MissPerfumado

Hi everyone. I pop in here every now and again. It's such a lovely and kind forum of people, so I do like to drop in from time to time and see familiar and new names.

Last night, for some reason I wondered how many sober days I had and checked online to find it was 2159 days. Then I thought about this place, so dropped in.

In a month or so, I'll have 6 years of sobriety.

I don't have any great words of wisdom. I have quite a poor memory for events in my life actually, sober or drinking. I'm always the type to look forward.

But I do remember the early days of sobriety feeling bewildering and new. I remember discovering things constantly, about myself and the world. I did so many things for the first time, sober. I felt like a newborn, like Bambi learning to walk.

I went to a party, sober. I celebrated Christmas, sober. I travelled on a plane, sober. I checked into a hotel room with a minibar, and stayed sober. I attended concerts and sports events, sober. I made love, sober.

I planned so many of those things really carefully (not the making love, in case you're wondering).

I had plans for what to do - exit strategies, trusted friends to watch me. I never felt close to temptation but the act of making a plan and enlisting others gave me confidence that I had the bases covered. It helped immensely.

Sometimes I was twitchy. I was hyper-aware a lot of the time. I watched people, to see how much they drank and how they behaved. It was fascinating to be the sober one.

I thought I would never be normal again, that I would spend the rest of my life on a high-wire act, working hard to never fall back into drinking. Turns out, after about 2 years, I felt very normal and all of life's activities became routine (mundane even, but in a good way). It helped to have done every annual thing twice by then. Birthdays, Christmasses, New Year's Eves, football grand finals, winters, springs, summers and autumns. The second time sober was much easier.

Keep going if you're in the early days. Twitchy sober muscles do get stronger.

Use SR and write here whenever you have a question or need help. It's amazing the amount of experience on these pages. It's very rare that a question can't be answered with a helpful suggestion based on personal experience.

If you're anxious about writing here (I was, and I stuck to my 'Class of' forum for a long time before posting on the Newcomers forum), remember that the Mods do a fantastic job of keeping the tone here supportive and kind, and collectively, we have been where you are! No one is here to judge, just to support.

Dee74

Its great to hear from you MissP - and congrats on your upcoming milestone
Awesome stuff

D

Delilah1

Great update, it’s so nice to see you. I am just a little bit behind you heading to that six year mark!

Steely

Great to see you again Miss P. And congratulations on 6 years.

You helped me a lot MissP, and I thank you. Still following the cricket?

I'm approaching 2 years myself, and would be sitting with you on 6 years, if it had not been for that fateful decision to give moderation another go. Clearly, it did not work. Onwards, now.

Mizz

YAY! Wonderful, Miss. P!
Keep on keeping on!

DriGuy

I'm very happy you did.

Contratulations. You are in what I call the safe zone. Of course we are always one drink away from a relapse, but when you make it this far, you no longer need to drink, and the only thing going to stop you is your own poor judgement. But you are now the one in control, not the bottle.

I found that making plans and exit strategies gave me confidence so that I never had to actually used the exit strategies. Just having plans in place (assuming you are committed to sticking to them) was the difference between success and failure for me. Without a plan for those expected or unexpected triggers, you don't know what to do. As as an alcoholic, the default behavior is to just "have another."

"I will never drink again," is a good umbrella plan, but I don't believe that is enough. There are smaller details that come up, and the devil is often in the details. It never hurts to know what to do, and that is the purpose of planning.

That's good for beginners to know, because it often seems like life long abstinence would be more than any newcomer would have the strength to keep up. In fact I don't believe I could have lasted this long judging by the strength of will I had to exert during those first two weeks of recovery. So I would suggest an amendment for this statement, beyond that first two weeks or two months of obsessive thoughts and cravings, I don't believe I got stronger. I just became more thoughtful. After all those obsessive cravings, it was all about thinking, using my brain instead of my emotions, and making a simple choice not to drink when the thought would cross my mind. I no longer found myself doing battle with those irrational drinking thoughts that come from my AV. Sobriety gets easier and easier, as long as you stick with it.

SnazzyDresser

Your posts are always home runs, MissPerfumado. I really mean that, you're SR hall of fame in my book. Congrats on your 6 years sober!

Hodd

I reckon that’s been a big part of your success, MissP. I’m sure all of us have a breaking point where a situation arises and coincides with a craving and the wrong circumstances, but having these plans keeps us sober.

Also as time goes on and the better that things become, the more we have to lose by drinking. Well done and thanks for the great post.

biminiblue

Great post, good to hear from you.

advbike

Awesome post, Miss P! Always good to hear from you.. thanks for dropping by!

lessgravity

Hey MissP, nice to see you around these parts. Thank you for sharing another story of what it is to break free and live a better life. Congrats on your sober time.

MissPerfumado

Steely, my dear, dear friend, we helped each other so much. You are precious to me. Every time I come back here, I look for your name first. I am so happy you are still here on SR, and with 2 years coming up.

Two years, 6 years, 16 years ... there is a point on the road when it's only a number and the important thing is to live a sober life, with the emphasis on 'life' rather than 'sober'. Pitfalls can appear at any stage, of course, and complacency is always a threat to watch out for.

Confession - I have much less interest in sports such as cricket and Aussie Rules football (which I loved). I've found what I call alignment in my work. I quit my job last year during one of the lockdowns and started up on my own. I find my work so absorbing - in a good way - everything else seems like a distraction.

MissPerfumado

It was so heartwarming to wake up this morning and see posts from familiar names.

Dee, ever present and looking over everyone... you deserve the Order of Australia, twenty times over and at the highest rank each time!

Delilah, Steely, Snazzy, BB, advbike, less, Mizz, Hodd, Driguy - I raise my cup of coffee and say a sober cheers to each of you and this whole wonderful life-saving community. I am very grateful for all of you x

MissPerfumado

I got a lot out of reading your commentary, DriGuy. Thank you.

I appreciate the perspective on thoughts vs emotions. The main emotion I recall having was fear - fear that my life was quickly becoming unmanageable. The day I quit was the day I surrendered, which was the fear talking. Part of the surrender was letting my rational side take charge. And when it took charge, the rational side made sure I spilled the beans to my doctor that I was an alcoholic and then rang my family to tell them too! Thank God, because that meant pride would also help keep me sober.

I was lucky not to have cravings. My obstacles were psychological, which I could address through planning. And eventually the amount of thought I had to devote to staying sober became less of an effort.

MissPerfumado

Snazzy. Thank you. <3

DriGuy

I can relate to that, and while my life was certainly becoming unmanageable, the fear was more because I felt like I my drinking was resulting in an insanity. When I was drunk, my behavior seemed strange and surreal and making no sense, like I was living inside a Salvador Dali painting. That feeling of surreal insanity scared me to death. I don't think I would have been diagnosed with a specific mental diagnosis. I think the correct diagnosis would have been alcoholism, or worse yet, "stupidity." I don't know which is more pitiful. As far as manageability, I "managed" when I was sober, but I managed poorly, and overall, my life just sucked.

I had long known my life was in the metaphorical gutter, and my last drink wasn't a surrender. It was just one more attempt to go without alcohol for some unspecified time, which never exceeded three days, followed by another month of nightly drinking. In an attempt to do something (actually by an order from my counselor), I went to an AA meeting, and I wanted to do that sober, so I ended up holding off for 5 days, a world record for me, but I was climbing the walls on day five.

At that meeting, I explained my situation, and everyone got it. No one told me I was just fine and needed to control my drinking. But I turned an abrupt corner when some old timer pointed out that the general goal in AA was never to take another drink, something which I had never considered, and which many people in the group could not yet do. That moment, which I remember so clearly, was my surrender. It wasn't a surrender about me. It was just this decision that if total abstinence is what it takes, I was ready to try that. I didn't actually know this was true. I was just desperate enough to try it, and that was accompanied by a commitment to follow it through and to quit messing around. Things changed fast after that. And indeed, total abstinence turned out to be the "cure." In fact, it was the "easier softer way" out.

My obstacles were mostly psychological too, although some reading I have done would include physiological addictions that operated below the surface. But psychological or not, those cravings were the worst part of early recovery for me. When I was through those is when the planning and rational thinking became necessary to stay sober. Basically, that just meant accepting that one drink unwinds sobriety and takes us back to square one, and choosing always not to take that drink keeps us going forward. Of course learning to identify the irrationality of my AV, rejecting it, and avoiding risk situations became part of my planning.

Dee74

Thanks for the kind words Miss P

D

Willow00

Thanks so much for your inspiring post MissP, it really gives me hope for long term sobriety

dwtbd

MissP !
The good kind of mundane never gets old !
Glad to hear how well the over 3 billion miles around the sun have treated you !

least

Congrats on your upcoming 6th soberversary. And thank you for an inspiring post.