Dee74

great update Ringside - glad to hear it

D

PalmerSage

Thank you so much for this post, your comments and the replies are so incredibly helpful to me (sober 2 and a half years but the AV is occasionally alive and well). Stay strong and keep posting here, in addition to your personal connections - this is the one resource that never shuts down!

Fallow

I hope that you enjoyed your time at the meetup 🙂

I think it is great that you realize you would not be moderating if you decided to pick up a drink. I have a lot of problems with this topic because my ratio of getting drunk to not drunk isn't too bad. But ultimately getting drunk is getting drunk and if I am drinking it's likely that I will be drunk sooner than later. With all the lovely consequences.

I have thought for years that if I was a worse drinker it would make staying sober easier because I would know 100% that I would be wasted as soon as I started. Instead I end up binging from time to time which might be worse. Who knows.

I am still digging deeper into the question about wanting to be sober more than I want to drink. Thank you for your response it got me thinking. I still have booze in my house. I will probably give most of it away soon. But my wife drinks so there will always be something available.

The thing is whenever I relapsed in the past it seemed to be a calculated decision at that time. I certinly reasoned that it was. Every time I started drinking I went out to the bar instead of drinking what was at my house anyhow.

Writing this out though I am realizing that as I went through the relapse process I must have wanted to drink more than I wanted to stay sober at that time. Probaby a lot more . At some point the switch flipped inside of me but I didn't know that had happened. I need to watch out for that.

fini

Fallow, wanting to be sober more than wanting to drink is a good true-sounding thing.
personally, i think it confuses or meshes up two very different “wants”: longterm and short term.
in any given moment, we may well want to drink more than we want to be sober.
having the short-term ”wannawannawannaDRINK!” and not acting on it because we want the longterm sobriety-want is a different balance altogether.
what i want in any given moment is not really relevant as far as what i want in the long term.

timi0000

Ringside, I'd like to share with you what really helped me. The 2 things that enabled me to drop my addiction: 1. turning my life over to my Higher Power 2. Becoming more loving and helpful towards people.

Everyday I reaffirm that I am giving my life over to God, that I want him to come into my life, that I want to have a relationship with Him.

Becoming more loving started by posting positive messages on post it notes and leaving them in bathrooms and other public places. And then everyday I think of what I can to help someone that day or make their life easier. It has produced amazing results for me.