lexilynn

And what are some of the ways that you dealt with them?

Ghostlight1

Good question.
I've been sober five years nine months and I somehow still think about drinking because the world is full of it. People who drink, TV commercials and driving past liquor stores and bars.
If I see a TV commercial for something I drank, I can actually taste it. It's weird. But it makes me ill.

That's one way I deal with it. Let those who drink do the drinking for me.
I call up the memories of what drinking did to me, and I don't have to look very far to see what it's doing to those people.
I remember the days wasted hungover. I play the tape through to the end of what would happen if I drank again. It isn't pretty. I was a bad drinker. For twenty years.

Drinking is a part of me, just as the rest of my past is. It'll always be with me.
I don't know if it will ever go away.

DolAndel

I'm afraid that "triggers" will keep us on our toes for the rest of our lives. I'm still early in recovery and can't attest to the duration of the initial obsessive thinking. I'd like to think that sobriety will become more about trigger management and less about enduring obsessions, in time. Have you given much thought to potential triggers for your drinking?

I've started out by simply trying to distract myself through the cravings. Delilah posted something that really got me thinking about this though. Mere distractions can turn into a "wheels spinning" situation that could exacerbate the hopelessness of one's situation. In light of this, I'm trying to get better at picking healthy/productive distractions. I was also exercising as a distraction during cravings until I rebroke my foot this weekend.

Dee74

I can't give you a date but more and more I found myself getting through tough situations or awkward feelings and then thinking afterwards 'I never thought about drinking...huh'.

It's my experience now that very very few things 'trigger' me anymore.

I think that's because I have a lot of tools to deal with things now, a strong support base, and a lot of successful sober history to fall back on.

The last time I thought about drinking was in a period of intense physical pain and insomnia - one night at 3am my thoughts turned to drinking...with the morning came sanity and I never thought about it again.

Eventually, not too long after, I found a medical solution to my pain

If I ever find myself in severe pain again that will be one of the succes stories I'll lean on.

I really believe we can change and grow and the things that affected us as active alcoholics can no longer hurt us

D

FeelingGreat

it took me around a year, and after that I it gradually left my consciousness. Now I rarely crave, except if I see a flute of champagne, and I've learned to look away very quickly.

EndGameNYC

Not that anyone has said this, but assigning a specific amount of time or a singular event as the impetus for moving past the obsession to drink doesn't seem at all natural to me, and wasn't what happened. The word 'triggers' doesn't mean anything to me. I drank because I wanted to drink, and that hasn't been true for some time since I got sober.

In the process of building a life that made it easier for me to stay sober and more difficult to even think about drinking, things changed dramatically. Not necessarily quickly, but certainly in very important ways.

Time wouldn't have been enough for me. I needed to change significant aspects of my life, including my own thinking. Without real-life support, I'd just be someone who doesn't drink anymore, but has very little to show for it.

lexilynn

Sorry to hear about your foot.,
And no, I don't talk in "triggers". The rehab I went to at a time never talked of triggers and I didn't even hear of that word before (besides on a gun, haha) until I heard some use it on a site. The rehab I went to did preach this though, nobody can *make* us drink, nothing can *make* us drink. " Triggers" was never a topic used at the rehab nor heard of there.

entropy1964

"Trigger" is an interesting topic. I tend to agree that really anything is a trigger if I want it to be. That being said, I do have 2 specific triggers but I hope by doing the steps and counseling I will lessen their power.

If I stay honest with myself, learn to control my emotions (ie, try to avoid anger, resentment, frustration), let go of things I can't control, stay open and willing, I think of alcohol far less.

lexilynn

Thanks, but "Triggers" is not the topic.

entropy1964

Uh ok. Drinking will 'come to mind' then pretty much anytime one thinks of it. Passing a liquor store, posting here, etc. If its not a 'trigger' per se then I wouldn't personally be asking about it. When drinking 'comes to mind' for me, but its not a 'trigger' to drink, I don't give it any notice.

EndGameNYC

I never heard of 'triggers' before I started working in a residential treatment program in the Bronx in 1990, when I was sober for seven years. Though I understood what people were talking about, it didn't fit with my experience.

It's only natural that certain people, places and things will awaken thoughts and feelings attached to drinking, but that's a much different thing than picking up a drink as a consequence of what I'm thinking and feeling at any given moment.

When I knew during early sobriety that I wanted to drink, and that I planned to do so on some level, it would have been convenient to use a person or an event as a rationalization as to why I drank. It's a process that also provides the illusion of protecting my self-esteem since I'm not responsible for triggers that present themselves to me, particularly when I'm not looking for them in any obvious way.

Rather tan ask a patient why he drank -- and I avoid asking "Why?" to anyone -- or what made him drink, or what triggered him to drink, I might instead ask, "What did you imagine would happen before you spent the weekend with your family (of heavy drinkers) in their beach house?" More often than not, I don't ask anything at all. We have a number of different ways of telling the whole story, especially when that's the last thing we consciously intend to do.

Dee74

Lexi I appreciate you might not have heard of, or been taught about, triggers...but for a lot of us, the themes 'drinking never coming to mind' and 'triggers' *are* inter related.

Not everyone's experience is the same, and not everyone description of meaning will be the same either - but it's possible to find common ground, surely?

A good discussion should help us all grow and learn new things.

D

lexilynn

Sorry, I don't understand your riddle sorry. Perhaps its because I got zero sleep last night. Perhaps its for the better, I'm not understanding your remark.

What I do know is nobody is responsible for your drinking but you, as the for me, and all others. Just as it was said in the rehab that nobody is responsible for your feelings.

Again, The rehab that I went to didn't talk of "triggers".

Soberpotamus

Drinking has never stopped coming to mind for me. However, it comes to mind much less frequently than ever before. I did a 20-day IOP, and then individual counseling for a few months for aftercare. I attended aftercare for a little over a year at the facility where I did IOP. Because I was in 'recovery,' drinking was always on my mind, but I was learning how to cope by not drinking.

SR is my only meeting place these days. Drinking is still 'on my mind' because I read about daily.

When did drinking stop coming to mind as a legitimate coping mechanism? Right away. The day I chose to never drink again. That's not to say I haven't had moments on occasion when an image or a memory flood my brain, briefly, and I recognize that as my brain wanting it's old coping mechanism, in the 'reward center' of the brain, as well as what they call 'euphoric recall' which is the tendency for us to only remember the good things or benefits of drinking instead of seeing it holistically as a raging, insatiable addiction.

Same as EndGame on triggers. Triggers were everywhere or nowhere. Cravings to drink (internal) mean anything at all can be a trigger (external).

Drinking as no longer an option, removing any ambivalence in the mind, for me, was the turning point.

lexilynn

OK, I'll let you guys have it.

Being in a thread speaking if "triggers" isn't good / healthy for *me*.

Soberween

The two year mark for me.

DolAndel

Haha yea the term trigger has been used in a lot of different situations and I'm still trying to figure out how much validity there is to the notion myself. The only reason I mention it here is that even something as simple as a beer commercial on TV can remind us of our past.

I guess to ask it another way, what makes ya want to drink? Are there any trends? These are rhetorical questions that you shouldn't necessarily feel compelled to answer here, but it seems like for many folks the quicker we can wrap our minds around the things that stress us out, the quicker we can recover.

Hope ya have a good week!

Dee74

It's very hard to try and control the tangents or the outcome of a discussion on a site such as this Lexi....in fact I'll go so far as to say impossible.

I'm not sure why a discussion of trigger would not be good or healthy for you, but I accept you feel that way and believe it to be true.

You can use the ignore function, or you can always leave the thread?

D

lexilynn

And just as I said... Have at it. That means I will no longer be in this thread, at least.

And idk what you mean by you don't know why speaking in triggers is unhealthy.

Nobody is responsible for anybody else's drinking nor drugging , as I have heard the term "trigger" being thrown around in sentences, blaming others.
Example(s)?: "Well he triggered me!".
" I can't be around that person because they "trigger" me".

Anyway, have fun, I'm done.

MLD51

I'm not sure thoughts of drinking will ever stop. However, the thoughts are different now for me - I see alcohol everywhere, I go to social events where there is drinking - so naturally, I think about drinking. But it's more like - I could drink, if I wanted to. But I simply don't want to. I went to a party on Saturday - I was the only one there not drinking. There was alcohol everywhere. It just didn't appeal to me. I had a lovely time - met new people, had some great conversations, lots of laughs. I left the party thinking - "I regret nothing I said or did, and I won't feel like crap tomorrow." One of the biggest rewards of sobriety. I never think of drinking as a reward now.