People say that "bottom" is a decision...
 

I've made myself quite sick again, since 12/10. Today, 12/30, I am crying "uncle" again. Every organ, every joint, every cell is either aching or burning or both.

People say that "bottom" is a decision. In every other area of my life, I am exceptionally good at sticking to decisions. Even at great cost, inconvenience, even regret. I stick.

I have a plan, I have support. I broke because I wanted the feeling, however fleeting. I don't know how to "never change my mind".

For me, it was essential to get to the point where I knew alcohol was no longer an option, ever. It was only at that point that my mind shifted and began to find healthy ways to deal with life. As long as the door remained open a crack, my mind would not allow me to begin healing.

However, I do think that, especially in the early days, it's important to stay in the moment and do what needs to be done.

It's not easy, but it's simple: you have to want to be sober more than you want to drink. :)

Hi Bix! I've been wondering about you! I know how hard this is, stay with us. Stay right here. Don't leave before the miracle happens.

Hugs!

"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.

BixBees, I was thinking about you yesterday.

I'm glad you're back. Take it a day at a time for now. Go to bed sober tonight.

Do it again tomorrow. That's really all any of us have. When I get up every morning I take a moment to be grateful for my health, my sobriety, a roof over my head, food.

One day at a time eventually becomes a long string of days that are precious and I don't want to give up that hard-earned ground. I never want to go back to the misery caused by that first drink.

Because it doesn't stay at one or two, it turns ugly.

For me, I was sick and tired of my drinking lifestyle and yes, at the end, I desperately wanted to be sober.

Hi Melina, thanks.
Thanks Anna and Least, too.

Hi Bim...thx. I fear you are right, that a string of todays is all we have, never a sure thing, never "for good and all". Seems pretty blasted exhausting.

But honestly, where I am now and have been since 10th is truly depleting. Who am I kidding about that?

I don't know if reaching one's bottom is always based on a decision. But I think one decides to drop no further, decides to halt the skid and embrace sobriety.

If you can't accept never drinking again, if you still cling to the idea that one day you might drink, you will. Drinking is a decision, just like not drinking is.

Yes, ok. Just very confused at the moment.

I agree it can be exhausting to see a never-ending stream of days deciding not to drink. But, like doggonecarl said, it's a decision NOT to drink just as it's a decision TO drink. So either way, a decision is made daily, hourly, etc. I wish you luck in your decisions, and hope you check in here and stay sober!

We are in control of the choosing....

For me, I reached a day where I really DID 'want' to get sober more than I wanted to drink. But that didn't forever turn off the 'wanting' to drink.

I CHOSE though on that day of wanting sobriety. I chose to get it. I chose to plan for the day when I'd once again WANT to drink. I chose to come up with ways to CHOOSE sobriety - even when I WANTED to drink.

I'm two years sober and sometimes, sometimes... I still feel like I 'want' to drink. But then I choose not to.

I immersed myself in things like AA, reading the Big Book, honestly reflecting on my own history with alcohol and what it had done to me and to my life. In that first year, I really had to keep on it. I made lists of the negative consequences. I tallied up the money spent over the years. The time lost. The experiences lost. The relationships damaged. I got very honest and I looked at the dark truths I'd always before allowed myself to tuck away out of sight. I no longer accepted my own actions of 'hiding' from my own reality. I kept the reality of drinking at the center of my vision. At the same time, I began building inspirational visions of what life of sobriety could be for me. I sought role models - locally and in the world in general - who had also chosen sobriety. I focused hard on the goodness sobriety brought them, the world, and could bring me. I made a conscious effort to dream of the life I might lead. I forced myself to stop looking at sobriety as a 'loss' of something wonderful (the 'ability' to drink) and to begin looking at it as a blessed opportunity (to live my life as fully and presently and abundantly as I could).

It took time.... it took work.... it took changes..... but what happened was I began to reprogram my wanting. My brain changed. My outlook changed.

And my LIFE changed.

For the better.

I stopped WANTING to drink and instead WANT to be sober.

I began helping others seek sobriety... and that too helped.

And now, two years on... I WANT to be sober more than I want to drink. A lot more. And when the odd occasion arises where I feel that old "want to drink" creep in - I am strong enough to CHOOSE not to. And almost the moment I make that choice again - the wanting to drink fades right back into wanting to be sober.

Yes... we CHOOSE our own bottom. By choosing sobriety.

Rehab is an option ?

Well, maybe I want sober more than I want rehab, even if I do really want drink. By transitive properties, maybe it can make that sincere desire work awhile.

FO you are very articulate. Thanks for putting so much into answering.

Just as FreeOwl said, though - the choice is made one time in the beginning. THEN every choice after that supports the decision.

In time the daily grind of fighting it goes away - and it happens because a choice is made over and over until that choice becomes the default position.

If it was a daily battle forevermore, I don't know how many people would stick with sobriety. It isn't a daily battle anymore for me. The thought comes up, I look at it and make the choice not to drink. It gets easier - but you have to stick with it long enough. You have to get past those first few difficult months where there are a lot of things to overcome. That's where this site or AA or therapy or a combination of things can help. Getting past those first few months is a little tricky.

For me or my thoughts I do not feel it is a conscious decision, I think/know from experience it will/has, in my case taken just about everything everything, it didn't take my willpower to stop and seek help, because of what alcohol abuse has led to.

I believe what is important is a host of things, these forums, research, an understanding of this AV we have telling us we need (in my case) a drink to kill mental pain, I am sober, have been since the 12th so my mind is clear and I am not going to hurt myself, my family or loved ones anymore, I am through with alcohol and for today I am in control of where I go, what I do and what I pick up and I can assure you it will not be alcohol.

If you feel you are ready to quit, rely on every resource you can get you hands on, take what works and leave the rest at the door, focus on the positive as the AV, IMHO, is afraid of us when we are sober and have a clear mind and it will tend, at least in my case, try to tell me why I should not believe in a certain program or even a post for that matter, I step back and think, realize more often than not it's this AV trying to steer me away from what is killing it as it's scared in my case as I am on a mission of recovery and it has no control at all in my life today and never will again, that is a promise I made to myself and I am not one to break a promise.

If you know the train is going to crash further down the tracks, then why not get off a few stops earlier?!!

The decision to end the misery is in your hands, we all have the power within us to end it at any time and make Sobriety a reality!! :)

Hi Bix -- it's good to see you here, I've been thinking of you.

In my experience, it's normal to feel ambivalence. There's a part of me that wants to be sober. And a part of me that wants to drink -- the addicted part. To stay sober I have to grow the part of me that wants to be sober.

When I plan out my day, I look at my choices ... I sort through what things will support and grow my sobriety, and what things might lead to drinking. Go to a meeting, spend time on SR, meditate, pray, write my gratitude list, help others, exercise -- all these are in the plus column. Work overtime, eat junk food, spend time feeling sorry for myself, hang out with drinkers -- all these are in the negative column and get crossed off my plan for the day.

It's a big choice (I'll never drink again) supported by a lot of little daily choices (I'll choose actions today that support my sobriety, and stay away from actions that endanger it).

It can seem daunting and exhausting in the beginning but it does get much easier.

Does that mean you might one day decide to rape, murder, or rob people at gun point? Give old people a beating and steal their pension money so you can buy heroin? You've decided not to do any of those things today, but you might change your mind about them in the future.

I suspect not.

Thing is, we DO KNOW how not to change our mind. We just have to be willing to refuse to engage in a behavior we know to be wrong.

I've screwed up plenty, but I never once fell off the wagon. I always jumped. Deciding to stay on is always the better option for me.

You can do this. :ring

You've got to give up the ghost. Hanging on by your fingernails and keeping that door open a crack is always going to bite you in the end.

Think of that old high school or college boyfriend or girlfriend. Maybe you pined for them a while after the breakup. You kept thinking "maaayyybe someday", until you grew up and moved on. You knew you needed to do that for your own sanity, and for your own well being. And you did it.

You've got to do the same with booze. There's a huge world outside of the little bubble we create with our alcoholism. Stop making yourself sick. Stop crying "uncle". Just knock it off. This battle of tug-of-war is not something you need to participate in. You don't need to play this game anymore. Walk away and don't look back. Be resolute.

Hi BixBees, the advise you have gotten here today is excellent, not much more I can add. I agree with the forum here, we are in control of our decisions every day.

Good work, ALinNS. Thank you for your experience strength and hope.

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 don't believe I was clinging to hope of drinking sometime, or putting myself in harms way. It was a failure of that basic choice/decision. That is alarming. Or maybe I am just not seeing things the way they are. I don't know.

Everyone, there is something in this that I am just not grasping for myself, yet. But I totally believe and trust your entries. I will be here on SR. Thanks for listening and responding. I'll be reading and rereading this thread.

Keep at it.youll get it

It's tough, BixBee and thanks for posting. Well, if drugs/alcohol didn't give people that "feeling" or "high", I guess boards like this, AA/NA, therapy wouldn't be in existence and people wouldn't spend so much time, effort and money on substances to help 'feel better'.

I think we need to keep telling ourselves that there is a BETTER way to feel good. Better, and healthier....takes EFFORT, true....but especially in the long run it more than pays off.

:tyou

Bix, sit down and write out your drinking history, chronologically. Start at your first drink and write out as much as you can remember, add to it when you think of more.

I think we go back until we are sure.

It really helped me to think back at all alcohol has done in my life, how I progressed, and how miserable I really was. I'm not sure you have accepted that part yet, and you're still thinking there is a chance. I had to be completely sure. Even so, the thoughts of drinking don't just magically go away...I have to manage them.

Unfortunately, some people go back out and never make it back. I truly hope you find a way to stay sober. It's something that has killed too many people I know.

I am one of those who lost the power of choice in drink. I still have no choice in that regard.

Making a simple decision to just stop was something I tried a thousand times. Mostly I didn't make it past a day. This was part of my problem, an incredibly short memory.

I reached a point where I just wanted the misery to stop. I was beyond making the connection between alcohol and the misery, so my first issue was to identify the real problem. In essence no defence against the first drink.
Second thing was to consider possible solutions. I had tried everything from harm reduction as it is now called, to rehab, trying to find a way through.

The "bottom" I reached in the end left me with only two choices on the table, all others having failed. Live on a spiritual basis, or face an alcoholic death. I chose the former, and made a decision to do what ever it took, and never went back on that decision.

The interesting thing was that, apart from the first few days of "not drinking" while I found my feet, developing the spiritual life became the focus of my attention and thoughts of drinking more or less left my consciousness.

Permanent recovery came, it seems, almost as a by-product of trying to lead a life based on spiritual principles.

There was a decision, to go to any lengths whatever to overcome my alcoholism, no conditions, complete surrender. A decision to take action if you like, quite different to a decision to just not drink.

Lots of wise words here BixBees.

I'm certain you will beat this. Good luck

Hi Bixxy!
So nice to see you back!

I just don't think about it to be honest :/
I can't really think about it or I'll freak out.
I just move through my days sober the best I can.
But others are more successful than I am so you should listen to them.
I just wanted to say hi!
Xoxo
See you in weekender!

I really haven't had any serious consequences from drinking other spraining my ankle badly in the summer.
I don't want the consequences either.
I'm worried about my health, and I'm vain- I don't want to look horrible because I drink all the time :(
Plus drinking is pretty boring, sober is more fun- at least for me.
You can do it xoxo