Mags1

Welcome to the Weekenders



Surely.....I’m okay to have a drink now?....After all this time sober!......



I had these thoughts 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.



..I had thoughts that I was a ‘normie’ drinker..



..I was an adult after all and I’d proved I could stop drinking.



After that first drink at eight months sober my drinking got steadily worse until I was drinking as much as when I’d stopped.



It took many years to stop drinking after acting on those thoughts , but this time I made my mind up it was for good. I didn’t want my life revolving round drink anymore.


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



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. (We’re here all week too!)

Kaily

Thanks Mags.

Unless I want to drink copious amounts of hard spirits alcoholically, I have to stay stopped. I never fantasise about a glass of wine but I do about a bottle of vodka...

Mags1

Wise move Kaily

Reid82

Thanks Mags, I'm in for this sober weekend and Shotgun too for it?!

Introvrtd1

Scary

Mags1

Congratulations on shotgun Reid

Intro I agree, you’ve come so far, much better life sober.

saoutchik

IN

Thanks for opening the new thread Mags. After a period of abstinence when the strong chemical urge to drink has subsided we are left with a wheedling voice that suggests we can now drink moderately like a normal person. I expect most of us on SR have had that thought and acted on it only to discover that we were back where we started in no time.

Drinking too much for too long causes what I think of as a sort of permanent alcohol "itch" and we drink to scratch that itch which only makes it worse. If we ignore the itch for long enough it will go away permanently and not drinking or using will no longer seem like a loss. That's not to say drinking will never cross your mind but it becomes an occasional thing that is easy to dismiss.

Congratulations on Shotgun Robbie.

PhoenixJ

famous last words...if I drink again with what I have learned- no 'reason', like pain or grief would justify it. And if I ever drink again , I will be successful in being dead.

Robbie64

Thanks Mags, I'm IN for a sober holiday weekend.

The subject of the thread is good timing because for the past couple of weeks I've had vague feelings of wanting to drink. Maybe not so much because I think I can have just a few drinks (I know I couldn't, it would be the start of another binge drinking session that lasts days) but more because the reasons why I stopped back in January are fading into the distance. The awful feelings, the anxiety, the sweating, the very real health concerns, the ridiculous waste of money, they have no longer been the centre of my thoughts over the past month or so. I need to take stock and remember why I stopped.

Adding to that theme, it's a holiday weekend in the UK and this is a holiday weekend where I tend to struggle the most with sobriety. This weekend is the start of what is known in the UK as "Whit Week". As a child it was a week off school so was something I looked forward to. As an adult I often would take the week as a holiday from work and... drink and party. Even when I stopped working the weekend was usually lost to a drunken blur. So I still have this association with drinking for this particular weekend.

However, I have made some plans for this weekend. I'm going to a outdoor food market on Saturday - it's nice to see them starting back up again - and plan on going for a long walk along the riverside on Sunday. The weather appears to want to play its part too as after weeks of rain it is forecast to be sunny and fairly warm all weekend and all through next weekend. I'm looking to make other plans too, to keep me busy. It's a weekend where I don't really want to be stuck in the house all weekend.

I hope everyone has a good weekend.

MantaLady

I’m in! x.

Dee74

Never confuse abstinence for control.

D

Haris2014

hello weekenders, can I join you for what hopefully is a glorious weekend for us all

the thought of never drinking again stopped me getting any meaningful time sober many times..I just couldn’t handle the thought of it and ended up carrying on towards destruction. When I stopped a did tell myself it was just a couple of months, then I added another couple of months and so on. I had to use the, when I am normal again I can drink again, as a catalyst to get me started..

After seeing the benefits I was reaping of being sober and reading here, reading a lot of books, setting targets and goals helped me adapt to being totally at peace with never drinking again.. at the start I just needed that safety net to make the jump.

andyh

thanks Mags

Robbie64

Welcome Haris

Plus hello to Manta, PJ, Mags, Kaily, Reid, Introvrtd, sao and andyh

DriGuy

Alcoholics certainly can feel normal as long as they don't drink. So it's easy to see how feeling normal can be misinterpreted as being able to drink normally. After a long period of sobriety, it's easy to think of yourself as "cured," but alcoholism can never be cured. At best, it can be put into remission as long as you don't drink.

fishkiller

Have no desire to find out.

Pretty sure after 30 plus years of hard drinking that an occasional beer is out of the question.

Don't miss it.
Don't want it.

biminiblue

I've told my story many times of drinking again after 18 years of not drinking. I would not recommend it.

It wasn't tragic or particularly out of control - at first. By the end, all my misery of my first drinking career had been refunded, with interest. Very large quantities of hard alcohol which threatened to kill me sooner rather than later.

If I hadn't gone to AA and come to this forum, I probably would have gone back to it once again after a couple weeks off. That was the pattern.

A full commitment to Never Drinking Again was what I needed, and I'm grateful to have found that.

In.

Mizz

This effort in sobriety has given me a completely new perspective on life.

I will not entertain the idea that I can control my drinking. Alcohol controlled many aspects of my well being in the end. It took monumental effort to find balance and to find happiness.

Now that I am sober and have recovered from active alcoholism I think Ill stay here and see what I can do with my time. Give back. Raise my life condition. Enjoy my time. There is freedom in this sober place. I got a life to live.

andyh

same. six years off for me & then back on it. lesson learned - the hard way.

learn from other people's mistakes. life is too short to make them all yourself.

ciowa

As a binge drinker, I know for a fact I would not ever just drink a beer or two. I sometimes went months without drinking "to dry out for a bit" and my first time back usually was just like the last. That was one of the big drivers of getting into recovery. I knew I couldn't control the drinking no matter what I tried, diet, rest, different brands etc. Even in recent years the few times I only had a beer or two are times I would wake up the next day and instead of feeling relief I would feel like the night had been boring and forgettable.