Scared1234

Well I've been here before... I made it 8 days without a drink and was so proud. But to be honest, every one of those days was so boring and dull. By day 8 I just needed the high...I needed to feel something more than just soberness and boredom. I even kept busy with video games and movies but none of it really helped keep my mind occupied. Now I binge drank last night and my stomach is hurting so much...it's sore. My back and shoulders are tight...when I breathe in deeply, my whole upper torso is sore! I fear that my liver and pancreas are hurting boatloads... But like usual I'll never learn...I only ever want to truly fight my drinking habits when I'm hung over and hurting all over. One thing though..when I woke up on day 8 of soberhood, I didn't have any anxiety, pain, fears, panic, or sweats. Wonder why those things don't keep me from the sauce though. I can't win! I feel like life without booze is just as bad as life with it...isn't that crazy?

D122y

Congrats on day 1....

The boredom is what I felt just like you at the same time....

You are dependent on the alcohol. The pain you feel is withdrawal.

Unless you have some nasty disease all of a sudden..which is insane...

Withdrawal symptoms appear flu like....

You have to really want to stop....

Check the AA BB, Bill.s Story,.pg 13, para. 2.

God can save you if you believe...If not something else can step in...

Until you hit a bottom...You are doomed to the binging cycle...each time.causes more and more brain damage...you can fully recover but depending on your years binging it can take months to years to heal and get used to feeling normal...

I am living this today...

teatreeoil007

It's not crazy and you CAN win...yes, life can feel boring at first because you are going without a substance you've depended on. Your brain and your body are healing and changing as you adjust to life without alcohol. Each day you are sober is one more day of repairing the damage that has been done. I've challenged myself to take up other things I enjoy, such as reading, walking, etc. I have found this site to be very helpful...know that you are not alone and many here can relate and are rooting for you...

WantToDoThis

Sounds like you made it to Day 8 pretty much on your own, possibly with only SR for your support system? If so, I'd encourage you to broaden your support system. If you don't want to try AA (like me so far), I've found a good physician and psychiatrist to help. At least I tell them how I'm doing, so I feel like I'm accountable to them and I can get their support. I'm just on Day 7, so I hear you about the boredom. For me, it's not really boredom, but the absence of a "fun time" that I could count upon and know what I was getting. I guess they're similar.

Also, you're doing the right thing to listen to how your body is responding to the sauce. That's been a major catalyst for me to try to stay sober. I'm in my 50s and I know that if I keep drinking the way I have, I will die younger than I would normally, and the quality of my life will be far lower than it should be.

Don't beat your self up too much and don't give up. Just put it behind you, take it day by day, and see how far you can take it.

esinger

Boredom or "anxiety, pain, fears, panic, or sweats". Hmmm tough choice.
You can figure this out.

ScottFromWI

Those things only keep you sober temporarily because they go away. If you truly want sobriety, you need to plan and work for it. It takes a lot longer than 8 days to establish a plan like that for most of us. What were you doing those 8 days other than just "not drinking" ?

Reset

It probably took you a while to get to the point where you have a drinking problem, so it's not going to get better overnight either. So it's not that crazy to hear what you're saying. Happened to me, and happens to a lot of people from what I understand.

I'm at 20 days and get bored out of my mind sometimes. I think about the states of mind that can make you prone to relapse (Bored, Angry, Lonely, Tired, Stressed) and it helps me stay on guard. There's an acronym for it, if someone could please help me out here. BALTS? BLAST?

Anyway when I get bored I think about those letters and try to redirect my thoughts away from alcohol.

You can do it though. 8 days was a good start. After a short while you'll be over the hump and it'll get a lot easier.

matilda123

Great advice, Reset. IMaybe HALT: hungry, angry, lonely tired?

Reset

Lol, yeah that's it. Somewhere along the way I swapped bored for hungry but whatever, it's working for me for now.

Dee74

Hi Scared - I'm sorry you're hurting but I'm glad you're back

Alcohol was my life, so life without it wasn't very pleasant to begin with. I knew I needed to change though or I would die so I stuck it out...

The more I stayed sober and the more I worked on myself and my life, the more I changed (in a good way) and the happier I got.

This isn't a sprint - its more like a marathon, at least initially. That's why you'll need a good plan and that's why you'll need great support - and that's why you have to use that support regularly.

We can help you - we can guide you to ideas about plans and ideas about dealing with cravings....we can support you when you feel low...

what you need to bring to the table is the desire for change

Maybe the first priority for you tho is to see a Doctor if you're concerned about your health?

D

Soberwolf

Read everything in this it will help you

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ful-links.html

IOAA2

Hi.
The results on day 8 might indicate that drinking alcohol is not a health food and your body might be telling you something you don’t want to know.
When I became a bit clearheaded it was pointed out that insanity for me was doing the same things over and over again---expecting different results. Some might consider that crazy also.

This can end simply by not having the first drink one day at a time in a row.

BE WELL

KAD

I recently heard an AA member say true insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, fully knowing the outcome, but doing it anyway!

Cleomie

Give AA a try. The support is amazing.

Roxyblues

Life may seem messed up with or without alcohol because alcohol is not the problem. You need to treat the underlying condition that makes you drink, alcoholism. Alcohol is a cure for alcoholism. It quiets the mind, reduces the fear, provides a sense if ease and comfort and keeps one in the present. Alcohol, however, leads to a whole new set of problems if you are an alcoholic using alcohol to treat alcoholism.

Removing alcohol from an alcoholic's life results in the untreated alcoholism making one irritable, restless and discontented. Removing alcohol from a normal pwrson's life does not result in emotional changes.

An alcoholic will not find true peace and happiness until the alcoholism is treated. One must first stop drinking before one can attempt to treat the alcoholism that causes one to drink. If an alcoholic does nothing more than just stop, the alcoholism will likely make that person pretty miserable.

stephendu

It takes 21 days to break a habit like heavy-drinking. You can make it.

hpdw

Hi , I cant add much to what the above posters say except that to say that I would ask you to focus on a key element I have quoted above from your post . It is very very good that you are aware of this , read it back to yourself 100 times if you will .

Its been 26 days for me so i,m very much aware of what you say .

I don't know your age but be assured of this " It gets harder to keep drinking than it does to keep sober " .As I went into my 50s and onwards alcohol beat me senseless every time I drank and at 58 I am defeated , too tired to battle with it any more , I surrender . My plan is to go into my 60s and beyond without alcohol and I will use every tool at my disposal to achieve this . I will keep coming here and urge you to come here often also .

Warmest Regards

Fly N Buy

Yes, it's insanity in my experience. An Insanity most of us are familiar with here.
Quitting is the precursor to recovery leading to untold possibilities and the great hidden treasures of life.

I had no idea until I stacked a little time how different things become. I use this analogy frequently, but for me it works. Remember the movie Plesantville when everything turned from B&W to Color!?! That is how breaking through the cycle of insidious insanity with regards to alcohol was for me.

Hope you'll stick around long enough start to understand how sobriety is a game changer in our lives

Thank you for the post, you are not alone....
Keep coming back

Retread1959

You sound just like me up until about 3 weeks ago when pancreatitis finally landed me in the hospital. It could have killed me, and I haven't touched a drop since.

I knew that I was having pancreas pain for a couple of years before that; even though I always knew pancreatitis could be deadly I laughed it off, completely denied that it would ever get serious. I have so many other alcohol-related health problems--osteoporosis, GERD, Barrett's esophagus (pre-cancer)-- so what was one more, right?

Well, I'm lucky I lived long enough to tell you that the pain with an attack of acute pancreatitis is almost unbearable. It's right up there with kidney stones and they say far worse than childbirth. When I found myself writing on the floor of the ER in so much pain I had broken into a cold sweat, that's the night everything changed and it all got real.

I'm lucky, LUCKY to be alive. 10% of the people who have this happen don't make it home. Yeah, those are low odds, but odds didn't matter to those 10%.

The point is that I was boneheaded enough that I actually had to almost die before I pulled my head from my butt and quit living in denial. Not everyone needs to flirt with death the way I did. I told myself all the classic things-- I don't drink enough to be an alcoholic, I'm still "functional" because I have a job and a family and I'm not eating out of garbage cans, the list goes on and on, but guess what? Alcohol almost killed me, anyway.

I'm sharing all this, not to make you feel bad, but with the hope that my experience will keep you (or someone else reading) from having to go through the same thing. I didn't drink "a lot" by the standards of some here, but I drank every single day, two, three, four glasses of wine and then when tolerance would start to creep up maybe up to two bottles a day. Then it would start to get expensive, I'd start to miss work, and I'd tone it down for a month or so. I wasn't "that bad" compared to people I met in AA when I was there, but, you know, I was bad enough that I almost died, anyway.

Hope this helps. Please take care of your health. You don't get do-overs!

GnikNus

It's hard to imagine life without alcohol in the early days of sobriety. All of us here can attest to that. We projected ahead and wondered how birthdays/weekends/ parties/ concerts/ sporting events and whatever else we thought went hand in glove with drinking would be as enjoyable once we've drained the pool. The truth is, it really does get easier and you really do get to the point where not drinking is normal. And - gasp- life is BETTER without alcohol. Hang in there and make a commitment to develop a plan to get you through the hard part ( first 45-90 days or so). Once you get out of the woods, a life without alcohol will not seem so improbable.