DesertGuy2112

Sorry for double posting today, but I'm sitting here in my aparment that is honestly the size of a closet thinking about everything that's been going on.

Has anyone here ever tried pulling a geographical? It worked for me for a while. I stayed sober 7 months this year. I am proud of that. 3 months in a rehab, the next 3 in sober living... Then I had enough of working a minimum wage job and not being able to pay my bills so on a whim I got in my truck and returned home. Big mistake.

Stayed sober a month when I moved in with my parents, but my old habits of being bored, lonely, isolated, depressed, not getting along with them, arguing all the time started to eat away at me...

Next thing I know I was hammered. Hiding alcohol in my room, listening to music in a blackout...

On a whim (always on a whim) I came back out West because I did get sober here. Now I am terrified. I'm alone, living in a dangerous area. I'm thinking about just packing up and leaving again...

My parents said I could come back, but I don't know if that's the best thing. I apologize for ranting, but I feel like I am losing my **** here.

wildflower70

I would suggest getting someplace safe, where you can work on being sober. If you have the option to live at home with your parents and pull things together...why not do it? Being in a crappy apartment in a bad area is scary and isolating.

Are your parents supportive, caring people?

suki44883

What kind of plan or program do you have to help you stay sober? Just trying to white-knuckle it is extremely difficult and generally doesn't work for long.

The old saying...Wherever you go, there you are, also comes into play. Changing geographic locations might possibly work if you have a plan and a job and a source of support. Rarely does just jumping into the truck and driving to a different location work in the long run.

DesertGuy2112

Thank you for the reply.

I'm very much considering it. I guess I could break my lease and pay the penalties on my CC I'm living off of... at the end of the day I still am in better shape financially than I was before. Or not, I dunno... I really mishandled a bunch of money I came into and now I am dead broke.

My parents have no desire to be supportive. They are old school and think your success is determined by how much money you have. I am the black sheep of the family and they will never let me forget it.

They have a rental property my mom said I could move back into, but I don't know if that is a good idea or not.

This whole situation sucks...

least

You can get sober anywhere, circumstances notwithstanding. It depends how badly you want to be sober. Do you want to be sober more than you want to drink? If so, then you'll be able to stay sober no matter where you are.

DesertGuy2112

I was very much involved in AA over the course of the last 3 years and it just hasn't worked. It hasn't. My sponsor has told me so many times that you aren't working the program or "you just don't want it." And that pisses me off more than anything because the last 7 months I put the footwork in. I completed all of my steps. Hell, my 4th step was 40 pages long. I made my amends. I even got a sponsee. I got on my knees and prayed every morning, night, throughout the day... I feel like I know the AA program quite well, but it just isn't something I wanna do again.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, right?

suki44883

There are many programs other than AA. Find one that you feel comfortable with and follow it. The main thing is to have support and people you can turn to when you feel a real urge to drink.

SMART Recovery: Smart Management and Recovery Training focuses on empowering the individual to sustain recovery.

LifeRing: This secular group provides a healthy network of peers focused on remaining abstinent from drugs and alcohol.

Women for Sobriety (WFS): This nonprofit, abstinence-based program is made up of women supporting each other in recovery.

SOS. (Secular Organizations for Sobriety): This nonprofit network is made up of secular recovery-based groups.

DesertGuy2112

My parents don't deserve the **** I give them and they always did bail me out of jail, but there has never been support, encouragement, nothing on an emotional level.

My dad never, EVER told me he was proud of me. Even after I gave up a career in law enforcement to go back to school just to please him... And he always used to say...

"You tell your mom and I "I love you" too much"

Ghostlight1

I cringe when I read that definition of insanity.
What if Tesla had given up his experiments with AC power? He tried the same thing over and over, with slight changes, and eventually succeeded.
A little tweaking maybe, but you get my drift.

As for the geographic cure, I tries that three times with no tweaking only the expectation, oh, I won't drink there.
I'm an alcoholic and am wherever I go.
I'm sorry AA didn't work out for you and it sounds like you were deep into it.

I live in a bad area in a large city and I see alcoholics of every stripe.
When active, I was one of them.
I didn't go too far into AA but I got the gist of it and it helps me immensely.
I actually got sober in another large city. No geographic cure, I had just drank myself to near death.

I was a low bottom drunk, too. It took a God of my understanding for me to get sober.
It's been nine and a half years now and when I see the poor souls still drunk it saddens me. It actually makes not want to drink all the more.
You'll have to decide for yourself, realistically, what you can do to get sober.
That's why I still come here. A reminder of where I came from and where I am now and maybe help someone else along the way.
Like your post has helped me.

Best to you whatever you decide. One things for sure, we'll always be here.

suki44883

There are almost always underlying reasons why we drink. That is why just white-knuckling it rarely, if ever, works for long...it doesn't address the things in our life that cause us to self-medicate our emotions.

I am sorry your parents aren't supportive, and that is another reason why you are probably better off not living with them. Many, MANY addicts had crappy families of origin. Many now distance themselves from their families for the reasons you just stated.

Find some type of a support group; SR is great online support, but most people need some type of face-to-face support, at least for a while. You can do this!

Dee74

Hey Desert Guy

I'm not in AA so I'm not even gonna go down that road - if you want to look at other methods, be they meeting based or not, there's more than a few

Here's some links to some of the main players, including but not limited to AA:

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...formation.html

I recommend you visit the Secular Connections forum if you think you may benefit from a non 12 step approach.

Use some, all, or none.

It's not a thing to get hung up on at all - the main thing is to get sober, whatever that takes and stay that way, no matter wha,.

Folks. Yep.

My folks never gave me praise or attention either...that was a rough thing to carry around, but I made my peace with it eventually.

I figured 40 years was enough time to carry around other peoples 'stuff' - and it is other peoples stuff

There's reasons why I never got that approval I was seeking and very little of it came from me.

I did accept in the end that my folks were not going to change and that I'd have to change the way I reacted.

Took a while to get to that point and took a while longer for me to change my reactions - but when I did, a lot of the heat in the relationship died down.

As for pulling a geographical - man, I was the one with the inner void. The booze and drugs were just my tools to try and fill that void.

I turned to booze and drugs to try and solve my issues but everywhere I went my issues came too.

In the end I got sober in the same house I got drank in every and all day for 5 plus years.

Not a lot changes externally, but I did, inside.

You can do this man - wherever you are

D

Kaily

Hi DesertGuy

I can't really offer any advice but I did want to say I understand how difficult it is to feel so alone and frightened.

It sounds like you are running scared from place to place... Maybe you are actually trying to run away from yourself.

Please think what you are really looking for before your next move and I hope you find it very soon.

Lookingforchange

I tried running away from my issues and alcohol abuse hoping I could just ‘leave them behind’. It didn’t work as I had to go with me-all the damage, emotion and trauma that was the underlying issue I hadn’t addressed. You can start fresh somewhere but you need to turn and address the big issues and get help for the addiction. That was Councelling for me and not ignoring my spiritual needs.

Jim1958

DesertGuy - I responded under your other thread. If you are in a dangerous area and you have the option to move into a rental property your parents own that might be the best way to go. I was in an apartment in LA but back then the neighborhood was not too bad. I dug myself out of debt but it was hard. You might be better off around family. When I was in LA I refused to ask for help from my parents and I almost starved. I came close to being homeless. If you don't have to go through that don't. My father never said he was proud of me either. We had a rocky relationship his whole life. But the past is the past and if you can get to a safe place that might help with stopping drinking. You can turn things around I am sure.

Cosima11

No one can tell you what's best, but I can say for me there was a correlation between my getting sober and the end of my running from place to place. Granted I'd backed myself into a corner/dead end and my options were limited, but I've grown more as a person (still have plenty to work on) by sticking it out through some of the toughest geographical circumstances of my life than I would have by moving back home or running back to a party city.

Hope you'll stick around here, there are a ton of caring people and you'll find there are also a lot of paths beyond AA.

entropy1964

I believe I read in your other thread that you fight with your Dad a lot. And you don't perceive they are being supportive even tho they allow you to move back home again. I do understand this....they support you with action, and then give you verbal crap when you get back home. They are probably just worried about you because you are having trouble launching. Its a bit of a 'parents worst nightmare' scenario. The best thing they could probably do is NOT let you return to home like they always do....its not working.

Can you move back into sober living? It sounds like that was having a good impact.

teatreeoil007

I’m a fan of healing atmosphere and decreasing stress... indeed partly why many of us drank was perhaps trying to cope with stress... if you don’t feel physically safe that’s highly stressing ... although I know it’s not realistic to expect no stress I think we can reduce stress... your personal safety is important...