PalmerSage

I don't keep a dry house but I could not imagine going into a liquor store and purchasing alcohol. I've only been sober one year and I am definitely not ready to do that yet.

MindfulMan

Everyone is different.

I have some leftover wine in my house from when I collected. I'm slowly serving it or giving it away.

My roommates have beer. I have asked them to keep open bottles of hard liquor in their area. That was a trigger to me, at this point though it probably wouldn't matter.

I couldn't do this before 6 months sober tho.

Kaily

This is an interesting thread and shows how different we all are.

I am just over 6 weeks sober and its taken me along time and many attempts to get this far. I don't feel secure at all.

Today I know I am going to be gifted two bottles of red wine. It has been worrying me all week. I know what I need to do with it but it is playing havoc with my AV. I am frightened to bring it home or leave it in my car. I am frightened to open it to enable me to throw it away. I have given it far too much thought which is a warning in itself.

I hope one day it will not be a problem, but now its a definite no no having it anywhere near me.

Meraviglioso

Kaily, I hear you. Often people suggest taking it straight home and dumping it. But that requires bringing it in to the privacy of your own home, opening the bottle and being faced with the smell and the temptation of an open bottle- not easy for some of us. Can you re-gift it right away? If it is at work you can accept the package and then when the gift giving part breaks up just "forget it" on a random desk somewhere or pass it on to another co-worker. If at a private event where it would be awkward to pass it off you can give it to someone on the way home, just hand it off to a stranger. Otherwise, drop them in a public bin or leave it in a shop doorway.

Dee74

Either throw them away, give them to someone else or leave them behind Kaily.

You're a non drinker now

D

Outonthetiles

I run a 100 percent dry house. If someone gives you booze as a gift, I suggest not regifting or dumping it down the sink...I always suggest taking it into the back yard and breaking the bottle with a big rock. That way you don't even get close enough to smell it.

DontRemember

who's gonna clean the glass up though? Also..if ya break the bottle you'll smell it..

Give it away or turn it down,is what I do..or..I toss it in the bar for guests,but that's me...I don't drink.

August252015

I think there are some gems worth considering that apply to everyone trying to get sober.

You do you.

Anna

Let's focus on the OP and not bickering with each other.

Thanks.

bexxed

My house isn’t dry. In the beginning that was hard, by which I mean the first few months. My gf is a normie craft beer person, it’s something she’s really into. I don’t understand because I’ve seen her decide she didn’t like one and dump it out, fail to finish one, and go days without drinking any just because there was no occasion to.

Now if her having booze around hadn’t been able to work for me, I suppose I would have had to change that, but that’s not how it ended up going down for me.

Around the time this post was made I also bought alcohol in a liquor store. I’m not sure it was the first time since I quit but it was definitely the first time buying in a bona fide liquor store. (Think I picked up wine for my gf parents when they visited last year, but from the grocery store). It was significant only because it was a chain liquor store, and I was buying a couple of six packs as requested from a last minute phone call while I was out doing errands for a work related holiday gathering, and I grabbed seltzer in there too, for me. The cashier asked me if I had a frequent flyers card, and I said no. He then asked me if I wanted one, to save money. I informed him that I don’t drink, and was just running an errand, that the seltzer was mine and I would probably just continue to buy that at the grocery store where it’s cheaper and the selection is better. He dropped the camaraderie and got very professional with me, and I noticed it. Said a little prayer of sorts for him, and for me, because it somehow struck a chord.

Anyway I think stories like this are probably not helpful to share because people can get too brash early on and read them and think that they can do it when they maybe can’t. It really depends on what your own personal brain is doing and how it responds, and what buying booze for someone else means to you. When I see people post that they went to this party or that wedding, and claim to have fun with smashed people, declaring victory, I sigh because usually those people end up relapsing, at some point.

For me, going into that store wasn’t pleasant or victorious but it also wasn’t hell on earth. I very much don’t want to drink, and I can’t. I can’t drink. I don’t drink. I’m powerless when I do, and for a long time afterward.

But the reason I think I relate to you here, LG, or at least to what I think you’re trying to convey, is that I am not a powerless person, and that’s what sobriety has allowed me to become. Sobriety didn’t give me power but it did allow me to heal inside so that I have it and I will not let it go. The concept of drinking is counterintuitive.

What I didn’t hear though and what is true for me, is that I know that I could get shaken and feel less on my Game. If that’s the case - and I start wanting to pop a can or taste the stuff or get blitzed or something then I will tell my gf to get the booze out, and there’s no way I would set foot in the store. I’d come here, take reprieve from whatever I need to, in order to protect my sobriety.

It’s not the same for everyone. What we have in common is that we all are one drink away from being back there, and the “there” in that sentence may look different on the outside, but it’s the same powerless hell on the inside for all of us. How we stay away from that hell, and what flip in our brain makes us want to return to it, is different though.

August252015

Thank you for this better expression of what I was trying to say in my second post (the first I reread and I think it was in more general "speak") - I use references from more general to more specific to me - whatever it takes for someone to be sober, working their program, is the ultimate thing. Self-reliance is what, for me, wouldn't be sustainable.

lessgravity

Gotta disagree with you strongly here Bex. Unless they're shared in some malevolent sense, it's my opinion that for many of us newcomers sharing stories exactly like this is crucial to the development of how we think about our sobriety and how we confront the world with that sobriety.

And in terms of self-reliance, for me, that's all I've got. The decision to pick up and place a bottle to my lips has always been, and will always be, mine and mine alone. Sure there's lots of support here and it can be found in many places. But I truly believe that no one is coming to save us.

My sobriety is still empowered when I repeat that line to myself. No one is coming to save me.