bunchie

Could someone with time being sober list a set of triggers, the other day I read to eat and stay full that hunger or empty stomach could be a trigger.i know for a fact that if I eat , I lose the craving for alcohol but I never realised it before until I read about it.
Thank you , Bunchie

2ndhandrose

this is a tried and true list and easy to remember

HALT
hungry
angry
lonely
tired

ScottFromWI

Just about anything can be a "trigger". I drank all day, every day, so pretty much being awake was all i need to to want a drink ;-)

2ndhand lists some of the very common things to check above, and that encompasses a lot. By a trigger, i'm assuming you mean something that happens that makes you want do drink. I think the real key is not necessarily recognizing the event that makes you feel that way itself, but your response t to it. As alcohlics, our default reaction to anyting that made us feel uncomfortable was to avoid/run away/hide by getting drunk. And of course that teaches us to not face those events, even after we quit drinking. So we have to learn a new default response to adversity- to face it front and center. And to accept that sometimes we are supposed to be scared...it's a natural response.

AnvilheadII

the two above posts

tomsteve

the only triggers i had were everything between the time i woke up in the morning and when i went to sleep at night, which meant everything.
when i was early in recovery, every...friggin...thing brought the thought of,"get drunk!"
i didnt let the thoughts control my actions and worked on learning how to live a life without alcohol- how to live life on lifes terms.

least

I drank all day, every day, so there were no 'triggers' for me. If I was awake, I was drinking. I had to learn new ways to amuse myself that didn't involve drinking.

Dee74

Scott's right - for me by the end I did everything with a drink so everything I did reminded me of drinking.

You can't stop that, but you can change your response to it...and in a little while that urge to drink will fade and pass

D

bunchie

Thank you, I realize now after readineveryones responses that triggers are basically my responsibility, there is no excuse to relapse from what I have been reading through the threads if I have a strong recovery plan. I am attending daily meetings , excercising like crazy, working quite a lot and it all seems good , but I am only 7 days sober so I know I am very new to all of this, but I felt as an alcoholic binge drinker for 35 years that there would be things I should try to avoid.

doggonecarl

There probably are things you should avoid.

In early recovery I avoided going to bars, concerts, outdoor festivals, holiday barbecues, pretty much anything centered around drinking and alcohol.

What I couldn't avoid were my emotions and feelings, which for years I sought to escape: anger, rage, fear, uncertainty, shame, discomfort, anxiety, sadness, longing, remorse, and so forth. Those were all triggers. And I had to learn how to cope with them without drinking.

lessgravity

Like the others have said, in the end anything can be a trigger. But I agree that in early sobriety it helps to examine what circumstances, thoughts, experiences are linked with the desire to have a drink.

For me, towards the end, it was the drink taking a drink - didn't matter what, who or where - I just wanted to drink.

Pay attention the voice that talks to you about drinking. Identifying that Alcoholic Voice has been integral to my sobriety. One of the remarkable things you realize is that it really is a sort of disembodied voice - it says "you should have a drink", "we really might as well get wasted" etc. See objectively how it plays games.

Looking back I see that I often returned to drinking, after a stretch of sobriety, because my AV would convince me that one day I was going to mess up a drink, it would say "there's no way you are doing this for the rest of your life, so let's get started and have drink now". The doubts that are normal and part of quitting drinking would be seized on by my AV and convince me that I might as well get back to drinking, I was just going to start drinking again anyhow.

MissPerfumado

I was a weekday evening and weekend drinker.

On weekdays, I have a pretty set routine and it was easy to see where my specific triggers were. They had to do with that feeling of coming home from work and needing to de-stress. So I had to choose other ways to relax and also changed my after-work routine.

On weekends, it was more of a free for all, but I had specific triggers too, like finishing a run, watching football on TV, tidying the house (which I find boring) etc. I had to make an extra effort doing those things, and stopped watching football altogether for a few months.

Over time I identified more triggers, like travelling and being in a hotel room on my own overnighting for work. Again, I made an extra effort around those times. Included them and my strategies in my plan.

In sum, my triggers had to do with the time of day and specific activities. Some were easy to identify by just running through my daily routine in my head, and others I detected over time as they came up. I still have a list of them written down.