ishallnotwant

Is it cowardice? Is it avoidance? Is it just ambivalence/indecision? I am so unhappy with myself. I am a good person and intelligent, I have a career that I love, a wonderful and supportive family, so why do I feel that alcohol will “free” me from that frustration/anger/resentment I feel?

Dee74

Its the lie of addiction I think.

It’s the allure of the easy fix - Drink this, smoke that sniff this - and all your problems will be solved or at least forgotten about...and of course it’s not like that at all it’s really quite the opposite, but we keep trying for that magic pill effect.

Solving problems, especially complex problems, is hard work and can take a lot of effort, and a lot of time. Most times there is no immediate solution to things.. But forbearance, time, effort and patience really is the only way I know to deal with life and keep moving forward.

D

Mizz

It could be to escape the feelings. I drank over all sorts of emotions. I drank when I was happy, sad, mad and everything in between. I didn't have healthy coping skills to deal with life. Once I saw that my coping skills were always at the bottom of a wine bottle, I decided I could and would find a solution. So, here I am. Here you are. Getting sober is worth it. You are worth it.

ishallnotwant

Dee—thank you. And I know you are right. I just sometimes get so weary and depressed. I am in counseling and I know what I need to do, But I think I’m feeling that “I shouldn’t have to” work so hard, keep constant tabs on my emotions, etc.

ishallnotwant

Miss, you are so right—those pesky feelings! I’m really so afraid of them—fear they will overwhelm me. If I open up, it will be a tsunami

ishallnotwant

*Mzz

ishallnotwant

I think I just don’t know what to do with my feelings. I feel guilty and ashamed about them and think that if I let them out they will confirm how awful I am. And that feels so awkward to even say. Others have told me that’s “just ego”. Maybe that’s true?

Mizz

I think its good to face our troubles and to deal with our emotions as they come. Drowning out the feelings does nothing but leave a person in the same place. Im not sure if there is anything to do with feelings? We feel them and then we move on. There are many emotions that happen all day long. Today I was happy, slightly sad and then frustrated. All over the place. That is the human part of us It may be a Tsunami at first but the Tsunami will not last forever.

Getting sober will show you that.

ishallnotwant

I’m sober, just sad. Alcohol doesn’t fix sad. Alcohol turns “sad” into “misery” and “loathing”. I may need to just accept sadness the same way I accept alcoholism. It just is.

Mizz

I understand.
I think you will find happiness. It is there for you.

Dee74

The fear of facing my feelings was a lot more intense than actually facing them in the end.
That doesn't mean you have to do things alone- plenty of support and in other places too

D

anxiousrock

It is easy. Too easy. Challenge yourself.
the hard part about drinking is, the aftermath. To me, anyways. Who did I make angry, what did I say? What about work? Did I spend extra money on something?

PalmerSage

I remember that feeling - which was described by someone here as a "coiled spring" - so well. It's like I allowed tension to build up and the only way I knew how to release it was through drinking. What I found is that in the VERY beginning, I didn't even necessarily need to face my feelings or cope with them, as much as I needed to prevent myself from romanticizing alcohol and immediately shut down the AV when it popped up. So it's like there is the phase of "just whatever you do, DO NOT drink" until that became bearable, and then I found that my thoughts and feeling had evened out to the point where I could think more clearly about how to cope with them.

DriGuy

This is complicated because addiction doesn't have to be just one simple issue, and seldom is. Emotions could be one, albeit minor, cause. Addiction just wants alcohol. It uses your feelings to manipulate what it wants, but beyond that it cares not one bit about how you feel. I'm guessing most of your bad feelings come from the use of alcohol, rather than being a cause. But you asked, "Why is it easy to give in?" That is exactly what addiction does. If you don't get enough, it creates both a psychological and physical discomfort, irritability, and jumpy nerves. And drinking is the most direct and easiest way to quell the addiction's edge and its long conditioned habitual response. You are simply taking the easiest route to getting plastered.

The way to beat this whole mess is to break the cycle: Drink; Get edgy, Drink, Get edgy, Drink. And the only links in the cycle under your control to break are the "Drink" parts. This is the hard part, and unfortunately you need to exercised some mental muscle to do it. The good news is that the cycle doesn't take as long to break as you think, and it's one of the very few times, maybe the only time of recovery, where you need muscle. After that you have to use your brain in just exercising the relatively easy choice not to reach for the bottle.

No kidding, it's just like that. But you have the muscle, although God knows, using it goes against every alcoholic instinct in your body. You've also got the brain power to choose not to drink, which is easier, except for that little voice that sits on your shoulder and tells you, "Just one drink would be OK." You've got to train yourself not to get sucked in by that little voice. Beyond getting alcohol, as much as it possible can, it has no idea what it's talking about, comforting as its lies are.

Obladi

What everybody else said, but not exactly and not in the same order.

With the notable exception of DriGuy's contention that emotions could be one, albeit minor cause. (Sorry, DriGuy). My experience is that emotions were the primary reason I drank and then became addicted. Emotions were also a major factor preventing me from breaking that addiction.

Of course, we all have our own histories and personal makeup, so although the components of recovery may be the same for everyone, the order and emphasis changes. At least that's my experience. Here's how it was for me:

• Something is wrong with me. I mean, something is always wrong with me (according to me), but something just put me over the edge. I don't know what it is or maybe why that particular thing put me over the edge. AV has learned that the most efficient thing in this situation is to entirely skip the feelings bit. Don't think, drink!
• "They" say, ok the next step is to not drink. As if. I absolutely must drink. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I have this vague notion that I literally must drink to get through this "feeling" that I absolutely Can Not have. No specifics about that - remember, don't think, drink!

It was really really confusing for me to heed advice from people who wanted to help me. Well-intentioned folks who said things like, "You need to surrender," "That's your ego speaking," "Everyone feels that way," etc. Because I knew how I felt, and I honestly didn't think that people in real life were actually making an attempt to legitimately understand how I was struggling. It felt like a brush-off, really. To this day, when someone says, "Did you talk to your sponsor about that?" it's nails on a chalkboard for me. ("I'm talking with you about that! Why does it matter if I spoke with my sponsor or not?)

Then there were the recovery program counselors, very nice people who got into a helping profession because they in fact wanted to help people. I felt like they were dealing with me as if they could put me through a recovery machine and if I did it right, I'd pop out the other end - sober and happy! But for the most part, they didn't make an attempt to actually understand either. I don't think they could, actually. (I have theories about why that is, but that's neither here nor there right now.)

So clearly, I needed someone who would make a really good faith effort to actually understand me. I have a wonderful psychotherapist (not in the recovery industry) who did/does just that. And it turns out I needed that person who didn't label or judge me or tell me what to do. Until I could do that for myself. He's not the "reason" I recovered, any more than all of the other strategies I used, but that relationship was a critical factor.

It took a lot more for me - bad bad episodes, many treatment programs, a lot of exploration into addiction and recovery programs... all of which didn't work. Until they did.

This is a gross over-simplification, but it's what worked for me to learn to handle those unbearable feelings: Don't drink, Feel those horrible feelings, then Explore what that was all about. There's a technique I thought I'd invented, but found out later that it's actually a "thing." It's called RAIN mindfulness (Google it). Here's how I practice it:

Prerequisite: Don't drink

• Recognize what's going on (I am really bent out of shape right now!)
• Allow (or Accept) the feeling or situation (Ok, I'm hurt, angry, sad, confused, or whatever emotion I'm feeling)
• Investigate with curious kindness (What's that all about? What happened? Why was that so upsetting for me? What's the first time I can remember ever feeling like this? What was the situation then?)
• Nurture (Oh! I see why my emotions would have made that connection! But I was just a child then. Poor little kid. I'm grown; I can handle that now. )

Follow up actions: To thine own self be true. Don't drink.

O

Aellyce

Because we are addicted, and the addiction is a very special condition that does not operate based on our normal, decent human values. I'm also one of those whose experience is that it has little to do with complex emotions, but it's obviously not everyone's story. The only real emotional challenge I can have if I don't drink is anxiety, but even that is more on the mild side when I'm sober, and I never drank to alleviate anxiety anyway, if anything, it keeps me from it because it usually pushes me into problem solving mode. The simple emotion driving drinking for me is the anticipation of a pleasurable mental state as an effect of alcohol, and this is very singular. The very unique kind of feeling good and even invincible that the effects of alcohol generate, so it's easy to give in when I keep the option open to ever experience that again. It's easy to give in because the so-called "euphoric recall" (look it up) can be very intense and stubborn and, by definition of the phenomenon, the addiction makes the mind ignore the knowledge of negative consequences in the moments of desire. For me, to only real challenge is to learn how to recognize the incredible distortion in those impulses and ignore the desire. It's sort of a compromise that can be very effective once we find a way to make it stick: we give up ever experiencing that unique pleasure and in return, can have a healthy life, pursuing decent, meaningful goals. It's not easy at all early on to consistently ignore that memory as though nothing is there, so I find active "distractions" help me a lot. By that I mean doing something else when I get the urges, even just going for a walk, and something productive where the results are satisfying tend to be the best for me. I personally find that merely talking about it helps very little and sometimes even makes my urges worse, because I grasp on them and engage with them - just had an experience that confirmed this for me in the past few days, when I was discussing cravings here on SR too much. It's easier for me to just manage them internally and use the active distractions mentioned above.

DriGuy

No problem.

JustJohn

Looks like you're working it out by talking through it

Feelings of all kinds will come and go. At some point you'll learn to forgive yourself and begin finding solace in clear headed sobriety. Coming here and talking it our with all the wonderful, empathetic members here at SR is some really good medicine that we all benefit from.

Obladi

Also, to answer your question - it's none of those and all of those.
But that's the nature of addiction. It is zero proof that you are not a good person or not intelligent.
Addiction is the opposite of rational; it can not be reasoned with because it makes no sense whatsoever.
I mean, it makes sense in a physiological and psychological way, but addictive behavior is just flat out insane. Its only purpose is to keep you addicted.

brighterday1234

Alcoholism 🙏