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Fell off the wagon

Old 10-27-2015, 10:42 AM
  # 21 (permalink)  
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I would caution you to write off medication for depression as a dr trying to get you hooked on meds to keep paying him. My depression is a chemical imbalance and the medication I take levels the playing field for me. Without the medication, my recovery would suffer. It's something to consider.

Being home alone sounds like a serious trigger for you, so plan ahead. Get out of the house, even if for a short walk. As others have said, you thinking will have to shift and change will be part of your recovery. I hope you continue to read and post.
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Old 10-27-2015, 12:20 PM
  # 22 (permalink)  
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Originally Posted by ScottFromWI View Post
I'm sure you are aware on some level, but alcohol makes every thing you just listed worse. It is not a "coping" mechanism...it is an escape mechanism. All of the problems you try to escape are still there, every single day when you sober up. Many times they are worse because we ignored them while we were drunk.

Our relationships also suffer as a result of our drinking for the same reasons - we withdraw and seek to escape them by getting drunk. But they still exist and the people we are in them with resent us for it.

Alcohol holds us back in our careers because we cannot function as well as we can sober.

And in regards to "helping us forget"...that's a problem, not a solution. We must deal with our past and present instead of shoving it under the rug or postponing it indefinitely.

So the long and short is, many of us had the same "reasons" you list here for our drinking...but what they really represent are EXCUSES to keep drinking that our addiction would have us believe.

Accepting our addiction for what it really is allows us to see this. It's a long road but you can take it if you like - many of us have.
Right, I guess I should have used the word "escape" instead of cope, because that is exactly what it is. It's a way for me not to have to face reality - temporarily. My girlfriend of 7 years(wow it's been a long time for her to have been putting up with my crap) always tells me that too, that I run from everything. I don't deal with anything at all, no matter how minor. I guess you could say I have checked out. I think I have just been habitually doing it for so long that I don't even realize it.
I think what brought me back here this time is that I'm tired of running.

I think the problem I had last time is that I was too afraid and not ready to put in the work to do it the right way....and in a way I think I still am. Sure I quit drinking for 3-4 months, but I never really faced my problems head on.
I didn't quit going to the therapist because it wasn't working, I quit because I was at a point where I would have to commit to going and that was too much for me. It was too much to have to deal with the stress of missing work to go to therapy, paying for it, ect...it was much easier just to go back to drinking and forget it all.
You know, I really like this site because it is almost like a journal. I just went back and read my first post and who would have guessed; I'm in exactly the same spot now as I was over a year ago. EXACTLY.

I'm not sure what this all means yet, I will have to put some more thought into it, which brings me to...



Originally Posted by Anna View Post
I would caution you to write off medication for depression as a dr trying to get you hooked on meds to keep paying him. My depression is a chemical imbalance and the medication I take levels the playing field for me. Without the medication, my recovery would suffer. It's something to consider.
Honestly I would be willing to try them, but the therapist showed no interest in being flexible with my schedule. He only wanted to see me during hours where I would have to leave work and I have a very demanding job as far as attendance goes.
Is there some way I can just go to a general doctor and ask for them? Maybe mention that I am trying to quit drinking and a while back a therapist suggested I try lexapril? Is it common for people to go that route?
I think a lot of my drinking is a self medication thing. It runs in my family. I have several family members who take them...but the whole task of having to see a therapist 1-2 times a week during work hours to continue to get an Rx is just not realistically possible for me.

Originally Posted by Anna View Post
Being home alone sounds like a serious trigger for you, so plan ahead. Get out of the house, even if for a short walk. As others have said, you thinking will have to shift and change will be part of your recovery. I hope you continue to read and post.
It really is. I think it goes back to alcohol being an escape mechanism for me.
I mentioned being neglected as a child...pretty much I was "homeschooled" but there was a period of about 3-4 years where my parents weren't home much of the day/night. I felt trapped, like A prison sometimes.
I think being home alone reminds me of that in a sense that I feel I need to "escape" somehow, which is where alcohol comes in. I drink the most and have the strongest urges when I am home alone. I know this is not rational, because as an adult I could simply just leave the house, but that doesn't necessarily get rid of my feeling alone and helpless like drinking does.
It would be nice if I could find something I like doing between the hours of 4-7 mon-fri that would not facilitate the use of alcohol...I just need to find what that thing is.
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Old 10-27-2015, 12:33 PM
  # 23 (permalink)  
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Originally Posted by NightmaresOnWax View Post
Honestly I would be willing to try them, but the therapist showed no interest in being flexible with my schedule. He only wanted to see me during hours where I would have to leave work and I have a very demanding job as far as attendance goes.
Is there some way I can just go to a general doctor and ask for them? Maybe mention that I am trying to quit drinking and a while back a therapist suggested I try lexapril? Is it common for people to go that route?
Most therapists cannot prescribe meds anyway, only a nurse practitioner or a clinical psychologist can.

It sound to me like you might want to try a different therapist anyway - even if you wanted to try therapy only they should be lot more accomodating.

GP's can prescribe meds and might depending on your condition, but i'd recommend getting a therapist' input too. I have bad anxiety (heath) and initially saw my GP because I thought I had physical problems. They gave me a prescription right off the bat for an SSRI but I waited and wanted to try therapy along first. So far it's working well.

Bottom line though, none of this will really help much until you stop drinking for an extended period. Alcohol messes up the meds effects anyway so it's not very beneficial to take them while you are drinking - in fact it can make things even worse.
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Old 10-27-2015, 12:57 PM
  # 24 (permalink)  
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Originally Posted by ScottFromWI View Post
GP's can prescribe meds and might depending on your condition, but i'd recommend getting a therapist' input too. I have bad anxiety (heath) and initially saw my GP because I thought I had physical problems. They gave me a prescription right off the bat for an SSRI but I waited and wanted to try therapy along first. So far it's working well
That's interesting because the same thing happened to me. I was going to doctors for several years thinking I had heart problems, acid reflux, asthma, you name it.
I've been dealing with it for about 4-5 years now and after trying a whole spectrum of different meds to treat psysical conditions, I am convinced that it is all psychological. It took a long time for me to finally come to that conclusion, but I noticed that; Lack of sleep(primary contributor), lack of activity, stress and drinking heavier than I normally do all seem to contribute.
I probably am in denial as to how much my drinking contributes, too...of course it only happens the day after drinking and goes away when I drink, so at one point I even had myself convinced that the alcohol was helping whatever condition it was. It wasn't through lots of experimenting that I realized it is about 10 times worse the day after heavy drinking when compared to light drinking.

Anyways due to this and several other reasons, I am not a big fan of the medical industry. That is one of several reasons I didn't trust the therapists motives. I now realize there were several other red flags; He steered me away from AA was one. Another was the whole not willing to work with my schedule thing. Then there was jumping to medication without trying anything else first, really.(one of his colleagues was in internal medicine and he said she would basically prescribe whatever he suggested)

Anyways other than the obvious things like exercise and sleep, what are some of the things they would do other than medication to help with anxiety?
Also it seems like when the anxiety goes away, the depression takes over. It's kind of strange really.
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