Gottalife

The last time I drank, I had made it to 21 days sober. I could not see how I would ever get 21 days again. Then someone said "one day at a time" and I guess that is how I got through the early days until the steps took effect.

I stopped thinking about the days and got on with the program, and before I knew it my sponsor rang me and told me I was 90 days sober. I hadn't even taken a note of the date. The desire to drink had gone, much to my surprise.

I member a talk about motivation to do with sales, which I often think about in connection with alcoholism. There was "down motivation" which we got at, say, a sales conference. We are all together getting a good shot of positivity and we leave highly motivated. But the motivation is temporary and pretty soon it is time for another conference to get us going again. A bit like meetings based sobriety.

Then there is "Up motivation" which comes from the emotional rewards of the task or job or whatever it is we want to do. It might be job satisfaction, the feeling we get from happy customers, the thrill of achieving good results. It comes from the way we approach our work, our attitudes, and that inner sense of doing well at something, or doing something worthwhile. Up motivation can be permanent. It is an internal thing, rather than external.

In sobriety terms it may be how we approach life, what we do with opportunites to help others. There is that old spiritual test of doing something for someone else and not getting found out. Very hard to do.

It seems to me there are paralells to sobriety. Sitting passively in a meeting getting down motivation is one way to hang on, or taking action, getting on the firing line of life and experiencing real inner rewards seem to be the choices.

August252015

Like Mizzuno, I find routine action is critical. My path is AA and my habits stem from it- I do six things every morning (I write them down and cross them off - still, at 437 days, every single morning) and I go to 4-6 meetings a week, which is my "sweet spot."

The good habits I have formed for creating a wonderful life in sobriety anchor me through every part of my life - not just staying sober.

When I don't know what to do, I turn to my program and to my people support system and I know it will be ok.

You can do this - if you want to be sober more than you want to drink, as least said. And if you want to live, as others mentioned - I didn't know what was on the other side of drinking, but last Feb I knew I was DONE with the life I had so I would have to find out what would come.

Nyah30

Thankyou for all your replies, I think this forum will definitely help me on my path to sobriety, along with healthier routines and keeping busy doing just about ANYTHING but drinking. I'm on day one today again as you know because I stupidly drank 1 and a half bottles of wine last night. Paid big time for it today as my hangover was horrific most of the day 😩

Dee74

Joining this community really helped me Nyah. The support and good ideas really help.

You have to be prepared for a little disconcerting tho - the initial period is not fun, but you will get through it and need never have to go through it again

D