Why this forum is effective
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Why this forum is effective
This is an article written by Dr. Jean Kirkpatrick who founded Women for Sobriety.
*************************
There are always certain periods in our lives when the going gets rough. Any one of us can think of five or six periods when everything just looked black, when we saw no way out, when we thought life would never again be all right.
However, it is true that time does have a curative factor that eventually we do feel better and, again, we have a zest for life and activity. Sometimes we don’t even know how this happens. We only know that we feel less pain and that we again want to do things, want to be involved.
One of these black periods is the time after the first glow of sobriety and health and the period when we are really on the road to recovery. This is a dark period because we are so completely confused. We feel not exactly like a full-time sober person, nor are we drinking any longer. We really don’t know exactly where we fit. In the first days, first weeks of sobriety, we actually glowed. We began to feel great and we looked different
physically. There was a spark of health and a feeling of being able to take on the world. We just felt like we would burst from these new feelings and we knew they would never end, that sobriety was now ours forever, and we would begin to think about dedicating our lives to helping other alcoholics.
We began to consider being an alcoholism counselor! We couldn’t imagine why we hadn’t stopped drinking before. It was so easy. And then, all of a sudden, it’s not so easy anymore. We begin to feel restless and we begin to feel out of place. No longer do we feel comfortable when we are with our new alcoholic friends. There are times when we wish we weren’t in this situation. We want to turn back, call the whole thing off. We don’t belong. We begin to feel out of place everywhere, even with our old friends and
certainly with our new friends. We don’t seem to belong anywhere. We don’t fit in. This period of time is one of the dark periods of which I spoke earlier. It is a period of time when we are in no-man’s land. We don’t have any real idea of who we are. We feel restless and without mooring. And, even worse, we don’t know how to describe it or express it. At times, we
are even afraid of admitting it to ourselves.
But how can we help ourselves through this period? What can we do to combat these feelings of not belonging in any group or anywhere?
There are several things we can do that are helpful:
1) Stay with our new friends, because we will again feel comfortable in their presence. Even though our first glow may be dimmed, or even gone, we will again like being with them. We should try to spend far more time with our new friends than with our old friends during this period, for our new friends understand alcoholism and what we are going through. Very often our old friends don’t and we are put on the defensive and then become resentful.
2) We should read, read, read. Not just anything, but we should read about other alcoholics and how they overcame. We should also consider using cassette tapes to help us through this period. Most important is to keep our minds occupied with positive thoughts about getting better and staying that way.
3) We must keep in mind that this is a phase and that these tearing feelings we are having will go away.
4)Most important is to keep our minds filled with positive thoughts. We just keep working at changing negative thoughts with positive ones. This may be the most difficult part of getting through this period. This is probably the most difficult period of our recovery. It is far more difficult than those first
weeks, because then we began to feel better bodily and that changed our entire outlook on life. It made us feel positive and it made us feel that we were once again in charge of ourselves. Little did we think we would experience this “down” period, even though we were told it might happen.
Getting through this period is often the key to a lifetime of sobriety. This is the period when we begin to realize the enormity of our disease and what is involved in managing it. We begin to see the long haul and we have doubts and questions and a nagging wish we could change all of it. We even begin to think we made a big mistake. We weren’t really as sick as we thought we were.
These are the kind of thoughts we must overcome and it can be done by following the four suggestions above mentioned. Perhaps it can help us to know that this is the most difficult period, that just because the first
few weeks were a piece of cake, we are still a long way from recovery,
but it can be within our grasp by our application of a few suggestions.
As the months go by, we will find our place and we will no longer wonder where we belong. We will no longer feel like an outsider who made a wrong decision. We will begin to feel at peace with our decision and our new way of life. The sense of belonging helps to ease us through this dark period.
For each of us, this period varies in length of time. How long it lasts can be controlled by us by the amount of effort we put into remaining positive as much of the time as we can. We can control its length by using every means available to us to keep us from turning back into the abyss of the dark days of drinking. We can shorten this period and we can know we belong with our new friends who give us the support and encouragement we need.
*************************
There are always certain periods in our lives when the going gets rough. Any one of us can think of five or six periods when everything just looked black, when we saw no way out, when we thought life would never again be all right.
However, it is true that time does have a curative factor that eventually we do feel better and, again, we have a zest for life and activity. Sometimes we don’t even know how this happens. We only know that we feel less pain and that we again want to do things, want to be involved.
One of these black periods is the time after the first glow of sobriety and health and the period when we are really on the road to recovery. This is a dark period because we are so completely confused. We feel not exactly like a full-time sober person, nor are we drinking any longer. We really don’t know exactly where we fit. In the first days, first weeks of sobriety, we actually glowed. We began to feel great and we looked different
physically. There was a spark of health and a feeling of being able to take on the world. We just felt like we would burst from these new feelings and we knew they would never end, that sobriety was now ours forever, and we would begin to think about dedicating our lives to helping other alcoholics.
We began to consider being an alcoholism counselor! We couldn’t imagine why we hadn’t stopped drinking before. It was so easy. And then, all of a sudden, it’s not so easy anymore. We begin to feel restless and we begin to feel out of place. No longer do we feel comfortable when we are with our new alcoholic friends. There are times when we wish we weren’t in this situation. We want to turn back, call the whole thing off. We don’t belong. We begin to feel out of place everywhere, even with our old friends and
certainly with our new friends. We don’t seem to belong anywhere. We don’t fit in. This period of time is one of the dark periods of which I spoke earlier. It is a period of time when we are in no-man’s land. We don’t have any real idea of who we are. We feel restless and without mooring. And, even worse, we don’t know how to describe it or express it. At times, we
are even afraid of admitting it to ourselves.
But how can we help ourselves through this period? What can we do to combat these feelings of not belonging in any group or anywhere?
There are several things we can do that are helpful:
1) Stay with our new friends, because we will again feel comfortable in their presence. Even though our first glow may be dimmed, or even gone, we will again like being with them. We should try to spend far more time with our new friends than with our old friends during this period, for our new friends understand alcoholism and what we are going through. Very often our old friends don’t and we are put on the defensive and then become resentful.
2) We should read, read, read. Not just anything, but we should read about other alcoholics and how they overcame. We should also consider using cassette tapes to help us through this period. Most important is to keep our minds occupied with positive thoughts about getting better and staying that way.
3) We must keep in mind that this is a phase and that these tearing feelings we are having will go away.
4)Most important is to keep our minds filled with positive thoughts. We just keep working at changing negative thoughts with positive ones. This may be the most difficult part of getting through this period. This is probably the most difficult period of our recovery. It is far more difficult than those first
weeks, because then we began to feel better bodily and that changed our entire outlook on life. It made us feel positive and it made us feel that we were once again in charge of ourselves. Little did we think we would experience this “down” period, even though we were told it might happen.
Getting through this period is often the key to a lifetime of sobriety. This is the period when we begin to realize the enormity of our disease and what is involved in managing it. We begin to see the long haul and we have doubts and questions and a nagging wish we could change all of it. We even begin to think we made a big mistake. We weren’t really as sick as we thought we were.
These are the kind of thoughts we must overcome and it can be done by following the four suggestions above mentioned. Perhaps it can help us to know that this is the most difficult period, that just because the first
few weeks were a piece of cake, we are still a long way from recovery,
but it can be within our grasp by our application of a few suggestions.
As the months go by, we will find our place and we will no longer wonder where we belong. We will no longer feel like an outsider who made a wrong decision. We will begin to feel at peace with our decision and our new way of life. The sense of belonging helps to ease us through this dark period.
For each of us, this period varies in length of time. How long it lasts can be controlled by us by the amount of effort we put into remaining positive as much of the time as we can. We can control its length by using every means available to us to keep us from turning back into the abyss of the dark days of drinking. We can shorten this period and we can know we belong with our new friends who give us the support and encouragement we need.
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Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: canada
Posts: 748
Thanks for sharing this. I can relate with quite a bit of the article, especially the early glow, hitting "walls" and battling negative thoughts. I can't say that I ever thought that I've had much to offer other alcoholics, much less want to be an alcoholism counsellor!
What I have found in 4.5 months of sobriety is that there have been different phases. The end point of a phase is usually signalled by me starting to have some personal difficulties around sobriety even though I'm doing all of the things that have been working for me. To keep going successfully I need to recommit to sobriety in a different way which usually means tweaking my plan.
Learning to gain control over negative thoughts is difficult and requires a lot of hard work and discipline. A poster here steered me to research ANT therapy, and for the first time in my life I found something that really resonated around my thought life. It was the idea that negative thoughts send negative chemicals throughout our bodies which causes a variety of negative mental, emotional and physical responses. Good thoughts send feel good chemicals through our bodies which causes a variety of positive mental, emotional and physical responses. Now when I realize I am having negative thoughts I realize that it's my choice whether I choose to go down that road and stress and damage my body or whether I choose to think positive thoughts and benefit myself. Understanding that really put me in a position of personal power over my life, but it's still so hard sometimes not to just give in and indulge in a session of really dark thoughts.
What I have found in 4.5 months of sobriety is that there have been different phases. The end point of a phase is usually signalled by me starting to have some personal difficulties around sobriety even though I'm doing all of the things that have been working for me. To keep going successfully I need to recommit to sobriety in a different way which usually means tweaking my plan.
Learning to gain control over negative thoughts is difficult and requires a lot of hard work and discipline. A poster here steered me to research ANT therapy, and for the first time in my life I found something that really resonated around my thought life. It was the idea that negative thoughts send negative chemicals throughout our bodies which causes a variety of negative mental, emotional and physical responses. Good thoughts send feel good chemicals through our bodies which causes a variety of positive mental, emotional and physical responses. Now when I realize I am having negative thoughts I realize that it's my choice whether I choose to go down that road and stress and damage my body or whether I choose to think positive thoughts and benefit myself. Understanding that really put me in a position of personal power over my life, but it's still so hard sometimes not to just give in and indulge in a session of really dark thoughts.
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Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: FLAAADAH
Posts: 793
Stress and worry coupled with negative thoughts can indeed damage all parts of the body, especially the brain and the heart. Cortisol is the major player (the bad guy) and is produced when we have negative attitudes.
Chronic stress puts your health at risk - Mayo Clinic
Chronic stress puts your health at risk - Mayo Clinic
New Life Sober
Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: Noblesville, IN
Posts: 777
We began to consider being an alcoholism counselor! We couldn’t imagine why we hadn’t stopped drinking before. It was so easy. And then, all of a sudden, it’s not so easy anymore. We begin to feel restless and we begin to feel out of place. No longer do we feel comfortable when we are with our new alcoholic friends. There are times when we wish we weren’t in this situation. We want to turn back, call the whole thing off. We don’t belong. We begin to feel out of place everywhere, even with our old friends and
certainly with our new friends. We don’t seem to belong anywhere. We don’t fit in. This period of time is one of the dark periods of which I spoke earlier. It is a period of time when we are in no-man’s land. We don’t have any real idea of who we are. We feel restless and without mooring. And, even worse, we don’t know how to describe it or express it. At times, we
are even afraid of admitting it to ourselves.
certainly with our new friends. We don’t seem to belong anywhere. We don’t fit in. This period of time is one of the dark periods of which I spoke earlier. It is a period of time when we are in no-man’s land. We don’t have any real idea of who we are. We feel restless and without mooring. And, even worse, we don’t know how to describe it or express it. At times, we
are even afraid of admitting it to ourselves.
We have a new life now, new Friends, New journey and we all here can stick together and help each other.
Member
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: FLAAADAH
Posts: 793
What is a..."Casette tape" ?
LOL. Just kidding...but I do listen to a LOT of AA speaker tapes on mp3 and smart phone downloads. Most are funny and very uplifting and it just feels so good to laugh for a change.
I highly recomend them.
DD
LOL. Just kidding...but I do listen to a LOT of AA speaker tapes on mp3 and smart phone downloads. Most are funny and very uplifting and it just feels so good to laugh for a change.
I highly recomend them.
DD
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Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Dallas, Texas
Posts: 2,459
Originally Posted by DuhDave 
What is a..."Casette tape" ?
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Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: Maryland
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ArtFriend. I saved your post into my files. It will be a reminder to me when I start feeling great again. I've been in that situation before and made the mistake. I want to stay sober for life. SR is a great place for me too. Thank you.
) and the "read read read" (whatever I could) suggestions during the first 2-3 months.
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Join Date: Nov 2014
Location: Midwest USA
Posts: 630
Originally Posted by readerbaby71
I love Jean! I don't think I would have gotten sober if I hadn't read her books and used WFS to quit drinking.
I read Turnabout in about 2 hours!
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Join Date: Sep 2009
Posts: 3,581
That's so funny, I read that "cassette tape" line and it didn't even phase me! lol That's not good!
This is an awesome article. It hits so many important points, in a short and concise way. This is like a must read for newcomers. Is there a place where the moderators post articles or can pin it somewhere? I just think it's really good stuff.
This is an awesome article. It hits so many important points, in a short and concise way. This is like a must read for newcomers. Is there a place where the moderators post articles or can pin it somewhere? I just think it's really good stuff.
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