes antabuse can be helpful but is no way comparable to the action of benzodiazepines for alcohol withdrawal. I spent the last 8 months drinking on average 2 nights per week, never back to back, and never on a particular night. Each time I got wasted. I registered here in march? I think... I didn't take the site seriously at first. I definitely didn't think I was one of you. My romantic relationship ended shortly after I registered and I knew that it was time to quit. I posted here for a few months, but I was still drinking about every 3- 4 days. It was in this period that I learned from you all that there is a huge difference from not drinking and recovery. I had tried many times to not drink, but I had never tried recovery. So with that-- and the passing of my 25th birthday (a day in which I refused to drink because I think a birthday foreshadows the upcoming year-- yeah I know I'm a MD/PHD student and it doesn't make sense but I "believe" it haha) I decided that I would have one last night to drink and then I'd be done. I really thought I was and I posted here with full sincerity on 6/8/14 that I was done. That is really when my recovery began... since then I've relapsed 5 times. Which, all things considered, is a huge achievement. Going from daily drinking (10 beers+) ---the hospital visit---- to drinking once every 3 days----starting recovery on SR---- to about a month and a half with only 5 nights...is a great progression that I'm proud of, but what I'm not proud of is:

1. My behavior on here at times. I'm a bit of a protagonist, not just on here, in life in general. I like to question society,question dogma, and it's my natural instinct to question recovery dogma or AA dogma. I'm a scientist-- we look for paradigm shifts -- that is how you become rich,famous, and revered. I also apologize to Dee, publicly, for he has had to remove some of my posts which I posted in a bad time-- and probably out of frustration. However, my attempts to debunk recovery dogma have not been futile. For example, I've gone at least 40 days without drinking at a bar or party. Many would say that my choices to partake in those activities were ill-advised and they would be right, but I'm an alone drinker and every relapse I've had has been by myself alone in my bedroom. So I am somewhat unique, and that is ok we all are. I need to implement that discovery in my new plan for recovery. Number 2. I'm also sorry for:

2. The fact that of the 5 relapses-- each one has been followed by a train of sobriety shorter than the last.


So what should I do now?

1. The most obvious thing to me is that I need to quit smoking cigarettes as much as I need to quit drinking. Smoking and drinking for me are intimately coupled. Before I smoke, I didn't drink, before I drank I didn't smoke. I started both on a 30 day backpacking trip through Europe after undergrad. Every time that I have relapsed since I started recovery I relapsed on cigarettes earlier during the day.
Once I start smoking, I desire the synergistic effect one gets from doing both and my legs walk me to the corner store to buy beer as if I have no control. The logic is that "well I'm already smoking so I might as well drink" It is a relationship that I am powerless to control. So no more smoking.

2. The next thing is that with each relapse I've posted less and less on SR. I don't go to meetings. I live alone. I don't have social support (except when I'm out with bars or sponsored happy hours where my friends get to see me not drink--I live for these moments....and I haven't had a problem not drinking at these events as I previously mentioned) So I vow to spend at least an hour each night/day posting on SR. You may get sick of me. I may start a lot of threads. I apologize now, but I don't know what else to do. Time on SR has highly correlated with the number of days of my sobriety. So I'm here and I accept that I'm one of you and I will do my best not stir things up too much... However, it's in my nature to do so. You won't see me posting to your thread with a simple "congrats on x days" -- not that those posts aren't valuable-- it's just that it's in my nature to fuel a discussion and discussion is always good as long as we are respectful.

3. I need to believe this is forever. Even if it's not. See I'm already saying it's not. I need to believe that I will always be an addict and alcoholic, a problem drinker, alone drinker etc. However, my neuroscience background and hippocampal memory habituation research makes me believe otherwise. I can get into this research in private messages if you want, but I don't think that it's beneficial for newcomers because it does go against recovery dogma to some extent but I don't have an example that you may find interesting.. For example, I don't believe in PAWS. I understand that we have created a criteria to describe a condition and many fall into this criteria and subsequently believe that PAWS exists... as it's own entity, however I would argue that removal of prolonged alcoholic intoxication isn't the cause, rather the cause is the behavioral, environmental, social factors that have influenced the alcoholic behavior in the first place. Despite my opinions, I need to firmly and fully believe that I will never drink again under any circumstance, that is where your comments will help.


I normally include questions in my posts, but I didn't want to because I didn't want to direct the discussion in any direction. I do appreciate posts that say congratulations on x days and you can do it serper! However, at least in this thread, please direct your responses to ANYTHING I have said. I'm open for discussion about various things and I appreciate any personal stories that will help me finally make it this time.

Lots of love,

Serper

Serper2014

No responses....awesome.....hours without responses.... but tons of views.....

ScottFromWI

1. Sounds like a good idea.

2. By all means post as much as you like.

3. I think this one is really the actual problem. Alcoholism is not logical, and you continually try to make logical sense of it. That's understandable with your medical training, but you'll never be able to explain it away. You must accept on faith or somehow simply surrender that you cannot drink.

Serper2014

Thanks Scott.... I guess as an agnostic I don't like the idea of faith, but I have faith that I'll be posting in a month sober... and thats whats important.

Dee74

First off no apologies necessary Serper

The only thing I can really say in response is I didn't want to get sober. I wanted to be able to drink, and to control it.

That stubborness led me down deeper and deeper, over many years, until I nearly died.

I had to accept that I was never going to find a way to drink and find control.

The two are like repelling magnets for me: I can drink, and not have control; or I can have control and not drink.

I really needed to find that acceptance.
I found it the long, hard way.

Don't let it take 20 years and losing everything you hold dear for you to find your acceptance, Serper.

D

Dee74

I just got here, honest

Scott's right too - you can't out-logic addiction - addiction is much more visceral than logical.

It's like having a philosophical discussion with a rabid dog.

D

ScottFromWI

I didn't mean faith in a religious sense...I mean that you simply have to accept that you cannot drink without a rational/logical/worldly explanation as to why. Call it acceptance instead of faith if you like.

Serper2014

Thanks Dee, this means a lot to me... simple words often have such an impact... when we drink we dont have control.... when we dont we have control... the problem with me is I like not having control.... I need to work on reversing that....

Serper2014

I know it wasn't in a religious sense.... but it's so hard to NOT be rational about it because I've been in school for so many years dealing with rational problems of health an disease....it's hard to fall into the non rational "acceptance of a higherpower if you will" but I'm willing to do so because I've got nothing left. I'm not saying that you need to believe in god to quit drinking , but if you look at science on this subject we got nothing! so I'm ready to believe! Again thanks alot for your response

LadyinBC

Sometimes it is hard to respond to threads like these.

At the end of the day I relapsed all the time because I didn't really want to quit drinking.

I just get thru each day one day at a time. I can't do it any different than that. Saying forever or I will never drink again my brain just can't wrap around that. I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss drinking or getting drunk. I'd be lying if I said I never think about it. Of course I do. However, today, I prefer to stay sober.

There is just no easy way to do this, I wish there was. It is hard to tell someone what they should do.

ScottFromWI

I'm not even talking about a higher power of any kind. For me, I simply accept that there is something in my brain that switches off when I drink. And when it switches off, I drink more than I plan on drinking. I also accept that the ONLY way to keep this from happening is to not drink...ever. Once I realized that, things got a hell of a lot easier to deal with.

RolyPoly

I also prefer to drink alone. When I'm out socially I have one or two drinks and then go home where the serious business begins. I think you do need to quit smoking. It definitely sounds like a trigger and the combination of smoking/drinking is a double whammy physically. Good luck. Keep posting. Keep coming back No, I don't like AA

Kitkat331

I don't speak for others on SR but personally I really enjoy provocativeness here and challenging questions (as long as it don't turn nasty/personal). It helps me understand sobriety better, so I definitely don't think you owe any apologies for asking interesting questions or starting discussions.

As far as the science part--I think the scientifically-minded among us have to acknowledge that the science of addiction (and psychology more broadly) is still in its infancy and we really don't know enough for science to be an answer (yet). So, we are left with no choice but to look to art and faith until science catches up.

There was an interesting article in a recent scientific american ("good habits, bad habits") that explored some interesting research into why it is that behaviors that seem to have been extinguished can reappear later--like the addict who relapses and dies after 20 years of sobriety. Interesting stuff, but I think it's hubris to think you can address your addiction with intellect alone. I think if you really want to go there, avrt comes closest to meeting that need--viewing the desire to drink as a product of our survival instinct gone haywire, and offering a path to using our higher order decision making power to suppress it.

Serper2014

Ill check out that article! Thanks

Nuudawn

Serper, do you have any believe in that which you cannot explain? In your world, is their inexplicable mystery of any kind or do you believe that there is a logical explanation of everything? Have you never experienced serendipitous occurences too bizarre to be chalked up as random coincidence? Is there room for wonder and uncertainty in your world?

Serper2014

Yes there is room for wonder in my world...why do you ask?

Nuudawn

By wonder, does that mean you allow for that which is mystical or inexplicable or is their a scientific, rational explanation for everything?

Lostinhk

Stopping the cigs is an excellent idea, for me they went hand in hand with my pill addiction. I quit when I started my taper and haven't had one since, and I think that's helped me a lot.

Stay strong, you've done 30 days before you can do it again plus a whole lot more!

Raider

You want me to post congrats on # of days you have sober, but you can't do that for anyone else?

Serper2014

What?