Reasons why I don’t want that first drink
 

I created a list for myself to read when I'm beginning to think that having a drink is a good idea. I thought I'd share. Please add to this list. I'm sure I left out a lot.

Reasons why I don’t want that first drink
• You WILL immediately crave another and another and another. It will not stop until you pass out.
• It only makes you feel good for an hour or two. Then it will make you feel like crap for days and weeks.
• You will need more and more and more to have the same effect
• When you’re not drinking, you feel the best you possibly can
• Imagine what it’s doing to your body if it takes weeks for your system to get back to normal.
• Your heart rate will elevate for days while your body is cleaning up your mess
• It doesn’t do your liver any good at all.
• It’s carcinogenic
• Heavy drinking means you are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s
• It’s empty calories. It makes you fat.
• It shortens your life
• When you’re drinking you’re totally numb to what is happening around you.
• You will forget all kinds of stuff that happened while you were drunk
• It sucks the life out of you. You will have no drive to do anything until it’s out of your system.
• It’s too stressful trying to hide it.
• You will struggle to stay awake.
• You will struggle to hide the fact that you don’t remember anything
• You will worry about your secret stash being found
• You will worry about forgetting where you hid stuff
• It will make you depressed. Deeply depressed.
• It gives you a short temper
• It makes you mean
• It makes you do stupid things
• It keeps you from focusing on anything
• It’s expensive
• It hurts those around you

I might overlap with some stuff you wrote goose but i want to write it anyway.
Great op and thread.
V.

- because it will inevitably end up in the massive night sweats coming back.
- because once you reawaken the demon its harder than ever to put him back to sleep again
- beacuse its a pschological and physical battle, the fact of lifting one drink to your mouth has monumental consqueneces
- because you have been there so often before you should know by now its nuts
- no matter how you feel today, good or bad, drinking will only very temporarily mask it but not resolve anything
- because there are other ways of letting off steam
- because you have people who love you and respect you and believe in you
-the first drink will eventually also be your last one
- when your on deaths door and you realise you lived a life without love not real it will be the biggest and last regret you will ever have
- ...

Excellent idea. All those listed. Towards end of my binges the days of sucidal thoughts dark depression hopelessness and self loathing. The anxiety and worry and obsessive thinking. Anger resentments all my defects magnified a 1000 more. Don’t pay pick up and life gets better each day and even bad days are better than the best drunk

Yes all of the above applied to me too. But my alcoholic mind easily dismissed it with the thought "this time will be different". I woke each day with the best of reasons to stay sober, and ended each day drunk. For an alcoholic of my type, there was more involved in getting sober than I thought.

Actually, it was a source of enormous frustration and despair knowing I needed to stop, and yet unable to carry it off.

I found or can still find when I slip up, that about 3 hrs into sleep for the night everything goes to hell in a handbag. Sweats, cold, cramps, insomnia. That and all those other reasons is why i would prefer to live sober.

Everytime you leave your house you could kill someone. Or yourself.

"Yes" to all you said, and one more that means everything to me - Being a positive role model for children.

I don't want that first drink because it activates an enormous thirst in me that cannot be satisfied regardless of how much alcohol I drink. It is like black hole.

My behaviour which I have worked so hard on, would be back in the gutter. All my self respect and dignity gone.

No thank you.

Absolutely fantastic list, goose.

I suspect that I will Bumpimg this,thread often.

Indeed.

Love this thread.

I agree with all of them. I wish there was a way to permanently pin this thread to page 1.

Thx for bumping SoberLeigh.

I find that even the first one doesn't sound good anymore.

since it took the early stages of liver disease for me to wake up I just keep it at:

I don't want to die like that.

My mom was a heavy drinker and smoker, started with lung cancer but I watched her die of liver failure, spent the last two weeks with her in the hospital, and I don't want my wife to see me like that.

I don't want to hate myself again.

Bump, for my sake as well as anyone else.

On a pure vanity level, I like my hair to stay on my head and not all over the hairbrush.

Because going to bed sober is sooo good..

Because I don't want to go back to the time when I woke up every day disappointed I was still alive.

Well laid out:scoregood