SparkyMcSparky

A good acronym for newcomers is HALT. These are the situations to avoid:

Hungry
Angry
Lonely
Tired

All of these situations can lead to relapses, and the way to solve these are incredibly easy.

Hungry - Eat, feed your new sobriety well. Remember when you ate such a big meal you couldn't eat any more? Yup, that's it.
Angry - Find productive ways to get rid of anger. Video games, boxing, going for a nice walk, blogging, or even logging onto SR and helping others. Some like meditation too!
Lonely - SR is here. So is AA, your sponsor, your friends, your family. Kinda hard to drink when you're spending time with others who know you quit drinking, eh?
Tired - Go to bed. Fatigue leads to depression and low mood. Learn how to meditate or listen to music until you fall asleep. Get plenty of rest.

There's some tips, but these can also be applied to regular daily situations. If you plan on sitting at home and getting hammered every Wednesday, well, now go find something to do. Hey, taking Tae Kwon Do on a Wednesday helps all four. Release anger, tire yourself out, spend time with others, and have an ice cream on your way home as a treat.

That's pretty easy, eh? But as I do stress above, always, always, always have a plan. So if plan A falls through, have a non-drinking plan B. Or C, D, and E.

Altoids

I love this thread. Thanks for asking the question. Triggers seems to creep in at weird times. But as others have said and I have learned. . . it is just a thought and I don't have to act on it. However, for me I've learned that I have to tell someone about it. I cannot do sobriety alone and thinking I handled a trigger well is too ego boosting for me. And ego boosts leads eventually to complacency, and we all know where THAT leads.

It is great that you are thinking it thru before the event, too. THAT is always helpful. Think thru the event, figure out a plan, execute plan.

Soberwolf

Hi serenity I am glad I didn't get to see that somebody sent a stupid msg

Stop worrying about what other ppl think on here be you can always speak honestly on how you see things in your sobriety here

If you didn't want to get sober you wouldn't be here and I can hear it in your voice how much this means to you you were even going to sacrifice a TV show for sobriety sake and that's massive

I think your brilliant and would ask that you up the ante and start posting more


As I for 1 know this is the start of something beautiful this is you in recovery saving your own life and others just by posting and talking about it

Well done !!!!

MelindaFlowers

I associated drinking with everything because I drank every night. I had to pretty much stop watching TV shows and spend most of my evenings on here for the first week or so.

I'm two months in without drinking and I can now do pretty much anything without drinking. Part of me misses it but it was killing me so the missing it is fading. I have to remind myself daily why I quit. I remind myself by checking in here every day.

There is a first time for everything in sobriety: first tv show, movie, Friday, etc. It gets easier after we get through more and more of the "firsts." You can do this!