Andagain

Hey there soberfriends

So, I've been drinking heavily for about ten years and I did drugs before that for about five. So overall 15 years of my life has just been a blur. Even when I stopped drinking for a while before I replaced it with drugs.

In all honesty... I've not been paying much attention to the world around me and one strange thing that's hit me is I don't feel like I recognize the world I currently occupy.

Did anyone else feel that sense of detachment, that psychologically I pretty much expected things to be the same as the world in the 90/s start of the millennium and it's not that things have changed its that I think people, culture, at least where I live, has changed so significantly I can't really relate to a lot of what is happening around me.

I don't know, I have anxiety and depression and I know these sorts of feelings are actually a pretty normal symptom.

Am I just being strange here? Or is this something any other long term addicts felt?

heavencanwait

Yes yes and yes. I think most of us would like to go back to a time where are addicition started. That was a time where we feel we were living a life before the hell broke loose. The good news is we can still get that old feeling back in a sense. We can make great new memories from this day forward, each and every day. AV is a monster living in our heads. We need to realize it is just that...and fight the demon. It can be done. I drank for over 30 years and quit cold turkey, solo, 61 days ago. You can do this...

Maudcat

I can relate, Andagain, but for different reasons.
1) the current political climate and what I see as a rise in haters.
Of everyone who doesn't look like them.
What happened in Charlottesville should not be happening here.
My opinion, only.
2) opiates have hit this country hard!
I don't know anyone who hasn't been affected by drug use, theirs or someone else's.
I have 4 grandchildren.
I worry.

Andante

Yes, I have experienced this too.

I drank alcoholically for about 12 years. During that time, the world changed rapidly around me, but my ability to adapt to the changes was impaired, and I was too dazed and preoccupied to notice them in any case.

Now that I've been sober for a while and my head is a bit clearer, I'm aware of how far behind the curve I got, and I don't think I'll ever catch up.

What I perceive as fundamental sea changes in the way people interrelate and communicate (in large part due to the Internet and social networking) has left me feeling like a different species, or like I'm trying to participate in a game in which everyone but me has been issued the rule book.

Navigating a changing world sober can be a daunting challenge, but I'd much rather be painfully aware of my shortcomings than bumbling along in an ignorant daze, falling ever further out of touch.

DontRemember

So true! I've been blinded by booze/drugs&relationships for so long that I look around now,with sober eyes and think "where'd those 10-15years go?".. Crazy feeling! like waking up from a time capsule.