Day 18 and no plan - HELP!
 

Hi everyone 😊
So I’m on day 18 sober now, which is great, but I’m starting to get conscious that I haven’t got a proper recovery plan in place.

I looked at AA and there are no daytime meetings in my area. I’m a single mum and can’t do evenings. I cannot take my daughter to a meeting either, for a variety of good reasons. 1.) she will tell her father who she sees every other weekend and he will start legal action or social services involvement to try to take her from me. 2.) I am a governor at her school in a tiny community and if she says anything at school, I will be dropped and my name will be mud, with her likely being bullied about it.

The online AA meetings I haven’t had any luck in finding, they seem to be based in Finland. I’m in UK.

I can’t access help through my GP as I’ve previously been diagnosed Bipolar type 1 and chuck alcoholism into that little bucket of ****, and again social services will be called. (Can I just stress there’s NEVER been any care issues with my child past or present.) I’m also unmedicated and they look pretty dimly on that too. (I couldn’t cope with the meds)

I joined “in the rooms” but can’t seem to find a UK online meeting.

I feel that this forum is great and I check in daily, however I am reminded a lot from reading that I need a program or plan of some sort to prevent relapse and stay sober long term, which is my goal.

Don’t know what to do I’m running out of options and ideas. Hope you guys can help! So far I’ve just been doing it alone, pure determination and that’s it, but feel it’s safer if I have more support long term. Thanks for reading.

Have you read through this sticky:

https://www.soberrecovery.com/forums...at-we-did.html

Welcome!

Congratulations on Day 18!

The link Carl posted has lots of information on various recovery programs and lots of ideas that our members used to recover.

And, SR is a great option for staying connected with recovery-minded people. So, I hope that you continue to read and post.

Good for you to be at day 18 with no plan in place, that's some admirable determination! Not being able to go to AA meetings and being diligent about confidentiality must be stressful in addition to just staying sober. If you can't get live group support, have you thought about using the chat feature here? It's not face-to-face, but it's still live interaction. And you could possibly find a virtual friend to support each other in times of weakness. I don't have a "plan" in place, per se, but I have contingencies to fall back on if I feel my willpower and resolve waning. Perhaps that is the way to go in your situation? Also, just as a thought as far as your bi-polar. Please don't give up on meds. I think you may just haven't found what works for you. My adult son has it too, and it took trial and error before he got the right meds. I wish you the best of luck.

I’ve been actually better off meds, than on them. I’ve tried about 25 different medications and in the end my psychiatrist agreed that the side effects for me were too great in comparison to the disease itself. For example I got tremors like I had Parkinson’s disease, incredible weight gain (went from uk size 4-6 to a UK 14 in a matter of weeks without changing diet) crushing drowsiness and worsening depression. To mention a few!! So with the doctors support I came off all medications about a year ago now. I did smoke weed and that helped, but in the interest of sobriety I have banned myself from all psychoactive substances, even prescription benzodiazepines and herbals.

I hadn’t actually checked out the chat feature, that’s a really good idea, will have a look now - thank you! I hope your son is also on the path to recovery with bipolar as I know first hand that is one hell of a ride xx

Thank you. Going to make a nice pot of tea and grab my notebook and digest all on the thread 😊❤️

This is a great link on making recovery action plans :)

https://www.soberrecovery.com/forums...ery-plans.html

D