Plagued by thoughts of alcohol...
 

Hi all,

Thoughts of alcohol have been plaguing me for a week or so. I have 6 months of sobriety. Amazing changes have taken place in that time which include running 5K three times a week, 2.5 stone weight loss, feeling calmer and relaxed, sober trips away, sober nights out...the list goes on.

It's a puzzle to me then, why thoughts of alcohol have surfaced...it's really unnerving in fact. Today whilst in a supermarket the thought of buying a bottle of wine and checking out of my head for a night crossed my mind. So I went home (minus the wine) and reviewed my recovery plan. I reflected on what helpful habits may have slipped. I journalled and read previous journal entries. I downloaded some new health and wellbeing audiobooks. I reviewed affirmations I used at the beginning of my journey. I listed all of the positives in my life as a result of sobriety. Then I had a healthy meal, drank plenty of water and herbal tea, had a hot relaxing bath and now going to bed. I will be going for a run in the morning.

Thanks for listening...just wanted to share x

You done amazing not drinking even better coming here reaching out :hug:

Really well done on hitting all those recovery tools. I've heard it's really common to have "thoughts" at significant milestones. If it's any consolation, six months was the last time I really entertained actually having that drink.

I still think about it once in a while, but I don't actually take it any further in my mind than that initial thought. I expect I'll have little thoughts of drinking forever. Doesn't mean they are good things to invite to stick around, and I don't. I do like you do - get busy doing other stuff that is good for me.

Thank you soberwolf as always x

Thanks biminiblue x

I think you should treat it as a good sign that you saw alcohol there and made the right choice. From my experience our insight as to what recovery means and takes changes slightly the longer we go through the journey and updating your plan and recovery tools is a necessity in my opinion. What works in week 1 probably won't in week 51.

So many positives from your post. I'm also a keen runner. Hope you don't mind me saying keep up the good work!

Hey, answer me one question: Do you want to get drunk again?

For me, at six months, I kind of had the same thing happen. I think my thought process was that I was at the point of no return. Did I want to continue on my sober path? At this point, I am so committed to sobriety, but not too committed in that I still didn't have a year. I think I felt this way because it still required a lot of work to be sober and I was tired of thinking about NOT drinking everyday. I had proven I could go six months without a drink so maybe that was enough. I think this is where the term "fake it til you make it" comes into play. Just keep doing what you are doing, ignore your AV and before you know it, you will have a year under your belt. From there it keeps getting easier and easier.

I'm over six years sober and sometimes get thoughts of drinking. Luckily, they are easy to dismiss with logic. I know what the outcome would be if I drank, and I don't want to go there. :( You will stay sober as long as you want to be sober more than you want to drink. :)

Inspiring posts nova84 and others :tyou

Hi nova :)

I think it's important we all realise most of us will have these thoughts from time to time. I drank for 20 years - it took a little time to rewire my brain :)

Thoughts are thoughts - it's what we do with them that counts. The measure of recovery is in the response.

I think you did, and are doing, great :)

D

Wow, I'm impressed with the way you handled that trip to the grocery. Great job! Sometimes we need to remember why we gave up drinking in the first place.

Girlfriend, I just scanned your posts quick, you seem so nice. I didn't see your drinking history, but have you considered that you might have developed actual alcoholism?

I wonder if you haven't encountered the school of thought, gathered most painstakingly by actual alcoholics (and their doctors and their critics), that observes real alcoholics become quite unable to leave the stuff alone entirely, at certain times, no matter how great the necessity or the wish or the reasoning, and despite having been successful at avoiding it during other periods. It is characterized as an infernal progressive malady where once we do capitulate to the urge to take a drink, unlike normal drinkers, we begin to lose all control over the amount we will take. This they call a phenomenon, some kind of allergy, and it NEVER occurs in your normal average drinker, this phenomenon of craving is restricted to the class of alcoholic and alcoholic only.

This condition can hit some percentage of the population from any experience or background no matter the life circumstances, and gets dreadfully impossibly worse over any considerable period of time. Once lost, we NEVER regain control, ever advancing to frustration, failure, futility, disgrace and finally wet brain.

Normal willpower and common sense do NOT function when this malady has advanced. They are insufficient to prevent us from picking up, despite what always keeps happening, and we grow quite deranged.

Many of these alcoholics spent plenty on psychiatry and medicine, spas and rehabs, tried every self help health kick resolution remedy over and over to no ultimate avail, the deep rooted urge to drink is too strong, crops up whenever it wants, and easily pushes aside every sound reason not to. They declare it an insanity. We drink contrary to our own will, interests, and otherwise sound reasoning, and once trapped find it impossible to stop.

I wonder what your modern doctor has to say about eliminating your urges.

*If* you do find yourself succumbing, because of this strange mental blank spot, their advice is to check whether we are in control of the amount. See whether you are able to have one or two and leave it at that.

If not, you might check into the book those alcoholics wrote back in the 30s. They found a kinda offbeat way that cuts straight to the heart of the matter, not without its definite challenge to the proud modern mind, that does eliminate the overwhelming urge where self-help methods fail.

I have finally found the desperate will to try it, in unhappy resignation and bewildered defeat, and it has actually been working just as promised. I trust your doctor hasn't withheld the information from you? Kinda sounds like s/he might be fiddling with its methods, but missing some fundamental ingredients. Were i you i would check that book out for myself, it explains different types of drinkers well enough, and exactly how alcoholics have been finding relief ever since.

If we are alcoholic to any considerable degree, our discipline, resolutions, willpower, efforts and wishes will sooner or later one day fail us, in favor of having a drink. We build lives and tear the structure down with senseless destructive inexplicable sprees. Our loved ones don't understand it and neither do we. We are in a continual state of disturbance until we can once more experience the relief that comes at once with a few shots. There is always one more attempt at control, and one more failure, and we repeat this ever worsening maddening cycle until we die. That's just the nature of alcoholism. The malady destroys everything we work for, it is progressive, and it is fatal. Avoiding alcohol does not work for us.