keeppushing

Hi all,

Question: How would you go about doing this: "Cultivate continued acceptance of the fact that your choice is between unhappy drunken drinking and doing without just one small drink."?

Is it as simple as repeatedly thinking it/saying it/writing it repeatedly every day?

Thanks,

KP

least

In early sobriety I was actively "not drinking". It occupied my every thought. But somewhere near the end of the first year, it just became the norm to not drink and I didn't have to think about it.

I don't know when acceptance became a normal part of my emotional awareness, it came upon me gradually.

Gratitude is a big part of my acceptance. I know full well that the blessings I am thankful for will be lost if I drink again. I am so aware of my blessings and don't want to take the remotest chance of losing them.

Anna

No, you don't have to say it every day forever. Not drinking becomes part of your life. And, to continue recovery, making changes in your lifestyle to support your recovery, result in you not thinking about 'not drinking'. Instead you begin to enjoy life.

August252015

That phrasing is a little strange to me, but maybe my answer is aligned -

I simply told myself that there had to be a way better life - SOMETHING else- than the hell I was in. That thought quickly became reflexive acceptance that '"rather than have anything to drink and what I know THAT brings, I can have absolutely any and everything else."

Dee74

Coming here and reading other peoples stories and re reading my own was great reinforcement for me accepting the idea that I was an alcoholic and always would be;

and that its the first drink that does the damage - not the last.

Its not something I still have to internalise. It's with me now - for good

D

january161992

page 449

"And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation -- some fact of my life -- unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.

"Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes."

Berrybean

As an AAer I don't need to say it to myself every day. Each meeting I go to I hear others sharing bits of my story, which helps me to remember that we also share that common problem - alcoholism. Every time I help a newcomer and see and hear the horrible combination of despair and fear and bewilderment and shame that they are experiencing, then i remember exactly where I never want to go back to. So, sometimes I remember, and other times I am reminded. Reading and posting here regularly does the same in many ways as well.

But a bit like we learn those trickier multiplication tables, or verb lists at school, initially it is an act of remembering, but eventually they are just facts we know - I think there is also an element of that involved. When we finally fully conceed that we are alcoholic and cannot take that first drink safely, then we don't have to keep working on remembering as we do at first when it seems yo go against our very fibre to not take a drink (after all, that's what most of us did for years or decades before - its gonna take a bit of unlearning). Clancy likens it to learning to ride a bike. At the beginning it seems pretty much impossible. Balancing, steering, fighting the urge to get off, having the balls to get back on when we occasionally fall off or crash or get real scared - all at once. And No one can do it for us. No matter how much they love us. They just have to watch us struggle with it ourselves. But after a while the act of riding that bike isn't scary or even that difficult. As long as we don't do anything stupid or decide to pop an experimental stick in our own spokes and go back out for another go.

It will get easier.

BB