Dee74

I did rediscover a me I'd forgotten about.
Thats not to say I went back to being that person.

I wouldn't be much good as an 18 yo in a 50 yo mans body.

Me now is a nice coalescence of what I was and who I am...both striving to be who I want to be.

It registers to me as 'good' 'normal'.

I'm not sure why you would want to dispute my experience or how we're 'belittling your achievement' tho...I'm not even talking about you.

Every day sober is an achievement... but that doesn't change the fact I'd damaged myself pretty severely, and it took me a while to get to a good place.

If you're in a good place already, revel in it...more power to you DD

D

Gottalife

Defining "baseline" looks problematic to me. Would it have to do with my relationship with alcohol, being free of the cravings and obsession, or my intellectual and emotional state, or my spiritual condition?

For me the lifting of the obsession and my feeling of finally finding the right path for me (spiritual condition) arrived with a bang around the three month mark.

But that didn't fix the emotional and mental damage though it did create the circumstances (freedom from alcohol) under which healing and growth could commence. Both emotional and spiritual growth continue throughout a lifetime. I started this journey about 12 years behind others of similar age. I think I may have caught up a bit in 35 years without alcohol, but I still have a long way to go.

sugarbear1

It just keeps getting better.

Ambush1256

I have just gone over a year sober and expected to be feeling better than I am. I had never heard of PAWS before. I've been going through sobriety on my own, doing my own research and completely missed that part. It explains my mood swings and some of my weird moments. I just looked at addictionsandrecovery.org and they give a 2 year period to get through PAWS.

I don't imagine I'll go back to whatever was normal behavior before I started drinking, because I've experienced life in a different path than had I been sober all along. I am just looking for peace and serenity in my life. It's coming slowly. Knowing now, about PAWS makes me feel better, that I'm still going forward to a better life.

GracieLou

I hit sober plateaus but never hit a destination. It is not a destination, it is a journey.

There were times at three months I felt good, even, centered and the boat rocked and dumped me back on the path again. Then at around six months I was smooth for a bit until a wave came and tipped me to the side. Then at ten months I thought I knew it all, I was all that and a bag of chips until I picked up a rock and carried it around for a bit.

I just dropped that rock and I am almost two years sober. So again, I am back on the path and feeling a plateau again. The ground is leveling out and the shaking has stopped.

It is always moving but as long it moves forward and not back (drinking) then I am going to be okay.

I was told early on and I was reminded of it last night. "I am exactly where I am supposed to be".

There is no place to go, no destination. Is death a destination? It is not for me. It is the journey though life that matters not the end of it. There is no end to the journey of sobriety.

FeelingGreat

About 18 months before I stopped feeling special for not drinking and just settled into it as a way of life.

ImperfectlyMe

Sorry in advance for my long windedness!:

I'm going to attempt to breakdown, give the Cliff Notes, of my nearly two year sober journey for you my dear alpha . I never really saw any of it coming.

So my backstory is, I was an isolated momma, wifebot, who drank quite a lot 4-7 nights a week. Strictly wine, at least a bottle, probably more. I had a very close call that should and could have left me at the very least some permanent damage. I escaped unscathed except for the fact my then husband demanded no more drinking. I stayed sober initially because I was shamed. After a month of not drinking I found SR. And my journey back to me began.

Thanks to SR it's all documented, the good and the bad. If I'm honest, looking back nearly two years out, I stayed sober the first year using only willpower, shame, guilt. Nothing in my life was better with the exception of being able to see my reality.

Now here is where it gets tricky for me to articulate without sounding like my alcohol use was no big deal. I believe I was so stuck in sobriety because I thought if I removed the problem (alcohol) everything would get better. It did not in fact it got worse because I couldn't check out from my pains, my secrets, my isolation. Being "dry" meant never missing a moment to watch myself life a very unfulfilling life.

Last summer at 15 months sober my then husband decided to change the game. He now was insisting I drink! (Extraordinarily controlling ... Get to that later) For the first time I had to defend my sentence (sobriety) to my parole board, (husband). The schema had changed, my sobriety was no longer a sentence term, it was now my choice, my salvation, my POWER! While he handed me a glass of my old favorite, lightbulb came on, it's never been about DRINKING!!!! That was last July. The whole reason for getting sober was to figure me out. It's been about finding my voice, using my power, and finally putting myself on the list of people to take care of. Doing the above was a mutually exclusive relationship with drinking.

In September my father took his own life. I know you know this type of pain all to well alpha. People were literally begging me to drink, but alcohol simply had zero allure to me. It wasn't that I was repulsed or scared or ashamed of drinking I had now gotten to the sweet spot of sobriety. To me at 18 months sober, alcohol=apathy, still does today.

During the early grieving of the loss of my pops, my husband did some pretty awful things. I needed a rock a safe place someone to hold me up. It was an empty, painful, cruel well, I will leave that there. One month after my loss I told my husband I am divorcing him. My life began. It was exactly like Dorothy's coming to color scene. My world had been spinning around in a tornado. I spent a year and a half holding on to my bed until the storm quieted. I got up looked around and opened my doors to the most beautiful, colorful, enchanted world.... freedom.

On April 8, 2015 I will reach my two years. To Drink or not to drink has no weight on me in my new world. I don't identify as sober or recovering I just am not a drinker. For the first time I have all the power, a clean slate and the ability to write the story of how my life looks.

I now have one of the most amazing people in my life. Someone who gets me, doesn't want to capture me, encourages me... Brings out the best in me. And I hope I do the same in return ! He is the oak tree I've been looking for my whole life. I would never have found myself or the safe, nurturing, loving, fulfilling life I'm living now, without quitting drinking and without SR.

I hope as time ticks by in your alcohol free life, you stop to look around and find your ahh haa reason you got sober. Alcohol abuse is a symptom of a much bigger problem. I wish you all the best, I know you've got a lot on your plate with your mom. I'm always available if you need a sounding board or someone to complain to, and I mean that. Take care of you Alpha, because you set the bar for how the world treats you!

Notimetoloose

That is what I am hoping will happen as well...it was a few years after I gave up smoking that I felt confident that I had given up smoking and it had become my new normal.

I know I will never smoke again as long as I don't light up that first one. I have no desire to and I don't crave cigarettes, I have no problem being in a room full of smokers. I am a happy non smoker.
I gave up drugs nearly 30 years ago, I wont take them again, drug free is my normal.

The Paws symptoms can be harsh. I believe they will eventually go and the intensity, duration and the frequency will eventually dwindle to nothing.
I wish it was sooner than later because even at 16 months sober I am very conscience that I am 16 months sober where as I would have to really think about how many years since I quit cigarettes and drugs...
I lay in bed last night and I repeated my big plan again that "I will never drink again and I will never change my mind".....it has been a few months since I have thought about it....so that's good!

PurpleKnight

I'm not sure if there will be a point of "I have arrived", job done!!

Instead I think a natural part of life is we continue to change, mature, grow, get older, more wisdom, more experience, do we ever stay constant?

Instead without the chains of alcohol, we can travel down a different journey than we otherwise have followed.

For me week 1 was better than Day 1, Month 1 was better than week one etc etc, it seems things simply go from strength to strength in Sobriety, and consequently so if I was to drink again I'd be undoing all that good work!!

Mountainmanbob

fog lifted at around the 4 month mark
1 year truly is a nice amount of sober time enjoyed by many
3 year mark is where I fell off twice (relapsed) sobriety taken for granted
5 years sober -- it actually happened -- keep doing what we have been doing
7 years -- would never wish to live any other way -- never crave alcohol

M-Bob

DoubleDragons

Hi, Alpha. I am approaching 18 months sober at the end of this month. I, too, have felt disappointed at times that I still sometimes struggle with a desire to drink, although it is nowhere near where it used to be. I think I wanted my one year to be a "won and done." The first year of sobriety was this fun, new adventure/challenge and now sobriety is more just my way of life. I like that Imp talked about apathy. I have figured out I don't want to live my life all numbed out. I want to experience life on life's terms, but that isn't always easy.

At this point in my recovery, I am more focused on my problems with codependency. Having grown up with a personality disordered, now alcoholic mother has affected me and how I handle life more deeply than I ever realized. I couldn't help what happened to me as a child, but I do have the power (with the help of my God) to change how I relate to others and the world in general, now. I would not be able to make the strides that I am making in my personal, spiritual, emotional health that I feel that I am now making, if I hadn't gotten the alcohol out of my system and my soul.

Quitting alcohol, getting the poison out of my system and keeping it out of my system was just the first step in my need to do a lot more self-love and self-nuturance. Doing the physical and mental steps necessary to quit drinking taught me at a very basic level the first steps of loving myself.

Kris47

One year sober and counting.

My sponsor says the first year is one of physical healing.

The second is more about healing mentally.

Everyday is about healing spiritually and letting life follow its course.

Enjoy the journey...................

bunnezjp

Sometimes I wonder if the fog ever really completely lifts.

Bunnez

Hawkeye13

First year was steadily better with some lows as I learned how to deal with things sans booze and numbing.

Overall, PAWs and brainfog were worse than I anticipated and lasted a good long time.

I think for me about two years of sober-time (I had a relapse nearly two years in) was when I felt "normal" and took things for granted.

Nowadays, I have days of great mental acumen which I thought were behind me forever, unfortunately tempered with mental ennui, which seems to be part of my mental territory in part to the traumatic circumstances in which I grew up.

I'm beginning to think this is as good as it will get, but feels much much better than how I felt drinking, or six months post drinking.

AO, I think you have many other stressors right now with husband and mother, so perhaps be patient with your feelings--sometimes it just takes time.

I think you are doing a fantastic job, by the way, maintaining your sobriety under very tough conditions.

Aellyce

A little over 13 months here.

Definitely not for me. I was actually pretty confused around the year mark. Not about sobriety, or my commitment to it, but about a lot of stuff in my life. Not sure all that had much to do with sobriety, though, maybe, we have no way to compare.

I think all this is quite subjective and diverse. My sober journey and progress has definitely not been linear. I actually felt quite good in my first 2-3 months and the first really challenging (in other ways than the initial cravings for alcohol) period came around 5 months, then another one around 9 months, and a completely different one around the year mark. The periodic "issues" have always been different ones, though. Staying sober due to the strong and frequent cravings was challenging in the first few months, then pretty much a non-issue for me so far. The 5 month era was emotionally intense with lots of anxiety and depressive feelings without any apparent reason. Around 9 months, I struggled with some stuff about my personal relationships and my feelings about them. A couple months around the 1 year mark was a quite intense existential angst. Right now I sometimes feel that I want too much from my experiences (both practically and emotionally). I'm really not sure how much all this has to do with sobriety per se, it seems more just "life" for me.

I think it also depends a lot on our individual history. For those that have been drinking heavily in most of their life (used drugs and other maladaptive behaviors) and who feel that they were living "a wrong life" all along previously, it probably takes longer and more effort to build a new way of living. Also depends probably how much one has lost due to their addiction.

I had long periods before my drinking became a problem where I was very satisfied and happy with my life, for me the drinking issue was more a break in the path rather than something that dominated my life as I know life. I've definitely learned a lot about myself during the past year, but I've always been very much into self-discovery since my childhood, so it's not like I'm finding a whole new person here. It's more transformations, new dimensions, and new discoveries. Also more new craziness at times

RobbyRobot

The medicine had become the poison. Well said. Drinking when we were as yet not yet teenagers creates a legacy that just keeps on giving, yeah? For me, and I say for you too friend, "normal" simply doesn't apply to our past drinking or our present sobriety. Normal has no meaning for me anyways. I'll never know what normal is, and I'm grateful in my own ways truth be told.

Timelines and milestones are more about the person rather than the continuum of days of a calendar. Addiction recovery is a highly debated topic as we all know, and so recovery is not a one-size-fits-all, and never will be, imo. Individuality will always trump whatever passes around as "normal" and this is a good and wonderful realization.

If I drank today, even after 33 years of sobriety, the first rush of feeling I would have would be intense core satisfaction. I would be rightly drunk with the world. Thereafter, things would go south. It would only be a matter of circumstances and I would be soon enough worse off then when I last quit back in 1981. Importantly, my satisfaction would begin to fade almost as quickly as it manifested. I'm saying this to give you the idea that length of sobriety won't ever eradicate the original personal circumstances for which you drank over. There is no magic timeline, imo, which makes our past drinking like it never happened. The past is the past. We can absolutely process our past in endless fashions, in endless conclusions, and in endless speculations if we have the time to waste but it really won't change what has already happened.

My sobriety is all me up one side and down the other and front to back about me being me and not being drunk. Everything I've done in my life since quitting is only as meaningful as I make it out to be for myself. The single most essential understanding I realized in the initial weeks and months after quitting was I was actually going to stay quit. I was really not ever getting drunk again. As the early years went on, I realized I was going to have a wonderfully fulfilling life too, no matter the circumstances or challenges in my life. I knew I would be happy and successful. Knew it like I knew alcohol was both medicine and poison.

You know, its not important how I chose to accomplish my sobriety except to myself. There are so many ways forward for any of us. At this point "most posters" (generalization, lol) in their own posts are making it quit clear on what method or path they chose to quit. It really doesn't matter to me how others quit, or even how I quit. What is totally important is staying quit and living a life worth living, and whatever accomplishes this is the best way forward for any of us.

I would caution you against overly safeguarding yourself, okay? I'm of a mind such precautions for any of us eventually create significant drag on the potentialities and opportunities for keeping quit and sober. Better to quit an be true and real to yourself than to become enslaved to any kind of new task master. Although I take what I need from whatever modality, doesn't mean I have ever given up my options for being an individual in my early recovery, and of course now as a recovered alcoholic drug addict. I do whatever it takes to be who I am. I strongly suggest you would do better to ponder and then put into action who you want to be rather than sweat the details of safeguarding yourself.

My own alcoholism is exactly where I left it: inside me and in remission. Not outside me and running my life. There is nothing I can do to make my life any safer against myself as an alcoholic than what I'm already doing, or have ever done since my last drink: that is don't drink again.

What I or any of us do with our sober lifestyle is our own business (even as we may share) and what works for some will not work for all. Quitting is itself enough to initially create opportunities for a well lived life. Congratulations on your early months of successful sobriety (((Alpha)))

colagirl

I'm at about 16 months, and I was just recently telling my counselor that I still feel a connection to my addict... like there is still a spiderweb thread connecting us. I felt better and better each month for about the first 10 months or so, and then leveled off a bit. It's like someone else said, I'm getting used to permanent sobriety. The newness has worn off and now it's just reality, not so many exciting "firsts", etc. I still think about drinking a fair amount, but I am much more confident now that I won't do it. It's not a daily fight like it was in the beginning, more like a tape that plays in the background. I still feel like there is improvement to be made.

silentrun

You held my hand through that first year so you saw plenty of crazy out of me. Remember I said it felt like the plates of the earth were shifting below me slowly putting me back to center? I also said it has to happen that way because if you saw it all at once you couldn't handle it. Little by little you get better and when you feel like you are backsliding that is when you are making the most progress.
I ran across this today and it is for you. It's all Greek to me anyway. Do yourself a favor and watch it full screen ah nom nom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNw-JXZnPj8

here are the lyrics in English but who cares right?

almost go crazy because of you
I almost destroyed from you
And that was building,
And that I built for a lifetime
came close because of you come down.

But fortunately there is still God
and escaped one minute before you do me great harm
Fortunately though through so much
I did it and finally got over,
get over, get over and I'm fine.

I almost what I won in a lifetime
because you lose them in a moment ...

But fortunately there is still God
and escaped one minute before you do me great harm.
Fortunately though I spent so many
I did it and finally got over,
get over, get over and I'm fine

alphaomega

SR - you cray. My kinda cray. Lol. Nom nom for reals.

My brains feel like scrambled eggs. One minute , I have the most intense sense of joy I can hardly believe it, then, without warning, BAH BAM ! I'm dizzy, nauseous, and running to the kitchen sink BC I have excessive salivation and the next move will result in clean up in aisle 5.

This is the wildest, runaway-est roller coaster that dips into the recesses of hell and then shoots up celestially then, back down and round again. But, strangely, I know, somewhere. in places that people don't talk about at social gatherings, that my grey matter might be shifting.

I just gotta start toting around air sickness bags.

Healing ?

God, please, let this be healing.

sleepie

Hi alphaomega. I recently spoke with a neuropsychologist about being tested for some things. I asked her how long before the brain returns to normal and she said for a long term chronic alcoholic, after two years you are back at your baseline provided you quit before 50 years of age. That's what she said, and she's a Dr, hope that helps. After fifty I don't know how long. I was asking about other things not PAWS but I imagine she meant all things affected by alcohol as far as the brain goes.