So thankful to be me, but want to be you (if sober!)
 

Merry xmas y'all! Just checking in. Since my last check in I have had really really good days and really bad days. The last week or so has been a solid mix with the last few days being very good, but not where I want it to be. I knew I wanted to wait to quit until after the new year, but I've been trying to moderate like crazy, and some days it's doable and other days there's just too many resources at my hands. All I know, is by next Christmas I will not be a drinker any longer! I am NOT going to put pressure on myself until after the new year, which I know might be a ticking time bomb... But come January, I swear on my life I will be getting this s**t together. I've been reading a lot of personal blogs about people recovering and they seem to be helping more than the recovery books. Hopefully in 2016 you will be seeing a lot more of me and not with negative posts like my average. I can't wait to be sober! (Sober tonight btw) but hopefully I will be able to do this as a LIFESTYLE!

Don't wait, the time will never be just right.

Thanks GhostFace! Sober tonight, hoping I'll make it through the new year... but so gosh darn determined after that.

This is a double post from me editing the title. Please ignore!

I'm hoping 2016 is the year that it "sticks" for you, PinotNoMore!:scoregood:grouphug:

You had two identical threads so I merged them.

I hope you can make this your turning point PNM.
Don't be afraid to try anything you can think of you help you stay in recovery.

D

Pinot ,
when i was moderating there was no moderation , i was immoderate .

In chatting on these forums we've kicked quitting around for a few years now , i hope we're not saying the same thing christmas 2016 .

After 10 years of procrastination, awful things happening and things slowly getting worse I started asking myself how many more years , months , weeks or days am i going to give up to this merry-go-round .
I knew i should quit but i didn't want to climb outside my shrinking self delusional bubble and deal with stuff .

I hope 2016 is the time for you and you can find out how great and liberating being truly sober and free from the drink life can be .

m

Why not get sober today? Why wait til new year's?

I do this type of thinking with everything I want to quit.
I feel ' safe' that I'm going to stop something in the near future.
Its just buying time really.
I hope you are successful! The sooner the better, there's not really a ' good time' to start
Xoxo

Have you got a plan

Wishing you good luck Pinot, but it does really sound like you are just
"buying time" as Jsbodhi suggests.
I've done it often as well, so no judgement, just observation--

I really hope 2016 is your year for finally quitting for good :)

You can do this Pinot!!

"Lifestyle" really is the key word, and once I realised that was what I was trying to achieve rather than mere abstinence that was when the penny dropped, the reality being this new Sober lifestyle must be strong enough to get you through next Xmas Sober.

There's always going to be events, we just have to change things up to be a non drinker moving forward!! :)

Today is an excellent day to stop drinking.

It does seem like I'm buying time after rereading my post. And for what? Who knows. And why do I think New Year's will be any different then every.other.deadline I've set over the years. I need to sit down and write out my plan. Then follow it. I'm feeling sort of low today, maybe the slow down after a busy week, maybe the insecurities of not knowing how to make this happen? I'm on vacation for another week, so I think not being home makes it hard for me to commit to anything. Maybe that's just another excuse. However, I did open a fortune cookie that was just sitting on the table this morning. It said:

"You're transforming yourself into someone who is certain to succeed."

Here's hoping!

I totally get it Pinot--After my last relapse I was also
really tempted to put off quitting until after the "holiday season"
It is hard to quit during this time, but I knew it was just going to delay
what I knew I had to do anyway, and I might not quit when I said I would if I really got rolling.

So I bit the bullet and now have accumulated 39 sober days I wouldn't have if I
had given myself an extended deadline.
If you quit today, you will have nearly a full week of sobriety to begin the New Year with.
That means you'll be through most of the detox and other difficult symptoms and
really able to focus on building a better life right from January 1.

That's worth something.
Is getting drunk on New Years and the days between that important?
I know I would get so loaded on New Years I had to have a Bloody Mary
on New Years Day just to settle my headache and stomach ache.
Then I was off an running again. . .

Maybe that's just me, but it is a risk you are running.
Make that plan and weigh your options.
You're smart--you'll know what's best :)

The title of this post is crap. I'm not hopeful, I'm hopeless. I don't think I can be helped. Even after only a few drinks last night I managed to cause a major problem in my family, and now today I just don't even want to exist. My family would be better off without me anyway. If im around they'll grow up with a drunk mom, who can't even figure out her own problems. I have acknowledged that I have a problem for 4 years now! FOUR freaking years!! And Here I am having the same damn problem that I had this week 4 years ago. I can't do this anymore. I can't pretend that I can figure this out, & I can't pretend that I actually will get this accomplished. I'm so over everything. Hello rock bottom. Here I am. Now what!? I give up.

Now what, is that you stop drinking, right now, today, this minute. That's a really good place to start. Get rid of the alcohol in the house if you can and work on coming up with a plan to stay sober. Look at what you can do.

Quit.
Resolve right now to never again consume alcohol.
What makes you think you can't? <--that's rhetorical , I know what makes us think we can't, best choice for me ever was choosing not to listen to that kind of thinking , to stop letting the addiction do the thinking about drinking. You Can Choose to stop letting it do the thinking too. The doubt is It 'thinking 'you into believing the lie and perpetuating the cycle, break it , You Can
rootin for ya

Anna's exactly right Pinot. You start right now. No one is destined or doomed to keep drinking, you have a choice just like all the rest of us did. You can accept that moderation will never be an option and not picking up the first drink is the solution to many of your woes. That is a choice you can make right now, this minute.

I have no skills, no hobbies, no interests, no use. All I am is a mom and I don't even deserve to be that. My family deserve better. All I like to do is drink and I can't even do that properly. Why haven't I changed? Why can't I do what's best for me and my family? Maybe because I don't deserve one thing I have been given. If I can't fix my self for the people I love more then life itself then maybe I truly am hopeless. Seriously can't believe I'm putting us through this again... I make plan after plan and never follow through. I am 31 freaking years old. I can't imagine battling this for the rest of my life.

Drinking makes you feel hopeless. Stop drinking and hope will return. But you've got to stop drinking now.

Skills are things we acquire, hobbies are tings we do and inteests are things we look for. The active addiction short circuits all the potential energy that can be discovered or turned to those things. The addiction blinds us to that potential and screams in our heads that we aren't worth the effort to find and tap into those things and that energy.
Is drinking the only thing you like or may ever like ? or is it the only thing the addiction likes? The addiction only likes one thing and will never like another, quitting strangles the addiction, chokes "it" and its thinking out and allows for hope.
It doesn't have to be a life long battle, it can be ( and is) a turning point , one moment in time, you can make that moment be right now.

It is horrible when you reach that point. I am on day 11 today, having had several false starts. I do not know what tomorrow brings, but I do know that NOT picking up a drink this last 11 days has made every day better. I am doing things with my son that I would not have done had I been drinking still. I will not pretend I am not a little bored, but that also comes with a 5 week break as I am in school and work for the school and right now school is closed. But, I am finding things to do...even if it is taking a nap - its not like I was present when I was drinking anyway. And I am looking into some topics of interest to establish some hobbies.

First thing you need to do is NOT take that drink. I have lists, and if I have a craving I have to do at least 3 chores from my list, and if I still want a drink I will - so far not got past one or two chores before the craving is gone - AND I am getting lots of little jobs done around the house!

We are all in this together

You've been here almost 3 yrs now and only have 200-some posts, and most of them are when you've relapsed. How about you start posting before you drink. Might help keep you sober.

Your sentence, "All I am is a mom" makes me sad. The greatest thing in my life is that I am blessed to be a mom, and now a grandmother. Any hobbies I have had, any skills I have aquired, any awards I have won - nothing holds a candle to being a mom.

You may have a low opinion of yourself right now, but you know what? I bet your children adore you, warts and all. You can be the mom you want to be, but you have to be willing to pull up your bootstraps and put down the damn bottle! You can choose to live miserably or you can do something about it - it's all up to you!

That's not what I meant. It wasn't supposed to be a negative comment. My kids are my whole life.

So quit drinking for your kids. If you cannot find the strength to quit for your own good now, use it as a starting point. You will need to grow and develop that drive eventually but you've gotta start somewhere, right?

How do we know what we're capable of doing? And what are we doing when we're in the moment of knowing what we can do?

We don't know what we can do until we do it. We don't have to do everything perfectly in order to achieve our goals. And we all can generally do much more than we think. What we need to do is to act. The opposite of doing is despair. Failure for some people is taken as motivation; for others, it is an excuse to give up. I've yet to meet a single person who's made progress in life by virtue of making plans to do something without following through.

I don't make promises I can't keep. I never promised anyone I'd stop drinking. I never tried to moderate. I never set a date to stop drinking, and I never set up conditions under which I'd "have to" stop. I don't make lists or resolutions. I've been around long enough to know that I don't need to make plans in the conventional sense in order to get things done, in order to make progress. I've learned in sobriety that I can trust myself to do the things I need to do in order to live a meaningful life. And that I can trust myself to accept failure for what it is -- one of many consequences of my actions -- and then move on.

I learned a long time ago that the word 'can't' clutters up my thinking and, ultimately, adversely affects my behavior. When I invoke that word -- in thought, speech or in the written word -- I pause to consider how it squeezed its way into my thinking. "Is this something I truly want to do? Or not do?" "Am I afraid of the consequences of following through on something?" "Am I overly concerned about the outcome of what I'm about to do?" It's usually about fear or simply about not wanting to do something that I insist I want to do. Yet the idea that I can't do something adds nothing to my life and takes away missed opportunities, like experiencing love. Not doing also disqualifies me from finding meaning for my life.

We all have a limited amount of time on this planet, yet we sometimes behave as though time passes more slowly in the present than at any other time in the past. We will not always be here, and nothing is guaranteed beyond the final act of life. As a way of being, fear is a false god that beckons us to worship at the altar of avoidance. It is the Antichrist, the belief that living a good life is based exclusively on not getting hurt or being "safe" from all that we fear. This is a delusion that, more destructive than ironic, dominates our lives. We trade in the possibility of both happiness and meaning for an impoverished sense of security that, in the end, only contaminates our very being.

Meaning, motivation, the desire to have more for ourselves in our lives...all are more often born of despair and suffering than of achievement or success. I don't make the rules, and I'm no hero. But I do know what doesn't work. Loss, trauma, heartbreak and failure...all are opportunities to start over, to be who we want to be, to make our lives we want them to be, what we need them to be.

Nothing gets better when we hold our breath and stay perfectly still. Neither success nor failure are endpoints in themselves. They can be used as motivation, or as an excuse to keep things exactly as they are. We are always free to choose.

Hey Pinot,

You've been on these boards for about as long as I have. I've gotten to know you're personality a bit, and you strike me as an amazing, spunky, great mom. I've got all the faith in the world that you have the strength inside you to get sober. Rootin' for ya!

There's this:

And then there's this:

Do you see the connection, PNM?

Moderating like crazy. Then anguish.

This has gone on a long time. No wonder you're exhausted.

We cannot moderate. It's not in our composition.

"Now what?" Well, that is really something you'll have to work out. There's not a secret list somewhere of who shall attain sobriety and who will not. Sobriety is an equal opportunity life. But you have to start by giving up the battle. You cannot drink.

Here are a few more ideas:

1. Join your monthly class on SR. Commit to posting at least twice a day.

2. Participate in SR's online meetings. They are at 8 p.m. Central Time, Tuesdays and Fridays. The chairs do a great job -- there's wonderful support there.

3. Participate in SR's Weekender thread. The people there are so welcoming and all walked a mile in your shoes. Some are old hands at sobriety while others are brand new. And everything in between.

4. Empty your home of any alcohol. Ask for your significant other's support in doing so.

5. Get exercise and fresh air each day. If you've got time to do "other stuff," you can find time to do this.

6. Read the responses to your thread. Fellow journeyers have offered you keen insight and true compassion. Take some time to absorb what they said to you.

7. Then do it all over again. Print out this thread and read every word, every day.

I recognize your screen name from the first week I was on SR. That's a long time to hurt as much as you have hurt, PNM. Change is possible. Read posts above.

Take care.