People say that "bottom" is a decision...
Member
Join Date: Nov 2015
Location: USA
Posts: 701
Dee nailed it, sometimes we overanalyze things. We know ultimately what we have to do - what the answer is, but we can't seem to just take it for what it is. Those of us who choose to quit drinking may have arrived at the decision in a million different ways, but it all boiled down to one thing- none of us could drink normally. Some ultimately choose to do nothing and accept whatever consequences it brings, some decide to take back their life. It really is that simple.
Member
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: north chesterfield
Posts: 2
I can relate. After another black out night last night, making a fool of myself, again, I woke up hating myself, again. A good friend told me today, that he hopes I can stop drinking before my liver fails. That really scared me. But like you, I am scared about never having the option to drink again. I'm scared to continue and scared to stop. I can go about 3 days before it gets rough. Today is day 1. I'm glad I found this site.
Member
Join Date: Sep 2015
Location: America
Posts: 4,136
I don't claim to have mastered this whole sober thing by any stretch of the imagination, but one thing that has really helped me have a mental edge at times to be able to RECALL the times in my life when I was the most healthy and happy.
Then, when I recall that, I further think on what I was doing at that time in my life and my attitude is if I could do it then, I can do it NOW! And, there is no time like the present!
So, I have been incorperating things back into my life that worked before and some of those things are a few skills that I've allowed to lay dormant for awhile.
It's been kind of fun and rewarding too!
Then, when I recall that, I further think on what I was doing at that time in my life and my attitude is if I could do it then, I can do it NOW! And, there is no time like the present!
So, I have been incorperating things back into my life that worked before and some of those things are a few skills that I've allowed to lay dormant for awhile.
It's been kind of fun and rewarding too!
Member
Join Date: Mar 2014
Posts: 25,373
You know, and it's not just liver failure. It's pancreatic failure, heart attack, bone damage, brain damage, cancer - caused by alcohol.
The thing about alcohol is it doesn't send you a warning card saying, "The next drunk you have will result in bodily damage that is not recoverable." Bam. Just like that - it's over. No warning, for some people it could be a slip-and-fall. Maybe a trip and a tumble down some steps, maybe a drunken slip in the bathroom or into a table corner in your living room resulting in a cracked skull - maybe a seizure that cuts off your airway, maybe drowning in your own vomit. Maybe you get so drunk that your respirations slow down and you just. . stop. . breathing.
Maybe it's a car wreck that gets you. Or maybe worse, you get in a wreck and kill a whole family and then get to live with that for the rest of your life - maybe from a jail cell.
Maybe you fall out of bed and hit your head on a heater.
Maybe you get lucky after that liver failure, and get a new liver and then get liver cancer in that new one. Oh, but you can't get a new liver unless you've stopped drinking for a year. My bad.
All of these ways - I've either read about on this site, or heard in an AA meeting.
It's not a joke. It's fatal. Cheers.
The thing about alcohol is it doesn't send you a warning card saying, "The next drunk you have will result in bodily damage that is not recoverable." Bam. Just like that - it's over. No warning, for some people it could be a slip-and-fall. Maybe a trip and a tumble down some steps, maybe a drunken slip in the bathroom or into a table corner in your living room resulting in a cracked skull - maybe a seizure that cuts off your airway, maybe drowning in your own vomit. Maybe you get so drunk that your respirations slow down and you just. . stop. . breathing.
Maybe it's a car wreck that gets you. Or maybe worse, you get in a wreck and kill a whole family and then get to live with that for the rest of your life - maybe from a jail cell.
Maybe you fall out of bed and hit your head on a heater.
Maybe you get lucky after that liver failure, and get a new liver and then get liver cancer in that new one. Oh, but you can't get a new liver unless you've stopped drinking for a year. My bad.
All of these ways - I've either read about on this site, or heard in an AA meeting.
It's not a joke. It's fatal. Cheers.
Life Goes On
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Baltimore, Maryland
Posts: 6,069
BixBees,
Disclaimer! I am 6 days sober and have been trying at this for years. So skip all that follows if you like. But I reacted strongly to you asking how to want it - and how to get to forever.
I think I understand your frustration at "not getting it." Like you, I'm drawn to AVRT. It's rational, it's precise, it has no fuzzy edges. One decides not to drink and then "voila!" one is a non-drinker. It works like that for some people and I think that's amazing! But not all people function the same way. If that were true, there would be no one desperately seeking help for their addiction, there would just The Cure.
Having said that, I actually do believe it's that simple. If I decide I won't drink, I won't. I'm an honorable person, I follow through on my promises. Except.
Except if I don't really mean the promise.
So for the longest time, I struggled with how I could really mean the promise without actually wanting to mean it. How could I force myself to want something if I didn't really want it? I want to drink and I want to not drink. I think Least says you need to want to not drink more than you want to drink. Makes sense, but what about the times you really want to drink? That's a puzzle.
I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, the answer to this needed to come from somewhere deep inside of myself. Not from the fear of what might happen to me or what I might do to someone else (I know that sounds awful, but bear with me, I'm not really a bad person, I'm just bad at hypotheticals) or what material things I might lose. I needed to find something that I held so dear to my heart that it would overrule that desire to drink even when that's what I wanted more than to not drink.
God forbid it should take you as long as it did me, but what has finally done it is coming to the realization that my children really and truly deeply care for me as a person in my own right and have carried with them daily the dread of what is going to become of me. I've done an awesome job of looking after their needs and supporting them and basically raising decent human beings, and yet I've failed at being the best example of myself that I can be and it hurts and scares them.
I think you need to find that one thing; that one kernel of truth you hold dear and make that your reason to want to not drink. If it's true enough, it will hold you through tonight. And when you wake up in the morning, you'll realize it will hold you again through tomorrow night. And that's really as far as you need to think right now. Ever.
I intended that this be an offering for you, but find it's been a meditation for me as well. I hope it's of some small value.
Disclaimer! I am 6 days sober and have been trying at this for years. So skip all that follows if you like. But I reacted strongly to you asking how to want it - and how to get to forever.
I think I understand your frustration at "not getting it." Like you, I'm drawn to AVRT. It's rational, it's precise, it has no fuzzy edges. One decides not to drink and then "voila!" one is a non-drinker. It works like that for some people and I think that's amazing! But not all people function the same way. If that were true, there would be no one desperately seeking help for their addiction, there would just The Cure.
Having said that, I actually do believe it's that simple. If I decide I won't drink, I won't. I'm an honorable person, I follow through on my promises. Except.
Except if I don't really mean the promise.
So for the longest time, I struggled with how I could really mean the promise without actually wanting to mean it. How could I force myself to want something if I didn't really want it? I want to drink and I want to not drink. I think Least says you need to want to not drink more than you want to drink. Makes sense, but what about the times you really want to drink? That's a puzzle.
I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, the answer to this needed to come from somewhere deep inside of myself. Not from the fear of what might happen to me or what I might do to someone else (I know that sounds awful, but bear with me, I'm not really a bad person, I'm just bad at hypotheticals) or what material things I might lose. I needed to find something that I held so dear to my heart that it would overrule that desire to drink even when that's what I wanted more than to not drink.
God forbid it should take you as long as it did me, but what has finally done it is coming to the realization that my children really and truly deeply care for me as a person in my own right and have carried with them daily the dread of what is going to become of me. I've done an awesome job of looking after their needs and supporting them and basically raising decent human beings, and yet I've failed at being the best example of myself that I can be and it hurts and scares them.
I think you need to find that one thing; that one kernel of truth you hold dear and make that your reason to want to not drink. If it's true enough, it will hold you through tonight. And when you wake up in the morning, you'll realize it will hold you again through tomorrow night. And that's really as far as you need to think right now. Ever.
I intended that this be an offering for you, but find it's been a meditation for me as well. I hope it's of some small value.
Member
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: Northern CA
Posts: 11
BixBees I've been battling the ambivalence as well. The problem is I don't want to stop drinking, I want there to not be consequences when I do. I read something recently that said that addicts will rarely ever want to stop, that the desire for sobriety comes after long abstinence, not before. I'm beginning to think that I'm not giving it enough time. I'm not sure about you, but I usually pick up after the pink cloud dissipates: sometimes that's a week, sometimes a few months, because I assume that post-pink cloud is what sobriety is. And if it is, then perhaps drinking isn't so bad. But from reading and listening to folks here, I don't think I've been to sobriety yet, even with many months of abstinence, since I keep making a U-turn. I think it's hard for us to want something if we don't know what it is, but I'm going to try trusting the people here who have it and wouldn't trade it even if there weren't dire consequences to drinking.
Member
Join Date: May 2012
Location: canada
Posts: 7,242
"you have to want to be sober more than you want to drink"
Are we in control of that wanting? Do I have to wait until it beats me unrecognizable pulp to want sober "more"? I am just so disgusted with my own fickleness on this.
I just wanted it, the feeling. I wanted it more than I feared the consequences.
bix,
i think this is about different "wants". different kinds of wants.
one is long-term, over-arching, and the other fleeting, momentary.
so i don't see anything like "fickleness" entering into it.
nor do i see fear of consequences being sufficient in the long run to effect lasting sobriety.
these are reasons i do daily "stuff". because fear of consequences and relying on "want" didn't do the job for me for over thirty years that i tried off and on.
just to share some thoughts on this.
Are we in control of that wanting? Do I have to wait until it beats me unrecognizable pulp to want sober "more"? I am just so disgusted with my own fickleness on this.
I just wanted it, the feeling. I wanted it more than I feared the consequences.
bix,
i think this is about different "wants". different kinds of wants.
one is long-term, over-arching, and the other fleeting, momentary.
so i don't see anything like "fickleness" entering into it.
nor do i see fear of consequences being sufficient in the long run to effect lasting sobriety.
these are reasons i do daily "stuff". because fear of consequences and relying on "want" didn't do the job for me for over thirty years that i tried off and on.
just to share some thoughts on this.
Member
Join Date: Aug 2015
Posts: 561
Originally Posted by BixBees505 
Thanks. I know this to be true, Dee: "If you take that first drink, Bix you're really not looking hard enough for alternative responses, because they are myriad."
I know I am not a "special snowflake" who can't get sober, as Bim said to someone else today. (Loved it.)
I just wanted it, the feeling. I wanted it more than I feared the consequences.
I must not really deeply believe yet that it will kill me. So I will stop ***again*** after x or y event, and here it is 2 or 3 weeks later after a serious binge.
Or I don't care enough about what I see in my future. More of the same, which isn't great, increasing limitation and disability whether I drink or not, blah, blah, blah, bring it on, get it over with.
Or I don't see it as a moral "wrong", as Nonsensical implies. But it IS tantamount to a moral wrong. I am lying--I wish it was only to myself, but it isn't, of course. People count on me and...what?...I don't care? Sounds like a moral wrong to me, for me. If I drank normally, nothing wrong. But I don't drink normally.
So...I am working on all this.
I know I am not a "special snowflake" who can't get sober, as Bim said to someone else today. (Loved it.)
I just wanted it, the feeling. I wanted it more than I feared the consequences.
I must not really deeply believe yet that it will kill me. So I will stop ***again*** after x or y event, and here it is 2 or 3 weeks later after a serious binge.
Or I don't care enough about what I see in my future. More of the same, which isn't great, increasing limitation and disability whether I drink or not, blah, blah, blah, bring it on, get it over with.
Or I don't see it as a moral "wrong", as Nonsensical implies. But it IS tantamount to a moral wrong. I am lying--I wish it was only to myself, but it isn't, of course. People count on me and...what?...I don't care? Sounds like a moral wrong to me, for me. If I drank normally, nothing wrong. But I don't drink normally.
So...I am working on all this.
in your post. I truly feel your struggle. There was still something I needed to grasp in my mind.Then suddenly it clicked.
I'd not yet had a sober experience that was better than the "escape" of the drink.
I kept looking BACK, cause frankly, I had nothing to look forward to.
I had no sobriety experience to point to and say "THAT'S IT!!" (An experience that is PROOF that sober life will be better than the high of drunkeness.
I hope this makes sense.
The line that Least shared is suddenly read very differently in light of what I'm explaining. Read it like this:
You have to want (your new amazing sober life) more than you want to drink.
Bix!! Until the past few months, I never created a new life! So I always wanted to drink again.
We have to create a life (which admittedly takes work/time) that we don't want to escape from. A life that is better than the best buzz.
It exists. I know the place you're in and it's hard to imagine this amazing life exists. But please trust a fellow analyzer....I just had to stop thinking, and start doing....start making that new life.
Last edited by SportsFan15; 12-30-2015 at 07:26 PM. Reason: Typo
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Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Eastern Us
Posts: 1,366
ZBix,
As long as you see alcohol as something valuable you are probably going to feel deprived if you decide you shouldn't drink it. The reality is that it isn't valuable, it is a toxic substance that is highly addictive and you are being released from a lifetime sentence of drinking the swill. No more hangovers, no more stupid decisions made while drunk, thousands and thousands of dollars/pounds/euros saved. No more embarrassing drunken behavior, no more drink induced I'll-health... It seems at least a fair trade for sobriety.
As long as you see alcohol as something valuable you are probably going to feel deprived if you decide you shouldn't drink it. The reality is that it isn't valuable, it is a toxic substance that is highly addictive and you are being released from a lifetime sentence of drinking the swill. No more hangovers, no more stupid decisions made while drunk, thousands and thousands of dollars/pounds/euros saved. No more embarrassing drunken behavior, no more drink induced I'll-health... It seems at least a fair trade for sobriety.
Sober since October
Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: In the world in my eyes...Somewhere I've never been before...
Posts: 7,355
Hi, BixBees.
Bottom is not a "decision".
Nothing that comes from outside is a "decision" . Only you can decide.
The deeper bottom you hit - the more difficult is to get back.
Life is a not a crash test for a commercially produced car to see how far you can bang it against the wall until it totals beyond repair.
If all your body aches, if you feel seek, if you spend all the day suffering (and they say that the way we spend a day we spend a life) - it's pretty much a rock bottom.
Start working on your sobriety instead of waiting for the "real bottom to give you a magical wake-up call and kick in the pants".
What you can do today - just today? A small step like not picking up and posting here when urges hit. What else?
It's the New Year Eve. Make it all the way up, not down.
Best wishes to you.
Bottom is not a "decision".
Nothing that comes from outside is a "decision" . Only you can decide.
The deeper bottom you hit - the more difficult is to get back.
Life is a not a crash test for a commercially produced car to see how far you can bang it against the wall until it totals beyond repair.
If all your body aches, if you feel seek, if you spend all the day suffering (and they say that the way we spend a day we spend a life) - it's pretty much a rock bottom.
Start working on your sobriety instead of waiting for the "real bottom to give you a magical wake-up call and kick in the pants".
What you can do today - just today? A small step like not picking up and posting here when urges hit. What else?
It's the New Year Eve. Make it all the way up, not down.
Best wishes to you.
Member
Join Date: Apr 2014
Location: illinois
Posts: 907
I had enough attachment to drinking that I just COULDNT grasp the long-term commitment at the start. So I did the day at a time thing and kept my eyes open for improvments. At about three months sober they just started rolling in. Improved mood (vastly), waaaaay less anxiety, no panic attacks at 3am, health, humor...the list went on.
That's when I was able to grasp the commitment for life. With a little self honesty, I figured out that most of the things I drank for were smoke and mirrors.
This is what the AA folks are getting at with "fake it till you make it." -it sounds silly, but its for real.
That's when I was able to grasp the commitment for life. With a little self honesty, I figured out that most of the things I drank for were smoke and mirrors.
This is what the AA folks are getting at with "fake it till you make it." -it sounds silly, but its for real.
One Day At A Time
Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: Midwest, USA
Posts: 2,054
I read something recently that said that addicts will rarely ever want to stop, that the desire for sobriety comes after long abstinence, not before.
Fortheloveofdog, that's a great statement. I would say this was very true for me.
Bix, as it is said here often, it gets better. But you have to give "it" time.
Fortheloveofdog, that's a great statement. I would say this was very true for me.
Bix, as it is said here often, it gets better. But you have to give "it" time.
Member
Join Date: Dec 2015
Posts: 77
I've watched a family member recover then slowly slide back into alcoholism again and then back into recovery. I don't think he failed for relapsing and letting alcohol get the better of him again, I just admire him for getting sober both times, especially as I now know how difficult that really is. I also realise that along that road there were many, many smaller episodes of wanting and trying for short stints to be sober but not having the strength to stick to it for more than a few days. He is one of the most intelligent, highly functioning and rational people I know so I take comfort in knowing that he struggled just the same.
I expect many alcoholics go through this cycle over and over again countless times until they reach a place where they can stay sober indefinitely.
Don't allow yourself to drown in self-loathing. I know that feeling and it won't help, its a waste of energy and will just send you into a downward spiral. You are not weak, you are battling something very difficult but you can beat it, even if it takes time and a lot of falls.
I expect many alcoholics go through this cycle over and over again countless times until they reach a place where they can stay sober indefinitely.
Don't allow yourself to drown in self-loathing. I know that feeling and it won't help, its a waste of energy and will just send you into a downward spiral. You are not weak, you are battling something very difficult but you can beat it, even if it takes time and a lot of falls.
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Oct 2015
Posts: 2,393
Thank you, solow. Yours was the first post I saw this morning. Glad to make your acquaintance at this juncture for us both. Wishing you renewal with sobriety in the new year.
I have just gotten myself out of plans for NYE. I am so sick that it isn't a hardship, except for causing a friend some disappointment.
I'm printing off this whole thread and keeping it with me. Feels like a touchstone.
I have just gotten myself out of plans for NYE. I am so sick that it isn't a hardship, except for causing a friend some disappointment.
I'm printing off this whole thread and keeping it with me. Feels like a touchstone.
Last edited by BixBees505; 12-31-2015 at 06:54 AM. Reason: Word replacement.
Hears The Voice
Join Date: Jan 2013
Location: Unshackled
Posts: 7,901
Originally Posted by BixBees505
Nonsensical and BigS -- I said at the top that I jumped, I have no "falling" illusions. That is the crux of this for me. Did none of you "decideds" experience a lapse in your "decided-ness"??
I think describing them as lapses of decided-ness gives them a passive nature. They were not passive events. Drinking didn't happen to me. I drank. That's an action verb.
Bad decision making?
Breath-takingly so.
Does chronic alcohol use impair decision-making ability?
Science suggests that may be the case.
But at no time did I not know how to never change my mind.
That's the distinction I was trying to make earlier.
This thread is fantastic, and so are you BixBees.
You can do this!
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