Mags1

Welcome to the Weekenders

Surely.....I’m okay to have a drink now?....After all this time sober!......
I thought this the first time I got sober. I was confident I’d become a sober, sensible person, in control of my thoughts and actions. So surely one or two drinks would be ok.
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..I had thoughts that I was a ‘normie’ drinker..

..I was an adult after all and I’d proved I could do it!..

If you’ve had these thoughts and perhaps forgotten why you decided to stop drinking, please re-think your thoughts.

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Remember why you want to stop or have stopped already..... I could write a story of why I did and I think, perhaps you could too?



If this is your first weekend sober, or many, come join us for support and chat...as we know the weekends can be a struggle sometimes.

Hodd

andyh

thanks Mags, I'm in.

good topic - I'll have to think of something profound to post later.

have a good day everyone. sorry you're having a tough time Kaily. drinking would be a good way of making it worse though.

Dee74

Thanks Mags

I always share not to confuse abstinence with control - my self and my life have improved dramatically because I've committed to abstinence, not because I've somehow learned control.

If I took a drink today, I believe I'd be back in the hole, as bad as I ever was, or worse.

Luckily I have no desire to do so

D

Mags1

I remember reading your words Dee, a while back, I’d hoped you’d say them again.

Tetrax

I still think denial and cravings are the two biggest weapons of anyone's Addictive Voice. Recognising thoughts as such may be helpful.

MyLittleHorsie

I didn't clue in this was weekenders. Duh, blond moment!
This weekend we are cutting and baling hay. The reinforcement for me of alcohol being a reward and necessary in social situations was, as a young person in my late teens, when I got to join in for a beer after working. So I will stay vigilant this weekend. AND hydrated with anything but booze!

Strugglingto

It has taken me five years, three hospital stays and three emergency detoxes to realise I can't drink drink like a normal person. Numerous losses, work wise, friendship wise, relationship wise, and financially wise to come to that conclusion. And I am on day eight from the last drink.
I am an award-winning journalist for ****'s sake. I am 37 and right now I am on the brink of ruin.
This is not to say I won't have the same thoughts as you. I know I will. BUT I am trying not to. Shopping outside of alcohol sales hours. If absolutely necessary to go, I treat those lines of shelves stocked with bottles as like a person who wronged you in the past and you cross the street to avoid them.

theVman31

Thanks again Mags.
I really enjoy your OP's.
Interesting topic moving forward nicely.
Got trapped by that only too often.
Control your sickness and commit to abstinence oh yes.
After 10+ years maybe you can become totally indifferent to alcohol. I say 10+ years minimum. Probably come a time when you no longer consider this substance as the object of pleasure or persecution.
Don't get trapped.
Peace to you all.

STDragon

Hi StrugglingTo.

Thanks Mags, yet another great opening post!

I am firmly comitted to my sobriety. It was tough for me to finally come out and say "I will never drink again". I found freedom and I can't give that up for "just one".

kk1k5x

Shotgun?
Wow, 10 posts in. Great topic.

The voice is always there. Because it's so reasonable to drink, right?

In my late teen years, I was of how I could control matters. I lost 60 lbs as a teenager, not because someone told me to, but because that's what the heck I decided to do. And I put up and overcame every obstacle that came along. And acheived my goal (somewhat). And then it got to my head - I've always had an issue distinguishing between things that can be controlled and things that can't, as well as things that ought to be controlled or ought not to. As long as I hadn't had that first drink (and I mean the very first one), I was basically okay, although I could have used external help in dealing with those control issues.

After I had that drink, it deluded me into thinking I could control things that can't be controlled and there was no more should/shouldn't discussion at all.

I don't want to go back to that delusion - I want to learn how to recognise the differences and place my energies accordingly.

Strugglingto

Hello to you STDragon.
I think no matter how much we try to convince ourselves it is " just one" we all know it isn't. It is something I knew from when I admitted I had a problem. But still I tried that "just one" and low and behold it leads you back to the point of not caring again. And once you don't care then you've just rewound the tape and right back to where you started

dpac414

Mags1

Dpac, yeah! Backseat driver sounds good, more the merrier.

kk1k5x

As long as you surrender any potential claim to any stereo rights :P

Bluetooth ruined stereo rights...

DriGuy

I like this because it sounds like a paradox, and everyone is drawn to a paradox, but it isn't really a paradox either.

The primary goal in recovery is not to achieve control, but to rid yourself of any NEED to control. Struggling not to drink is and attempt to control, but as we all know, it is a most unsatisfying losing proposition in alcoholism.

Recovery is not about spending the rest of your life engaged in that battle. One of my big wake ups when I got to AA was to see that this wasn't a room full of people struggling to control their drinking, which was what I pictured and dreaded before I got there. Some still were struggling of course.

But the inspiration comes from observing those who are no longer struggling. That struggling stopped for them after a short time in recovery. For them, control was only necessary to jump start their abstinence. Once abstinence is achieved, control transforms from a struggle to simply making thoughtful choices. I suppose those thoughtful choices require a modicum of control, but they are more like intellectual choices, rather than emotional battles.

Before I realized this, I confused abstinence with control. And it held me back because I knew I was not capable of controlling my drinking but for a day or two, and none of those short spells ever felt like victory.

A comment I heard long ago comes to mind: "If you are struggling to control your drinking, you're not in control of your drinking." Obviously, you need to find a better way, which turns out to be abstinence.

biminiblue

I've told my story a bajillion times on SR, but the tl;dr version is:

I became an alcoholic by age 18. I utterly messed up my life and negatively affected a lot of other peoples' lives in very short order with my drinking. I quit in my early thirties - on my own - it was beyond Time to do so.

Fast forward to my early fifties when too much (and not enough) life happened and one day I picked up a drink. No real thought behind it, I just did.

Things were fine - one drink here and there for a while. Then two. Then more often.

Then as it always will...



It may have taken a while, but down I went into the misery and swamp of it all - AGAIN



Powerless, unmanageable. Yep, that.

lunar

Thanks, Mags.
Count me in, please.

lunar

Wow, bimini.
Scary reality.
I feel it and have been there.
Thank you for reminding.

MLD51

I'm in!

Yeah - control vs. abstinence. Very interesting topic. I harbor zero illusions that I can control my drinking. I USED to think I could, but over the years, I gathered ample evidence that in fact, I cannot. I like to control things. It's just how I'm wired. admitting that there was something in my life I couldn't actually control in any way, shape, or form, was a major step for me to take. I took it willingly when the time came, because my life was such a mess that I was losing control of LOTS of things. That just couldn't continue. So, oddly enough, I thought that letting go of the idea of controlling alcohol would allow me to go back to controlling other things that were slipping away from me. (does that make any sense at all?)

A strange thing happened, though. Letting go of that illusion of controlling my drinking led to a deep understanding that I can't control LOTS of things. That serenity prayer thing? I struggled with that for a while. But somewhere along the line it started to sink in. Wow - how freeing it is to not try to control things that I can't. Figuring out which things those are is still a bit of a struggle, but I'm getting much better at it. Life is much nicer when I'm not banging my head against the wall in a futile attempt to control things I have no business trying to control. The added wonderful benefit of this is that it makes abstinence so much easier. I can't control my drinking or lots of other things, so the best move by far is to walk away. Less frustration in life. Less stress. Stress was a big trigger for my drinking. Simple, really. Things still cause me stress, don't get me wrong. But my response is no longer to try to swim upstream and alleviate all stress. Feel the stress, think about what I can do about it, if anything, do those things, or do nothing and wait for things to work out the way they are supposed to.