Hope1234

Can’t tell you how valuable the responses have been. Beats a therapist any day. One thing I gathered was, until we address our triggers and how we process and most importantly how we are going to readdress in healthy way, empowers us instead of playing the victim and powerless….which leads to the drinking.

for me, similar to adv, it’s the need for attachment, that has led me to sacrifice my own well being. And when all my people pleasing efforts result in being taken advantage of, leads me to drinking because I can’t control that dynamic by being the good guy.

not sure if all the psycho babble is directly related to being sober, but I see drinking as just the tip of the iceberg and not until you go deeper, can you kick it.

7 days sober, and finally feel better. Relapse after 4 months sober may have been best thing for journey.

birddawg

I always thought that I was addicted to alcohol my physically and it helped me sleep but I am learning (a huge portion of it from SR, or links posted by members here to articles and videos online, same thing I guess) but that's the tip of the iceberg as you said. I keep seeing the term "dry drunk" and it applies.

Glad you're feeling better.

DriGuy

You will only recognize these are not your reasons for drinking when you finally quit for good. Yes those things are all real and ugly. I won't argue that. But your response to them (drinking) is worse than all of them combined. You drink because you are addicted. Alcohol is your "goto" response. You know drinking doesn't help, because you do it all the time, and what happens? Nothing happens. It just stays real and ugly. So you know drinking is not the answer. You can't fix what is real and ugly. But you can fix yourself. I know. I know. You would rather fix the other things. But it's just not going to happen that way.

advbike

DriGuy, I appreciate what you're saying here - the addiction is the addiction and needs to be priority 1. It's our standard response to stress and needs to be addressed first, or the other issues can't be resolved. Would we drink anyway if those other issues didn't exist? Probably yes, at this point. But we shouldn't minimize the fact that drinking is our way of coping with emotional pain, or minimize the need to address our dysfunctional ways of thinking and relating to our partners. It is well known that those of us with a dual-diagnosis (codependent traits and alcoholism) need to work on both simultaneously. Developing awareness of our dysfunctional thinking and behaviors has been huge for me and done a lot to reduce my need to drink. Working on these co-existing issues is a huge part of the recovery process.

Hope1234

Dri, that’s a really interesting take…

however, the relationship between stress and alcohol has been a key component in my journey. When manageable stress…no drinking.

ive seen a couple buddies, mentally and emotionally tough, who weren’t big drinkers. When life through them a really tough curveball, they turned to drinking. Think it happens more than we think. Did they have an addiction problem or a life problem?

I guess my point is, if I continue to stay sober, and focus on resolving those other issues, then I won’t have the need to drink. Although some other stress related issue may come up, trying to manage that is just as important as managing my sobriety.

I guess for me, you take out out one or two of those issues I mentioned and life becomes much more manageable….with work and being productive probably the most important

Obladi

Hey Hope, welcome.

When any therapist or counselor asked what happened before I picked up again, I was happy to oblige and try. I was honest too - I'd tell the professional any number of of plausible 'reasons,' but was clear that they really didn't ring true to me. It was hard to come up with the truth of "what happened" when it felt like everything and nothing had happened, you know? Sure, I had plenty of stressors in my life and people who didn't know about my addiction would not infrequently respond to my stories with, "That would drive me to drink!" I'd think wryly, "You have no idea..." But what led me to make The Decision to drink? By the advanced stages of my long alcoholic career, I honestly had absolutely no idea. (I figured it out later, but that's a different story.)

Yes, drinking is just the tip of the iceberg for many people, as you and advbike point out. I'm one of those dual (triple?) diagnosed people. Drinking was my solution to the unbearable state of simply be-ing. Yes, I had to (still have to) work through those stressors to firm up my sobriety, but as a champion (ha!) relapser, I can tell you that I couldn't stop drinking until I decided that I Never Drink Now. And then I had to buckle in for the ride. It wasn't fun, it wasn't rainbows and lollipops, it wasn't even a relief to do that. But it was what needed to be done. I'd come to the 'jumping off place' as it says in the Alcoholics Anonymous book. There was no other choice. I had a safe environment (rehab) and had already been working with an excellent psychotherapist; both of those were significant supporting factors in my recovery.

Wondering how long it takes to get back to stasis is sort of planning for the next drink, isn't it? It would have been that for me, even if I didn't know it. Because in the final analysis, we know that our brains (along with our livers and other organs) will heal eventually. It takes as long as it takes, and if we never drink again, we've done all we can.

I hope you understand that I'm offering only my experience in the hope that it might help you some. I've been on this site for a very long time, as you can see. But I've only been sober for 527 consecutive days as of today. The way I did that was to Never Drink Now, no matter what.

As they say around these parts:
Simple
Not Easy

O

biminiblue

...or, you change how you're reacting to those issues you have. Lots of people deal with the same sort of stuff without drinking at it.

It's a whole lot easier to deal with life's inevitable ups and downs without adding a toxic chemical which changes the way the brain and body function. I think without some long-term continuous sober time I wouldn't have understood that.

At some point life is just life. No one gets smooth sailing. There are no answers in the bottom of a bottle.

Hope1234

Amen to that Bimini…

minimizing stress, simplifying your life a bit, and learning how to react to situations in a healthy way…sure goes a long way. Stress tolerance plays a role.

Doing it sober sure makes it easier

ThatWasTheOldMe

In the long run, the result of additional relapses would be what you fear. It resets your brain chemistry or makes it worse.
Alcohol is a particularly insidious chemical when it comes to healthy brain chemistry since it's a potent anxiolytic and it saturates your brain with dopamine. You won't ever reach the same high you got the first time with additional attempts and the shock to your system will get worse and worse.

However, getting and staying sober can bring you a better, healthier high. If you want peace, it is my experience that this is the only way for someone prone to alcohol abuse.

BackandScared

You have gone through a lot and I am very sorry to read about all the things that life threw your way.

I have already explained recently in another thread that one of the most difficult things for me to digest as a sober person was that, in hindsight, I realised that alcohol was the choice I made when things became very difficult in my own life. This is a fact I am not proud of. Many people get more than their fair share of ****. When we are challenged that way we show who we really are. I hope that I have learned enough to react differently if things turn out really rough again.

There is no doubt you have gone through serious trauma and survived. You obviously have lots of incredible skills and human qualities that made you stand out for all the good reasons. Perhaps you can use these skills to stop yourself from drinking instead of adding even more to the pile of things to recover from.

Good luck

fishkiller

This has be key for me. When the stress gets to be too much I just check out for a little while and reassess my reaction to the situation.
I can usually find a way to be OK with whatever it was stressing me especially if it is something out of my control.

This is a very new behavior I have learned since being sober.
Sometimes we just have to be OK with things even though they suck.