andyroo72

Hi there,

One thing I'm becoming aware of at the moment is the degree to which alcohol and drugs have screwed with my perceptions. I'm not just talking when I'm out of it, but later, much later.

I have cravings and fantasies of getting high a lot. I seem to be able to 'think' myself out of it, but what strikes me at the moment is the degree to which my 'memories' of getting drunk or high are completely unreal.

What this has got me thinking is stuff like 'Was it ever really fun getting drunk?" I'm beginning to think it wasn't. Maybe it was simply disorienting and sick-making and uncomfortable. Somehow the fact that I was ripped simply 'tagged' it as a fun experience without it actually being so.

I think that no matter how much I drank, I never forgot the complete inadequacy I was trying to cover up. Maybe this idea that it was enjoyable is just a direct effect of alcohol and drugs. They kid us that we're having a good time.

Maybe that's just splitting hairs: was I really having fun or I just thought I was having fun? Actually, I think it's kind of important. There's a part of me that's fundamentally real about how I'm really feeling and nothing has been able to get rid of that. When the drugs or whatever are telling me I'm having a good time, it totally clashes and it's totally de-stabilising. It's also really important in terms of how 'sober me' looks back at my drinking days and judges them.

I'm sorry, I know this isn't at all Christmassy and also is totally waffly. I just have a gut feeling it's going somewhere important. Take care.

Dee74

I think I get you.

For many years fun for me was the temporary absence of angst.

It wasn't particularly fun - it was a high price to get 'there'...and after a few years the angst become drink resistant anyway.

D

awuh1

Was it a good time when we got drunk or high? Ya, sure it was. It was a chemically induced period of feeling good. What was it feeling good about? Well, nothing really. That's the point. The process was pointless. It was self centered, it was selfish and it was potentially very dangerous to ourselves and all sorts of others who might cross our path.

In early sobriety our ability to be able to feel good about normal things is impaired. It's been compromised by all those substances we were regularly ingesting. It takes awhile for our bodies to adjust, and for us to feel the normal pleasures from ordinary life. It takes time.

My advise is to stop centering your life around how you FEEL. Do things that make your life truly meaningful. It's a shift in perspective (and priorities) that you won't regret.

toomuchtoolose

Amazing how much clarity you get looking back through sober eyes. I openly admit to myself and others that I had fun through my drinking years but I also look back and think **** the risks I took, the ways I degraded myself and the relationships and friendships I messed up as a result. If drinking and drugs didn't feel 'good' or fun then hey they wouldn't be so appealing and addictive, right? For be it was all about consequences. There were ALWAYS consequences. Sometime small, almost imperceptible consequences on my health. Sometime massive life destroying consequences. So yeah drinking can be 'fun' but for me, the consequences outweighed the benefit

Nuudawn

Exactly Dee...ridding myself of the angst..the anxiety..the discomfort. It in turn created more...
I watched some low profile Christmas movie on Netflix tonight. I am not sure why I did since almost every review was terrible. Worst I had ever seen "review" wise..yet something prompted me to play it anyway.

I knew why in very short order. The lead character in the movie has a break up and moves cross country to live with her brother and his wife and baby.

On her first night there..she goes out with a friend to a party and gets hell hammered. She passed out in the party host's bed and couldn't be roused. The friend is horrified and she calls the woman's brother to come get her. It was painful to watch... The brother's wife can't believe her behaviour and has concerns about her living there with a small baby. Later in the movie the drunk little sister gets upset with the man she is dating..and again gets hell hammered...comes home and tries to cook a pizza....passes out and almost burns down the house..

Yikes. Ya... not fun looking at all.

Andyroo...my dear ole friend. I got three words for you "remember the hens". It wasn't fun at all....

Tonks

I think that was the first movie I watched after joining SR

JanieJ

It's a good point, and one I 've been musing over recently too. If fun is flirting inappropriately, being nasty to strangers, falling over, saying embarassing things, wetting my pants, blacking out and driving drunk ,then yeah, booze is fun.

I realise that although I had some laughs and the camaraderie of other drunks, actually it was more of a desperate bid to be free of agonising feelings and thoughts more than anything.

I still get the laughs and camaraderie- in a real way these days.

andyroo72

Interesting stuff :=] All your responses have got me thinking even more- I'm sorry if it's as inarticulately as before.

One side of this is the quite intense tendency I've got to glamorise my drinking times and totally ignore the shitiness of it. This constantly astounds me. I just ignore the crap times as if they weren't there. It's almost psychotic. I'm getting way better and kick myself in the butt, though.

I really like what awuh1 said although it takes a bit of processing. I know I'm slow, I'm slow :=] I guess maybe what you're talking about could also be called authenticity? Artificially induced 'feelings' (if you can call them that) are never gonna really work. Feelings that are hooked into the real world actually make sense. Yeah, I said I was slow lol

Honestly, I'm questioning the role of alcohol in terms of supposedly feeling good. It never did a very good job of masking my bad feelings, the nervousness and self-hatred and stuff. The negativity and crap just sat there under the surface and festered. Maybe that's why drunks get into fights so regularly?

I'm still astounded by how much I've kidded myself, to be honest.

Dee74

You can train yourself to remember the bad bits tho Andy...when the nostalgia kicks in force yourself to look past that...to the next day or the next week.

The consequences are part of our drinking experience too.

D

Turtle82

The booze helped the anxiety in social situations alright but, hindsight being 20/20, sitting alone without booze and remembering what I said and did back then... hmmmm... yup, anxiety! But, realizing that everyone around me was so into themselves and also drunk that they don't even remember what I did... any anxiety is gone!

andyroo72

^^^ Funny :=]

I guess I'm think a bit existentially, too. I know, it's possibly a waste of time :=] But using drugs or alcohol to overcome a (natural) tendency towards introversion or shyness or whatever is actually really disrespectful. On a psychological level, it's a really harsh way of dealing with? a problem that requires a fair measure of gentleness.

awuh1

Thanks Andyroo72. Being helpful is part of what nudges the life of this alcoholic from bearable to meaningful.

Just one more suggestion. It sounds like you are one of those (like myself) who needs to do more than simply stop drinking. The self hatred to which you refer might have a solution in the program that AA offers. At least it did for me. It helped me to clean up some of wreckage I had inflicted. I never thought that was even possible. To be sure it was not easy, but it turned out to be both easier and better than living with the self hatred.

All the best to you.

Nuudawn

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me....

Respect seems to be my Sesame Street word of the day today. I feel like I found some internal ball of yarn that needs unravelling. It occurred to me that disrespect and love were handed out in equal measure in my family of origin. I haven't quite wrapped my head completely round the concept...so I'm probably not articulating what I mean well either.

But ya, our maladaptive coping mechanisms were extremely disrespectful to our miraculous selves both physically and psychologically. But...we didn't really know any better now did we?

Now it's our job...our duty to ourselves to learn better, more loving, self respecting ways.

Nuudawn

You know what struck me about that movie? The wife (with the normal brother who didn't act up when he visited) wanted her husband to talk to his sister about her behaviour. He wanted to shrug it off. She insisted. He told her he would..but he didn't...he couldn't when he sat down to talk to her.

I couldn't help but realize...nobody in my family ever talked to anyone about their behaviour directly either.

Addiction lives where no one talks about it.

MelindaFlowers

It was fun in the beginning but that was years ago. In the end it was anything but fun. I couldn't recapture the fun no matter how hard I tried.

least

My biggest change in perception was focusing on what I was gaining by living sober, not what I was giving up.