Zevin

It WILL get better!

Gabe1980

Zevin

Don’t forget....alcohol makes our brains depressed.
Whatever you are going through right now—-Drinking is making it feel 100 times worse.

Zevin

I really enjoy reading your updates here.
It sounds like you’ve had a BIG change in your job!
Don’t let that throw you off the rails. I HATE changes in my life.

Gabe1980

Thank you....yeah, having more free time is kinda backfiring on me. I just need to pull it together x

MaximusD

BABM does have a point. Sometimes a really bad hangover is just what I need to get back on track. I feel for you Gabe. I have been where you are now many times. It can be very hard to finally stop but what is even harder is knowing that you have to but you can't. It is maddening. Again, kudos to you for staying and trying. you will get it again!

Gabe1980

Sorry BABM I'm bit sensitive. I know you are just trying to help me and I appreciate it x

Gabe1980

Thanks Max.....I am going to get it this time. You are doing do well, well done x

Philemon

Hi Gabe, this time I stopped, my life has just returned to a boring normal. There are decisions being made for me, my family and the world I don't agree with and I find that hard.
I have to live with the utter what sometimes seems to me like the pointlessness of life, I find that hard.
My daughter is having stress and hassle, which I now feel for her fully, I find that hard.
My youngest son, whom has just resumed contact after 18 months of ghosting me, is back in touch (a few weeks after I stopped). Not so slowly drinking himself to death and can sometimes be very "challenging" for me, especially when he drags up all of my both real and imagined transgressions when he is drunk. Things that I used to beat myself up to the point of drinking about and then some of his more fanciful inventions that I get angry about because they just didn't happen but are being held against me.

My point is, I can live through this, like a grown up and maybe an opportunity will crop up where I can improve some things. Maybe it won't and I will just have to sit through things until they pass in whatever way they play out.
What's the alternative? Going back to drinking again?
What will that do?
It will give me a couple of hours of pleasure, more hours where I just am not anywhere, lost in oblivion, neither happy or sad or worried, or anything, just one of the living dead really. What a waste of life. Maybe I would even choose that at times. If it came free, but it doesn't come free. There is a high price to pay. It comes in the form of a messed up brain chemistry that produces unbelievable anxiety, worse than any experienced naturally. Massive doomladened depression that is untreatable because of the drinking and a helplessness that is practically unbearable.

My son who drinks has been saying to me "I drink because of A.B or C" But I can see ways, if he didn't drink, he could do something about A,B or C or at least cope with them. But he can't do anything at the minute because the drink has disabled every natural survival and healing mechanism he has, especially his natural coping mechanisms.

I know I've been to places before with help about my own drinking and they said "you are using drink to cope, you need better coping strategies" Which I found didn't ring true. I had coped with much much worse stuff in the past and didn't drink, so of course I had coping strategies!. And why did I start drinking when I was at my happiest? Why did I want to drink for any occasion, including happy ones?
Because I had gotten myself addicted to the feeling of the initial high the substance gave and my brain now craved it, even if I wasn't physically addicted.

It comes down to a stark choice. A lot of people, my son included, don't want to give up, no matter what the price they have to pay. And it's his life to choose that.
A lot of people do want to give up, not prepared to pay the price anymore, no matter what the perceived rewards.
But it's a choice. There is no can't. Just a (in my case) " I wanted to drink without the bad consequences"

Which is not possible.

Wishing you all the best Gabe

Philemon

PS Can I just add, that the pointlessness I sometimes perceive life to be, I put down to my Beast. IT finds life pointless now, because IT only exists to drink, but I don't!

Gabe1980

Thank you. I'm sorry, I am too burst to reply properly but thank you xx

Philemon

You are not broken Gabe xx
If you are on a bender and the craving to keep on drinking is super strong..just try not drinking for even a few hours, that seemingly overwhelming craving and urge will dissipate

Fusion

How are you feeling today, Gabe? I eventually realised that regardless of how I felt (hungry, angry, lonely, tired, bored, stressed, happy, excited, frightened, scared, nervous, anxious) I had to mentally dissociate all those feelings, from the thoughts of a drink. The thoughts of a drink, which I call my AV, uses off my feelings as an excuse, to suggest a drink would 'help'.

I can never stop feelings arising - but I can notice and ignore the "thought of a drink", as simply the AV - the 'addiction loop in my brain', and therefore 'not me' who wanted to stop drinking. I've found the natural process of neuroplasticity, lessens the frequency of the addiction loop firing. I've also found acceptance helps, truly accepting deep down that I tried the drinking-life, and was unsuccessful through too much success at drinking, with consequential tolerance, and attendant depression and despair.

For me, the sober-life heralded freedom from drink and the opportunity to function at my best, without the hindrance (and ultimately devastation) of alcohol. Even if freedom continues to involve myriad unwanted feelings,I am resolute in my opinion that a drink will never, ever provide a positive solution, and therefore my AV always lies.

Today is great day to start your sober-life, Gabe!

Obladi

Gabe, the first order of business is to stop drinking. Sure, acknowledge things might or will suck once you stop, but don't think about all of that right now. You won't solve anything whilst drinking, not even how to live sober. This is one area where thinking/planning ahead is useless.

Put your all into stopping and staying stopped just for Now. Every moment for as many moments come up when you want to drink for the next 24 hours, just don't drink Now.

You don't want to, you're afraid, you know it's going to suck. That's ok. Do It anyway. You have the power to choose.

xoxo
O

LumenandNyx

Okay, check this out - there's this THING you're part of and living in. Most people call it Life.
You're here for a reason. We all are. We're not down here taking up space for nothing. I don't know what the reason/s is/are - I just know they're out there. So - face the music.

Choices are opportunities. Would you feel better if someone or something made all your decisions for you and led you around like a puppet? That's not life or living. Not sure what that would be called, but it's not life.
Then again - neither is drinking your way through it. That's existing.

BeABetterMan

When I was in early sobriety free time terrified me. That fear goes away. I picked up some hobbies.

nez

Remember the free part of free time and be grateful that it is time free of alcohol, how great is that!!!

silentrun

That's how I felt that day. ANYWHERE but here. It didn't feel so much a choice but more of a reaction to a bad situation that was getting worse. Like Carrie Fisher said, "things were getting worse faster than we could lower our standards."

I don't see it as stopping or quitting or giving up anything. I see it as escaping.

Dee74

How it going Gabe?

D

Gabe1980

I am pretty I'll See. I must have drank 12 -13 beers yesterday. I think I am I'll enough to be done though.

I was sexually assaulted when I was a student and that had all come out now. It's probably a good thing but I am feeling pretty freaked out.
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