thomas11

First the good stuff. I celebrated my 49th birthday on last Monday and Sunday was Labor Day in the US. I felt kind of proud that it was the second Labor Day and birthday sober. These small "markers" are adding up and I have to admit, there is some pride there. The health kick I'm on continues and while its intense, its so worth it. On occasion I need to dial it back because I have an addictive personality and tend to push pretty hard. New career is going in the right direction, I feel comfortable about my decision. Lastly, my marriage is as strong as it has been since the first couple years. My wife is proud of her husband....not ashamed or embarrassed. She knew I had it in me, which is why she married me, but it had been dormant for too long.

With that said, I must admit the lure of relaxing with a few cocktails has been on my mind once in a while. I haven't caved and am perfectly content with what's going on in my life. I have reasons why I don't cave and a big one is I have a significant amount of sober time under my belt (I don't count days) and would hate to start over. I am a curious person and wonder on occasion if I could pick up again without any consequences....doubtful. I have mentioned before, I do read this site every single day and it has the same impact now as it did when I decided enough was enough. But on occasion I need the reminder that alcohol is a one way street to destruction. I agree 100% with the saying that there is not a single thing in life that alcohol won't make exponentially worse. I don't think that has changed and probably shouldn't find out.

Bobbieka

Happy Birthday and congratulations on your sobriety.

"But on occasion I need the reminder that alcohol is a one way street to destruction." You know it is. The things that made you stop drinking are still there if you pick up a drink. From what I hear, maybe worse. Keep doing what you know to do.

I love the way you talk about your marriage.

AnvilheadII

the addict mind has some seriously defective thinking.....man everything in my life is going GREAT right now.......so, how can I F it up as quickly as possible???

always play that tape through, Jeff..........ALLLLL the way through.

Fly N Buy

Starting over is never guaranteed. If there is any lesson to learn here or in the rooms, that is the most important one for me.........Only by grace did I get here to begin.

Here's a good reminder why I don't pick up........550,000 views can't all be wrong.......


http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...lly-again.html

Della1968

Look at all the changes that took place AFTER you quit

MissPerfumado

Good idea posting those insidious thoughts, Jeff, because you'll get plenty of firm encouragement to stay on the path. Your story has been inspiring to me, so I want to say my piece.

You fought SO hard to get all of this back, it took every ounce of your physical and mental strength. One drink is all it takes to start down the slippery slope to where your began this. It would be more than starting over the day count - you would be throwing away everything you've fought like a lion to recover: your health, your marriage and a good job. And you'd be starting right back at the bottom.

The AV never sleeps. Don't listen to its lies.

tomsteve

thomas, idk about you, but one thing im very greatful for is i didnt completely destroy my memory- i can look back and see how well thinking a couple drinks was doable.
russian roulette is a game im done playing.

Hawkeye13

That's where I went wrong, thinking I had it cured, and lost nearly two years of continuous sober time.

And I was right back in the shite physically, emotionally, and mentally even though I had a few times of "successful" moderation.

Put those thoughts away forever Jeff, would be my suggestion.
Congrats on all the positive develpments--I'm really hitting the gym hard too.
Thinking about a 50 mile trail run next year. . .

Anna

Jeff, Happy belated Birthday and congratulations on your recovery!

Ooona

What he said above was what I was thinking when I read your original post. Sometimes we alcoholics do have selctive memory and I do think it is human nature for us to also have a tendency to forget unpleasant experiences. Our illness is powerful, baffling and cunning and just insidious enough to allow us to have a couple of moderation experiences, just enough for us to tell ourselves, See I really dont have a problem, See Im not as bad as I was before, See I can handle this.
Then in short order we are actually worse then we were when we quit initially. Alcoholism is a progressive disease that continues to get worse, WHETHER we drink or not!

I think of a chinese proverb:
First the man takes the drink, then the drink takes the drink, then the drink takes the man.

Ride it out buddy, write out a list of all the reasons you quit, sip a sparking water or soda or coffee or juice or anything w/out alcohol!

Those of us in our early days looks up to admire folks like you.
Please dont let us down, we need role models!

Be Blessed.

Bruno1979

You are correct Thomas my friend, you are indeed cured. Celebrate the cure for everything that it is, but do not use alcohol to do so.

The cure can be undone in one foul second of time,

Think about it matey, it's just not worth it.

Bruno.

MLD51

I have a very close friend (ex-boyfriend, actually) who went back to drinking after 16 years of sobriety. He was OK for a little while. But not long. He tells me it truly was like he had never stopped - that what everyone says about the disease progressing whether we are drinking or not is true. He almost died about two years ago, then got sober again. He almost died, because one day he realized he had lost everything again (including me), and he put a loaded gun to his head. God didn't let him pull the trigger. This is meant as a cautionary tale to anyone who thinks they have their alcoholism licked.

This disease is for real. It doesn't mess around.

january161992

Dee74

Ours is a ridiculous condition sometimes.

We nearly destroy ourselves - break limbs, break relationships, shatter reputations - but after a while we start to think we're cured - and the first thing we want to do is drink again....

Madness.

Please don't confuse abstinence with control Jeff. They're not the same thing.

Your life is going well because you're no longer in that toxic relationship...not because you suddenly gained 'control'.

I think the work for you now is going to be to define yourself as a non-drinker and being happy about that.

You can do it

D

MIRecovery

I had a 100% failure rate when it came to normal drinking . I tried so very hard to figure out how others did it. In 30 years of trying and each time getting the snot knocked out of me I finally got tired of hurting myself. I gave up, I surrendered, I was beat. When I had the gift of desperation things started to get better.

Maybe there is a way to drink normally or to drink without the consequences but if there is I never found it

cwood3

I think in the Big Book, it mentions that doctors and scientists haven't found a way to do that either.

MeSoSober

You know, in the past, for me, sometimes watching a scary documentary like Rain in My Heart or an episode of Intervention (particularly the one where the guy who owns the tanning salon dies) was a nice dose of reason to smack me upside the head. Sometimes I needed to be uplifted, and then when I got too "high" I needed to be brought back to earth with a cold dose of reality.

Just wonder if watching something like that will help make those thoughts of drinking go away.

Congratulations on all your other success!

EndGameNYC

Congratulations on your success, Jeff.

You must have known that I'd reply to your post, so let's both make an effort not to make this adversarial.

Um, you might recall that you've already done this. And the consequences were disastrous.

I believe that your comments refer to, or are the product of, something that you've struggled with from the start: acceptance. Having thoughts that you may be "cured," or that you can "relax with a couple of cocktails" echoes your thoughts from early on and suggests that you haven't fully accepted that you're an alcoholic, or that you cannot drink safely, or that you're not like everybody else with a drinking problem, or that you only need to find a way to drink "normally," or that you're somehow different or smarter than other people who have problems with drinking...These are only a few of the different things that people here have acknowledged (or not) following a relapse since I've been on SR.

The playing field is leveled when it comes to addictive and compulsive drinking. Doesn't matter how smart we are (or tell ourselves we are), how much experience we've had, that we believe that we're a good person or a "nice guy," that we have a good job or career, that we have the perfect marriage or relationship...Nothing matters but the fact that none of us can drink safely.

I too was "curious" when I relapsed for three years following twenty five years of sobriety. But I wasn't at all curious (or certainly not enough) about the eventual outcome, only about whether or not drinking would provide me an escape from the burden of being a healthy and responsible human being. I was lying to myself, and I knew I was doing it while I was doing it. To be clear, I knew that my drinking would eventually take me to a very bad place, and what I thought I knew about it was nothing other than a best-case scenario. It was much worse, and not by a little bit. How could it have been otherwise? I think you're essentially confusing 'curiosity' with 'addiction'.

And, though it doesn't mean that they don't exist, I've never met someone who stayed sober based on the fact that they "would hate to start over." You must know that this is not nearly enough. I mean, you've read it thousands of times here that at some point, staying sober isn't about not drinking; it's about making significant changes that can only be done by becoming honest with ourselves, changes about (or an acknowledgement of) who and what we truly are or are becoming, and that have much less to do with external reality than many of us hope or imagine. Putting a fresh coat of paint on a broken-down car only makes it seem that everything is okay, and can be dangerous as well as deceptive.

"...on occasion I need the reminder that alcohol is a one way street to destruction."

I would argue that no, you don't. Again, you've already gone this route and, unless I'm missing something, you've nothing else to learn from drinking that you don't already know. "Forgetting" what we already know to be true may temporarily (though not in fact) relieve us from the responsibility of the consequences of our actions, but doing so only sets us up for future acts of bad faith. Once we know the truth about ourselves, it is impossible for us to unknow it.

We need to remain mindful until we learn to trust ourselves, usually for the first time in our lives. We've trained our minds to fool ourselves, to minimize the importance of certain things that we say and do, and to override both common sense and sanity. And we receive consent for doing so from all kinds of people and things in the world, willing co-conspirators to keep the fantasy of who and what we believe we are intact so that our own reality dare not encroach upon or displace the illusion. How do I know this? Because those are precisely the things we attempt to do with other people when we don't want them to see the truth of who and what we are, and not only when we're drinking.

After all you've been through, and all the damage that you've done, do you truly believe that you need more convincing?

MIRecovery

Unfortunately it never stopped me from trying

PurpleKnight

Happy Birthday Jeff!!