Delilah1

Hi Blossom,

Welcome to SR. You will find lots of support and wisdom on this site. My plan consisted of the following:
-Logging into SR daily
-Joining the January class
-Reading books on recovery
-Journaling
-Exercise, mainly walking, hiking, yoga
-Spending more quality time with my kids
-Doing something/anything else when the thoughts of drinking popped in my head

I will have four months of sobriety tomorrow. I had many previous attempts, Thor difference this time was I wanted to be sober more than I wanted to drink (Thanks Least:-) . You can do this, and it does get easier. Spend some time reading posts with an open mind, and start jotting down ideas that will work for you. Piece together the parts that do and you can come up with your plan.

I hope to see you on here.

❤️ Delilah

blossom123

Thanks all for your replies.

I said early on that I have multiple problematic behaviors. I can go without one for weeks, even months -- provided I do others.
So it's hard to measure quitting/sobriety.



I find that unless I sort out my "God issues", recovery just doesn't seem worth it.

Delizadee

Do you feel like sharing your other problems with us?
I think maybe a new approach would be to put whatever together in a notebook for ways you can be and strengthen your sobriety if nobody has posted the link yet. I'd worry about God issues afterwards. My higher power for awhile were people in group meetings and the forum. And I prayed often to loved ones for strength and guidance. You're allowed to decide what works for you and what doesn't. You have to figure out what fits you and if it doesn't just let it go. Trying to fix all the other things is never going to happen until you're sober tho Mayne see about a therapist who specializes in multiple addictions aND disorders
My eating disorder gets ramped right the hell up when I. Sober. I'm constantly looking for next thing . There is a book that addresses the 12 steps and how to work with a counselor for doing the steps to heal from all addictions. The premise of the book is exactly what I need .

Dee74

why is that?

D

Bird615

The uncertainty? I just left it alone. Let it be. It was there, but I tried not to focus on that.

I guess you could say I I did "go through the motions". "Fake it 'til you make it" sort of.

Step 2 says "Came to believe". I heard in meetings: "I came. I came to. I came to believe."

blossom123

In order to make it through the hard times, one needs hope, one needs something to look forward to.

It's eventually impossible to invest in efforts that will ultimately get squished anyway.

And I don't think I have anything to look forward to, unless I figure out my "God issues".

Dee74

well faith in something better ahead is important, but I see a lot of resilient and hopeful atheists too

My point was, if you don't want to believe in God in order to get sober, you don't have to...but if you want to, I guess that's a whole other animal

D

awuh1

blossom, I'm curious, can you point to anything in this thread so far that has been helpful to you?

blossom123

I don't see believing in God (or in a Higher Power) as a matter of what one wants or doesn't want. It's about truth.

I don't see how anyone can say "if you don't want to believe in God in order to get sober, you don't have to" ??

I've never seen anything like that before. I'm not saying it's wrong, it's just so new to me that I can't relate to it.

blossom123

Thanks! I'm in the process of compiling a list of notes into my notebook. I've looked up posts on "multiple addictions" on this forum and elsewhere on the internet. I'll summarize a bit later.
Thanks again.

Dee74

I don't have a background in 12 step recovery.

I was just sharing my experience, but it's not a unique experience by any means

Like I said right back at the beginning of this thread there are a lot of secular methods...and there's a lot of people very happily employing those method for successful long term recovery.

I thought that was what you were looking for, but it looks like I was wrong - no harm no foul

best of luck in finding what you're looking for

D

blossom123

I literally have dozens of projects I've designed over the years in an effort to help myself. I mean charts and lists and calendar systems for tracking abstinence on the bad things and performance of the good ones.

I was seeing a counselor until I couldn't afford it anymore. I don't think she was really helping, either.
Although I see that recently, some things have changed and there seems to be more acknowledgmenet of problems with multiple addictions.

To me, they are central, though. That's why it's so hard to find people whom I can relate to ...

Whenever I went to church, read religious books or when religious people were telling me about religion, I had to bow my head, unquestioningly believe everything I was told -- or those people would get angry, accuse me of willful rebellion against God, that I am bad and such.
I guess I've learned early on that when others talk to me, I must bow my head, unquestioningly believe everything I am told -- and not feel, not think, not talk.
That -- don't feel, don't think, don't talk -- that's very important. (I feel guilty for talking.)

My counselor and most people I know are of the kind that says "Shut up and go with the program!"

Yes ... Abstain from one and the others are so much more powerful ...

bemyself

Hi Blossom,

All I can offer you is the suggestion that you consistently lay aside (mentally) all these torments about God / no-god, what recovery programme to do, how embedded your family and everyone's negative voices are in you.....and just stick around here, a lot. Read, read ...and then read some more. Learn and practice meditation - specifically, ) mindfulness meditation. Give yourself (your inner Self) some space, give her a break. She is NOT who you've been told all your life, and she's certainly NOT who you can be as you gently extricate yourself from all these mental, psychological, theological / philosophical! traps: they've become one of your addictions without your actually realising it.

Stick with just stopping drinking for now, by hanging out here in this amazing community; lurk around and / or contribute to various parts of the forums. People here know how to stop drinking, how to get through that and keep doing it every single day.....'give Time, time.....' You WILL find help, trust me luv. You WILL. But only you can open your mind and heart to it as people reach out to you. We are not your family or church or old counsellors of before, keep reminding yourself of that, eh?

noneever

Try secular recovery. Within that you will find no God, no guilt but you may find recovery from alcoholism.

It seems to me that you are looking for excuses and i get that, I really do. But if you are looking for sobriety, "god" doesn't have to be the cure. You can.

stillpooh19

How long have you been sober? How long were you drinking before you stopped? Are your other addictions substance related and do you still use them?

Delizadee

The book I was referring to is called "Addiction is the Symptom " it has a reworked format of the steps which you can start on your own and you work out step 4 and 5 with a counselor or therapist. I believe she calls it the Brown method of doing the steps. The purpose for it is to live a life recovered and free from all addictions, not trying to deal with one thing at a time. This is what I plan on doing when I'm set up with my counselor. I do not want to 12 step my way through each of my problems or attend 17 different groups. I want to work a program that will guide me through a process and give me hope at living a new kind of normal.

Do you attend meetings or have a sponsor? Not everyone is going to push group philosophy on you. Trying out different groups may help.
Have you looked into AVRT? Maybe having your recovery method separate right now from your relationship with God might help get you to a solid sober point to contemplate your feelings on God.

But if having a relationship with God is important to you, then I'd put down the drink, and start praying. Working the steps really can help you with this.

You don't need to be working a recovery program to pray. If you spend time in quiet prayer along with the work you do, maybe that will help you to find, fix or build a good relationship with your own God.
And nothing is going to drop sobriety or a recovered life into your lap unless and until you go out, you keep doing the work and finding different ways to achieve and maintain the life of sobriety you want.

At the end of the day it is a choice we make to engage in our addictions or not. Our heads or our egos will take us to task on our counter efforts but it is still up to us whether we engage in the behaviour or not.

Delizadee

A really handy tool for me has been the sober tool app. It's a free app and it's got a ton of awesome messages as to what to do and inspiration and whatnot. It really helped me in my early days.
Do you have much or any sober time yet? Not asking as a judgment or in any negative way. But if you are still under the influence of alcohol (and by this I do not mean drunk) Then this is very likely a lot of av talking and giving you all kinds of reasons to keep using and taking your power of choice away. I say this because for the last month even if I rarely got drunk my mind was still being controlled by my av. I could have easily just stopped so many times but instead I'd just watch myself take the first drink wondering what the hell I was doing
The mind altering substances have to be stopped before we can do any real recovery work.

FormerWineGirl

Your issues seem very complex to sort out all at once. One thing is certain: being engaged in active alcoholism is going to make everything else very difficult to figure out.

Andante

I used to think I had special, insurmountable problems that prevented me from getting sober too. Then I learned that the phenomenon of feeling special in my addiction and constructing insurmountable obstacles to my recovery was so common, so ordinary, so… tawdry that it even had a name: "Terminal Uniqueness."

The bottom line is that as long as you continue to disrupt the functionality of your "thinker" by whacking it out with drugs and alcohol, you’ll never sort out the larger issues that you believe make you specially exempt from recovery. You may think you’re thinking clearly, but you’re not. Just take it on faith that in order to stop drinking, first you must stop drinking, and then go from there.

If you can grind out a few months just not drinking no matter what, I’m pretty sure most of these issues (including the God issue) that seem so overwhelming to you now will begin to sort themselves out on their own. That’s how it worked for me, as well as many others afflicted with "terminal uniqueness."

blossom123

Thank you all for your replies.


Some of you seem to think that first I had problematic behaviors and only then I developed "God issues".

That's not how it is in my case, though. First I had "God issues" and then, because they are very stressful, I developed problematic behaviors to cope with that stress caused by those issues.

I grew up in a very competitive and discriminatory religious setting where being of the right religion was paramount. I was the only non-Catholic, non-Christian among Catholics (even my parents were Catholic). Even though I went to a regular public school, I was the only student there who was not Catholic. The other students didn't want me, and ages 12-15 I even had to sit alone because the other students didn't want to have anything to do with me. I wasn't good enough for them.

This in fact is a statistically rare situation; I do have grounds to "feel special", and I don't do so in a good sense. Ever since I can remember, I wanted to fit in, be like others.

So earlier today, I decided to think about what would happen if I would stop trying to figure out which religion is the right one and came up with these answers:

1. Some people would be very angry with me, despise me, accuse me of being a weakling, a loser, and I would not know how to deal with those accusations.
(Some of those people are still occasionally present in my life, some in memory.)

2. I would cut myself off from God, and I am terrified of that.
As long as I am still trying to figure out which religion is the right one (no matter how stressful that might be), there is still some hope. If I quit my efforts of trying to figure out which religion is the right one, I would be overwhelmed by hopelessness.

3. I can't handle religious individuality, I am terrified of doing anything religious alone. I don't think I can handle this fear. As long as I am trying to figure out which religion is the right one, this fear is at least held at bay.

4. The only way to have any real safety and confidence in life is by knowing which religion is the right one. Giving up trying to figure out which religion is the right one would cut me off from ever having any safety or confidence.

5. I would have no friends, not even tentative ones. As long as I'm trying to figure out which religion is the right one, I at least have some religious friends, even though it's a tentative friendship depending entirely on my future conversion (my religious friends put up with me and wait for my conversion, so that then we could finally really be friends). Without knowing which religion is the right one, nobody will like me, and I am terrified of that.

6. Giving up trying to figure out which religion is the right one would be very stressful, which would require efforts to medicate that stress.