MrPL

I see your point DriGuy, thanks for explaining it so well.

It’s amazing how our personal experiences change the way we need to tackle the same problem. I’ve never achieved long-term sobriety, of course, but when I had my longest streak (almost 2 yrs) it was based on finding challenges elsewhere - I setup a record label by myself (then closed it, turns out making money from music is tricky these days), learned how to play new instruments, took on various new physical activities, and while those things moved well and really improved my quality of life, I eventually went back to drinking.

By elimination, my current conclusion is that I had no specific challenge related to being sober itself. So this is now in my list.

To be honest I find it difficult to think about the long-term. I can’t tell myself that “One day I’ll be sober for 20 yrs”, it kind of opens a can of worms in my head, opening up all sorts of possibilities where I could fail.

So my solution is to always have “not drinking today, or now, or in the near future”, as a current challenge. Circumstances around me will change, so I’m sure the way to tackle the challenge will be different over time, but it feels good for me to say “I still won’t be able to drink in 20 yrs, I’ll still have to face that challenge”.

This is strange to me, as surely it should feel better to just say “I’ll be sober” instead of “I’ll still be an alcoholic”, but it doesn’t for me. Working through that one at the moment, another of those contradictions of alcoholism!

By the way that boat trip sounds awesome! You must have seen some amazing things!

MrPL

That’s an awesome transformation Hood. It’s like facing the challenge of sobriety allows us to take on other ones!

Good luck with the triathlons!

DriGuy

You were certainly busy and up for taking on challenges, so that is not a problem, but I believe it is a fact that sobriety becomes less challenging with time. This is debatable of course, because in time, you relapsed, so it seems like there was still a challenge present that you must have been ignoring. Now that in itself represents a challenge. How do you stay sober if you don't recognize the challenge? I think you know what comes next, even if I didn't nail the exact nature of your circumstances:

You need to remain committed, and I would add maybe become more committed, because commitment is variable and a scale, and you must be careful to stay vigilant and in-tune with your Alcoholic Voice. That is be "in-tune" to your AV, but of course, not be receptive. How do you do that without a challenge? Well, that IS EXACTLY the challenge, not the same as starting a record label or sailing across an ocean. It's a smaller challenge, one that can be done, but I would argue that has much more at stake.

And it is a smaller in that learning steadfast commitment and vigilance are not monumental undertakings. They are like learning to play a musical instrument, however. And you know what that requires... "Practice", and then more practice and then more, until your muscle memory takes over and you do it without thinking. Except instead of muscle memory without thinking, it becomes the mental equivalent of "habitual" while you focus on an array of challenges, like singing while you play, paying attention to your audience, etc.

Well, that's how I did it anyway. I didn't really force it, however. I was just terrified of slipping back into drinking so much that it was more like running away from an angry bear. You just do it because the consequences are so awful. And pretty soon it's second nature.

Of course you can fail. We know this because we see alcoholics failing all the time. The trick is to make sure it just isn't you. My commitment was long term, but lot of people do it one day at a time. Like you, I can't wrap my mind around every idea presented, and one day at a time makes no sense to me the way long term doesn't to you. There is no perfect equivalence between methods, but I have always maintained that commitment and vigilance are common to every recovery. And there is no doubt in my mind that you are self aware and intelligent enough to pull this undertaking off. I think you just have a couple of solvable issues to deal with. I can't name them, but the answers are there in your head, and more importantly, in your future actions.