Serenidad

Again, I am looking for tips and tools. I know the world is full if triggers. Kinda wish I wouldn't have posted now. I'll just call my sponsor again.

Serenidad

Oh and you said that I need to LEARB to deal with the cravings and triggers. That's why I posted....to get tips from you guys. :-/

gettingsmarter

Serenidad

I was in the same place before if finally stuck. It felt like something would literally drive me to the liquor store. I made the decision down in the deepest parts of my soul that drinking can't be an option. SR has def helped but that decision has been key for me. Had one of the longest and worst cravings i have ever had this weekend. What did I do. I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. Not only do I feel great today but my house no longer looks like those people on the show hoarders. You can resist (or let go of)that drinking force.

doggonecarl

I looked back at your original post and you didn't ask for tips. If the question was implicit, I'm sorry I missed it.

And if the request for tips was explicit, I'd be at a loss to add something that hadn't been offered in replies to your hundred-something threads already. I am sure many of the suggestions in those replies are valid to the current situation. Why not review them.

Berrybean

Hi Serinidad,

So sorry to hear of your slip. *hug*

I find confrontation and arguments difficult as well. My feelings are so easily hurt, and I tend to take things really, massively personally. And then when I start feeling hurt and upset, I start comparing my insides with everyone else's outsides and before I know it I'm on a real self-pity mission. SO, it's really really important for me to nip these things in the bud earlier rather than later.

What I find works for me is to treat anything that causes me disturbance as a resentment and work through it as I did for my resentments in my Step 4 so I can figure out why something is bothering me so much. Usually, by the time I have done that I feel a bit calmer.

I also find that the resentment prayer really helps me, esp if I have just done as described above...

God, I have a resentment towards X that I want to be free of.
So, I am asking you to give this person everything I want for myself.
Help me to feel compassion, understanding and love for X.
I pray that X will receive everything he / she needs.
Thank you God, for your help and strength with this resentment.

You don't necessarily need to feel like you 'mean it' when you say this prayer - trust me, it still starts to work, even if you don't.

One of the things I'm having to work really hard on is not minding if people disagree with me, or think I'm wrong, and I've learned through the step 4 work on resentments that many of my problems come from caring too much about what others think of me (pride / people pleasing / whatever you want to call it). I use the 'Do It Anyway' prayer / poem daily to keep my perspective ...

Anyway
People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

I have to remember (every day, and often every hour) that "The AA Big Book is not the solution to my problems. It is the description of the solution. The process of healing and sobriety is a doing process, not just a learning process." (I can't remember where I heard that - I noted it down without the source.)

Have you spoken to your sponsor about your slip. If not, please contact them now so that they can help you work through this. Plenty of AAers had a slip early on, and learning from it has really helped them carry on into sobriety with more self-knowledge.

Take care - and keep us posted re how you're getting on.

Serenidad

Thank you so much Elizabeth! I will look for that book. I agree about FEAR. I really appreciate you giving me some specific advice on some action I can take to learn how to cope better in the future. :-)

SDH73

"I hope this is the last time you'll treat yourself so badly." That was a post from least on my post-binge thread a while back. It struck a chord with me.

I'd let myself be bullied by my addiction. I hadn't stood up for myself when the AV came screaming at me and I bowed down to its will, over-riding my my own better judgement. I then poured ridiculous amounts of poison into my system causing me to feel physically horrible for several days after. Treated myself very badly, indeed!

I'm not sure what to tell you about how to stay sober, you've had more success with that in the past than I have. But I do hope you'll stop treating yourself so badly very soon.

Serenidad

Any specific tools that you use instead if confrontation Anna?

Serenidad

I obviously don't have enough tools which is why I came here looking for more. :-(

Saskia

Serenidad, I think I "get" where you are coming from. During my abysmal period of many slips, I got very frustrated with people asking me what I needed to add and they got very frustrated with me because they felt that I "didn't get it".

Addiction can be incredibly challenging to overcome. I think that most of us forget just how hard it truly was, and for some it's not as hard as for others. I realize you are asking for help and are probably very frustrated with the responses. You are the only person who can determine what it is you need. It sounds like you have the major tools. Please consider rehab and or an addictions counselor. Also, for a really clear explanation of addiction and why it's so hard to beat (but definitely not impossible), there is a DVD called "Pleasure Unwoven" (available at a major online store for about $30 - $35) and features a doctor very clearly explaining addiction. We watched this in my outpatient rehab program. It helped me to become less judgmental of my own failings and at the same time gave me hope.

I believe that when we go into mea culpa blaming ourselves mode, it makes it harder to stay the course.

We care!

Serenidad

Thanks for pointing out that I have started 100 plus threads. That helps a lot! :-(

I'm gonna go to a meeting now. I get the feeling that some of you just want to point out things that are making me feel worse.

To those of you that have given me advice and loving support, thank you. I have a big stick and I am hitting my head pretty hard with it today. I don't need any help doing that.

I think it's best if I "walk away" from SR for a few days. I guess I'm not strong enough for some of the "tough love" right now.

Saskia

(((Serenidad))), I hope you can stop beating yourself up! You need to do what's best for you!

least

In order to stay sober, you have to want to be sober more than you want to drink.

AnvilheadII

is it possible.....you are using the "i don't have enough tools" as an excuse? you HAVE tools, you choose not to even attempt to use a single one. it wasn't like the bottle of whiskey was stashed behind the toaster and you only had to walk six steps to get to it. you intentionally grabbed your keys and your purse, left the house, and drove your car TO the bar......you have plenty of OPPORTUNITIES to do something else....now you are sounding all offended cuz you aren't hearing what you want.

you have your very own THREAD on a tool to deal with cravings. you also posted that article on addiction that really struck a chord with you. you've been given recommendation after recommendation by tons of folks here. serindad, we aren't intentionally holding out the secret weapon here.....there isn't some SPECIAL tool that will make it all ok for you.

unless you consider complete SURRENDER.

alphaomega

Oh Bim, THIS is good stuff. Really good stuff.

Saskia

Hey folks, I've previously been where Serenidad now is and I don't think that repeating similar types of comments is useful. Just my opinion!

EndGameNYC

Hello again.

I apologize for not having any tips for you should you find yourself wanting to drink again, but there were no tips that worked for me in early sobriety. No book, no website and no one person could bring me to a place of redemption. Effort was not enough. Honesty was not enough. Willingness was not enough. I needed to dramatically change my life and my style of life in order to live. Nothing short of that would have done. I am far from alone in this, and my experience is not at all unique. The affliction that we're stuck with is alcoholism, and it requires drastic measures in order to achieve sobriety.

I cried on the inside every day for months. I was both shocked and consumed by my capacity to have destroyed virtually all of my life's work, and by how many people who used to care for me were left in the rubble. I existed in a place that's somewhere (and somehow) below guilt, shame and remorse. I recoiled from people who sought to help me, even though I imagined that there was no one on the planet as wretched as I was. And make no mistake about it, I was wretched. Which, among much else, means that I could be wretched again. I craved sustenance, but I bit the hand that fed me.

Somewhere along the line I acquired perspective. I am responsible for who I am and what I do. I have the freedom to make choices in my life, and to the extent that I deny this freedom, I'm being dishonest with myself. I needed to do whatever was required to live a rich and fulfilling life, no matter what that life looks like. I needed to get and stay sober. I needed to act. And in order to act, I needed to focus not so much who I am/was at any particular moment, but on who I could become. And then start living that way.

Many of us have offered suggestions to help you live a sane and sober life. It should be self-evident that when what you're doing is not working for you, then something else needs to be tried. But many of us are simply not built that way. We hold out hope that what hasn't worked in the past will rise from it's ancient ashes and fulfill its empty promise, but it never does. Yet we keep "trying." It's great that you're so involved in AA, but you've gone back and forth with AA before. Same with SR. Again, sobriety isn't all about effort. Trying harder doesn't guarantee anything. My former sponsor's sponsor says, "Don't drink, go to meetings, and change your whole ******* life around."

My first year is now a blur, though my feelings during that time are still with me, and so they will remain. It was all a very small price to pay. I'm coming up on almost four years since my last drink, yet it feels like a lifetime. There wasn't anything available to me that's not available to anyone else, with or without insurance. I found help that was affordable, free or subsidized by doing the work. I didn't intend on getting sober during my first year, but I allowed myself the faint hope that if I were to do everything in my capacity to get sober, that maybe life would be better. This wasn't a flash of insight, a moment of clarity or a morsel of wisdom on my part; it was a function of the reality that I no longer had anything to lose.

Inpatient detox, 28-day rehab, IOP and then traditional OP treatment, individual counseling and then psychotherapy, daily AA meetings for about ten months. Reading anything and everything that didn't have to do with recovery or "self-help," usually novels. The help I got from live people was much more valuable to me than anything I could read in a book, and I needed the welcome distraction from all the work I was doing to recover. But that's just me.

You've been circling the runway for a long time, and even when you approach, the landing gear hit the pavement, bounce, and then take flight again. If nothing else, it's much safer down here and, even when you run out of fuel, there are things you can do to take care of that without continuing to hurt yourself.

Saskia

From my perspective, some of the comments on this thread feel like gratuitous piling on. None of us walks in another's shoes.

alphaomega

See I respectfully disagree Saskia. While we might not literally walk in anothers shoes, we all share the two common threads. We are alcoholics and we are alive.

So we all know all the tricks the AV pulls. And we know how we can talk ourselves from complete resolve in the morning, to drinking ourselves into illness by afternoon.

Serenidad, I know where you are, because although I haven't walked in your shoes, I have traversed that exact same path. It's worn, and full of stumps and potholes and in desperate need of being permanently barricaded.

I do think YOU yourself can teach many of us how to set and maintain that resolve. You were sober for 5 years for goodness sake !!! That is an AMAZING accomplishment. Amazing.

You can absolutely get there again. I believe in you.

Saskia

Alpha, I agree with you up to a point. Some of us have other issues such as severe PTSD that can complicate the picture. I know how I felt when I received a few responses similar to some in this thread. I came very close to giving up because I felt like I was being kicked when I was down. I am my own very worst critic. With a great deal of kind and compassionate help I was finally able to stay sober. I'm now a month away from a year sober and am so very grateful. Looking back, I still feel that although I'm sure people meant well, the "tough love" comments were not at all helpful.