Diary of a day 1 trapdoor
 

Greetings friends,

It's pretty much bedtime for most of you but here it's just gone 5pm Sunday.

I haven't wanted to start a new thread for ages, mainly because of relapsing / choosing to drink again. This has lasted not quite a month. The past 3 days in particular I've consciously tried for a full-quit day ('one', or 24 hours, as we say in the addiction community). I'm doing it on my own, as in without wanting to return - yet again - to a rehab facility as I did in late February for a seven day detox.

I'm pretty well-versed in how my previous withdrawals (all medically supervised in a facility) have panned out. Essentially - and somewhat surprisingly - those first 2 - 3 days were always pretty benign, with only a very few small doses of valium required. (PS I do still have a few 5 mg tabs left from last year, and took just one mid-morning. I will also get into to see my GP early this coming week too.)

I thought I'd try to occasionally diarise from today; I 'made it' quite well since my last drink last night (at about 8.15 pm) through 20 hours in total....up until 45 mins ago, when I drove to the shop for one bottle of (white) wine. Now am drinking the first.

No doubt some in this section would suggest I move over to the general Newcomers section. However, I hope I don't have to...if you don't mind putting up with me....as I don't wish to be inundated with the 'pressure' replies (along with the more positive or uplifting ones). I would prefer to write here about what I call this 'trapdoor' effect of never-quite-making-it-through the first full day / 24 hours without drinking.

Much of what I say - that I'm drinking at all! - might seem oddly 'stupid', given that I consciously know / studied / reflected upon seemingly every conceivable 'method' (to use the term very generically) of quitting. Plus keeping up with as much as I can of the neuroscience and psycho-biology of addiction.

I've been a year more or less in the mainstream A world, but don't currently wish to return. I've devoured Rational Recovery as well as most if not all the AVRT and related threads here in Sec Con. I get more wonderful insights and discussion (of the often intellectual - and contemplative - kind that I love) here than I ever do these days in my real life. (I sometimes wish we could in fact 'meet' as confreres, in the regular way that they do in AA etc, but of course that's physically impossible).

Of course, the call-response cycle here for an Aussie like me (those damn massive time differences) may be disjointed and delayed at both our ends. Still, I guess I'd like to do this little writing exercise for a bit, if only as a way of journalling my small successes. By successes, at the moment of course, I mean simply experiencing (again) how it FEELS to actually get through the bulk of a sober day....before that trapdoor of my mind just bangs shut.

the trapdoor metaphor is open to question of course - it just somehow came to me. I have absolutely no doubt that the Beast / It is so keen to get me and IT together in that cellar, rather than still out in the house or garden (as it were). I'm not by any means desperate - another reason I don't feel I belong right now in Newcomers, where so many are truly suffering. Oddly, I don't seem to suffering as such. It's more that I can strangely objectively watch and see what's happening in this relapse as well as in these attempts to 'stay' with even a full day of sobriety. Kinda creepy? Possibly.

I look forward to hearing from a few wise and interested members. I'll do my best to jot down random thoughts as they come to mind too. But remember those time differences, crew, so you don't think I'm being rude if you don't hear back from me for hours n hours.

Addendum
 

I probably should add: I have a great interest (and occasional practice) in Buddhism, particularly the non-multiple gods varieties :-)) PLUS I keep an open / agnostic / doubting but open mind to interfaith discussions, progressive versions of Christianity (and I mean the really progressive, super-liberal variety that get slammed by most of the mainstream), Celtic spirituality, etc etc etc.

So I personally try to reflect on whichever of these help me each day, sober or not. hence, I don't mind one bit if someone mentions those things. But I am currently not too sure about the whole Steps thing, even though I have access to a range of alternative / secular / agnostically framed Steps.

Just thought I'd mention that, as bits of any ensuing discussion might mean I have to move bits over to secular 12 Steps section...don't I? Sheesh, it can become extraordinarily delicate, can it not?!

Yet I also like bits n pieces of SMART as well as RR, and such like. Not sure I 'belong' anywhere, in terms of 'recovery methods'. Some days, I just give up worrying about it all, and remind myself of a fantastic Van Morrison song 'No Guru, No Method, No Teacher'. :-)

Anyway, I'm sure that the mods will politely intervene or guide me / us. One of the great things about SR, among many.

Hi
I have detoxed as an in-patient twice in the last 8 months and am only 3 weeks sober so I can identify with your struggle. The first detox kept me sober for only 10 days so 3 weeks is an improvement. I find every day hard work. As an atheist AA does not work for me so I have found myself here. However, I am embracing the one day at a time bit as I cannot yet get my head around the never drinking again message. I wish you luck in your attempts to remain as sober as pos.

Thanks Harvey - your 3 weeks is not to be snorted at! I hope you will keep it growing.

You used a phrase which piqued my interest: '...detox KEPT ME SOBER...'. I've observed to a couple of people in recent weeks that for me (and I suspect most of us), a period of detox or rehab in itself does not 'keep me sober'. The very fact and experience of picking up again...and again...and again really p**^sses me off, given that, in the last 3 and a bit years, I've 'done' detox (short) twice and rehab (28 days) once.

The longest period of continuous abstinence was the six months following the rehab. Then a further six months of single session drinking (1 bottle) roughly once a month. All the abstinent days and weeks in-between those sessions I tried even harder to 'work on' recovery, attending almost daily meetings and a few outpatient groups, reading, reading reading, joining SR, meditating, doing recovery-life change oriented daily reflections and readings, and so on.

Hell, I even - very reluctantly - started some step work with a sponsor, late last year, but simply had too much un-needed additional cognitive dissonance and mental / emotional angst about that particular paradigm.

I believe I know / sense why I go back to picking up - whether it's much later in a day one, like yesterday, or over the previous periods. I am extremely alone; I can't work anymore due to various chronic medical / psych conditions so am on a disability pension; I seem almost incapable of getting out and doing volunteering and / or the other external activities which so many people advise.

Some of this is due to not so much full depression but rather its shady cousin, dysthymia - a chronic, persistent level of very very low motivation. I described it at my first SMART meeting on Friday as akin to a car which has run out of fuel, or more aptly, with a dead spark plug! Lost my mojo, compared to years past, in other words.

Another way of putting it is an expression used by a long-distant friend of mine. She was describing her elderly mother's state in life as 'being without portfolio'. That's pretty much my life now. My only 'portfolio' is to care for my gorgeous blue heeler-border collie rescue dog. Keep my rental place clean and tidy, including the very small garden. Pay my bills, feed and basically care for myself daily.

All the little projects I'd listed as part of the previous rehab programme, early last year, you know, for 'things to keep us busy in recovery', I barely start or attempt - again, somehow due to that dead spark plug factor within.

So, the whole 'happy joyous n free' mantras proclaimed by many recovered people (whom I envy!) kind of don't gain purchase in me. I guess that's what leads me to that moment of 'deciding to drink' as RR / AVRT puts it.

Well....barely a couple of hours since my last post / diary entry, which was very early morning near dawn (I get up very early), I logged on and off SR, reading various threads in different sections.... fed the dog and played with her. It's going to be a cold and rainy day, so unlikely we'll get out and about for her / my excursions to parks or the beach.

A few minutes ago, around 8.30, i turned away from the computer, and just sat here in my dressing gown on the couch. Which I do, very often through the day. I could feel my thoughts going all over the shop, especially with...what? another bout of mild frustration that I don't seem to be able to fully BELIEVE that 'I will never drink again'.

I'd been reading various AVRT related posts, and was struck - like so many times - by the determined, dedicated, mostly unswerving belief which so many people have developed in themselves. Essentially, they have a Big Plan, and its essence is more or less the same as the mantra I heard a million times in rehab and in AA: 'don't pick up a drink NO MATTER WHAT'. Or, its corollary, in slightly different wording: 'it's the first drink which sets off the craving for more'. All of this is both psychologically, physiologically and every other '-ally' true, to be sure.

And: in that void of frustration....sitting with it, practising a bit of AV recognition, praying even, rationally questioning myself: 'do you REALLY want to pour and drink those last couple of glasses left over in the fridge from last night's bottle?' Many times I've done what so many of us do, when trying for day 1, and poured out whatever alcohol is left from the day before.

But no, I went to the fridge and poured a drink from those leftovers. It's now only just after 9 a.m. Of course, when those two glasses / units are finished, in the next few minutes, what then? Will I just accept there's no more and try to start my day afresh....? Will I get dressed, in the car, and off to buy more at the local shop (highly embarrassing, this early in the day).

We often talk about addiction ambivalence. This is the down n dirty details of how it works, within me, just in my experience.

Well, I should have known this was a bad idea. Not just to keep on drinking - yes, I went to the shop to buy more wine. But to have posted this type of in-between stuff in the first place.

I guess it really should be a blog / journal away from the active posting sections of SR.

Anyway, after a half bottle of wine now, and with no brekky or even brunch in my tummy - though I might get something to eat soon....

A final diary post, to myself if no one else (and no, I'm not really being snitchy): the timing of actively picking up again this morning is a kind of self-sabotage. That's because a. I should be sober enough today to do final vacuuming etc in prep for the real estate agent's 6 monthly inspection of my rental property tomorrow. Mind you, my place is always pretty damn nice. But when you're getting older, you've been renting for 13 years, and subject to the sniffiness of most property managers (most of whom I've encountered are about 20............), being under their gaze is really quite undignified, dispiriting. So, b. on that note, I've often over these renting years, in various locations, searched and agonised over some way of buying my own place again. In play right now: I'd made an inspection appointment for tomorrow, back in my previous country town.

Do I want to live back there? Probably not. Do I want my own place? Yes. Can I actually manage the whole nightmare of juggling being on a pension / having to use up all my other non-pension money to buy a place plus trying to get a small loan to cover on-costs of buying and moving? Well....I spent a bit of time just now, on the government pension services websites, including on my own profile link. Trying to calculate recalibrations of my pension if I bought a place. Trying to work out their insanely labryinthine set of different contact details just to find out what my situation might putatively be if I bought a house.

It's all too hard. Truly too hard. So I'll text the agent to cancel tomorrow's inspection (which involved a two hour drive each way just for a half hour inspection, and back in a town that I know but don't know if it's the right place to end up). I don't belong anywhere, anymore. Not here, not there, not back in my original home city of Sydney, not in the other Aussie States where my two elder sisters live.

I guess I just have to stick it out, here, again. A renter into my old age, and therefore subject to the vagaries and whims of the owners (I've had to leave the last few places because they wanted to sell).

So. I'll have a bite to eat, and then go for a nap. And it's only just on midday. What else is new?

I hope you won't consider my post 'pressure'.

That just doesn't spontaneously happen tho Vic.

I think it takes abstinence first off.

I spent many years aiming for a kind of wry amusement, observing myself going through groundhog day again and again.


Waste of time and talent sure, but who was I hurting?

It was easy to convince myself that nothing was really wrong, but things were wrong.

It's not normal to drink at 9am, and it's not the sign of a happy camper.

I deserve better than to repeatedly destroy myself...I know you do too.

It takes hard work, it takes a little patience and above all it takes a little faith to get out of that...I realise this is the Secular forum but what I mean by that is, if nothing else, faith in that things will get better if we allow ourselves enough time and space to make some changes.

Volunteer work was a game changer for me. I spent 20 years in my own head. It was good to get out.

If you want a sense of purpose, a reason for being then you'll have to find it, Vic, cos none of the rest of us know what you're looking for.

I do know it's not at the bottom of any bottle tho.

D

I don't mean to butt in here but Dee that was one fantastic post. Amazingly so.

Bemyself, you really do deserve so much better.

Bemyself,
It really is that simple and difficult at the same time. In my case it was making the decision to do absolutely anything to never drink again. The first step was to clear the house of all alcohol, not by drinking it, but pouring it out. There were many false starts along the way until I joined SR. I finally came to a point where I could no longer live with the madness that came with getting drunk. It was hard at first, but it really does get better. Pour that sh!t out and join us. You know everything you need to know...it's that first drink.
Wishing you well today.

Well, thank you Dee, HRB, and Received (and Robby for his acknowledgements).

I don't know what to say. (yeh, sure).

Dee, you've been around these boards long enough to know that I know I can't expect ANYONE to 'know what I'm looking for' as you rightly put it. I kind of knew that, when I decided to start this thread...and then to post again a few times, despite the minimal responses. I knew full well that people would be saying to themselves, as we all do at times on fora like this: 'yeh, well, ummmm....what do you expect me / us to say dear?'

No, I certainly do not consider a post from you as 'pressure' at all, and nor do I hear what you've written as pressure either - just some pretty sane advice from a recovered alcoholic. No, the 'pressure' I referred to was more on the lines of some who truly mean the best but who tend to see us strugglers as 'just needing to get with the program' (as it were....). I know that I can do the 'ignore' function - somehow I've never felt comfortable doing that. It seems rather rude - even whilst feeling certain responses (not just to me but others who are hurting) are not really engaging-with what the poster has actually tried to describe.

As I said in my posts, I agree in principle with you about stuff like volunteering (indeed, I was perusing the various options for same the other day on my local council website). But there's something in me - EVEN WHEN I'm sober for a good period of time - which has always prevented me from 'joining' things. Or, when I do or have, I feel always on the outer. The only time I didn't feel quite that much of a stranger, was when I was deeply immersed in the university world, all the way up to post grad (PhD) level, both in Gippsland, Melbourne and Adelaide. There are LOTS of um, 'misfits' - who are super smart, well some are :-) - hiding away in the universities.

But that time is long ago gone for me, and besides, the uni world is erm, b(*&&ggered now. The nearest non-paying / casual thing I think I could possibly do is as library volunteer at a local library. But when I checked it out ages ago - as well as very recently: guess what? there's a waiting list, a very long waiting list. And this is just to do gentle shelf stacking / cataloging.

There was indeed a small part time job going as a (paid) library assistant in the next council area to me recently. It was only 17.5 hours per week, but required travel to two different library branches at odd hours and with quite some driving time involved. You wouldn't believe the overwhelming nature of the position description one had to meet. For a tiny job paying a small amount per hour. I just get utterly depressed and overwhelmed when I read such PDs. I play with the idea for a few days....and then, the whole bureaucratic and pragmatic part of it, on a daily basis, just defeat me.

It's been this way for a long time now. I used to be able to give conference papers, conduct tutorials with a crowded room of (mostly sullen but some excited) first year uni students. Write journal articles and a chapter in a book on Aus politics (when I was a middle aged, divorced and struggling undergraduate). Complete - amidst a nightmare second marriage with a sociopathic psychologist and two disaffected daughters living with their father - a first class Honours degree. Manage things like a ten acre half-bush property. Move house to and from different States and city / country. Somehow pull myself up out of redundancy (in my last paid job, as a Federally funded project officer) - whilst drinking - to do the NEIS programme, just after my first detox, and develop my own tiny small business. That, whilst enduring multiple deaths in my extended family, and the utter nightmare of attending my dear ex-mother in law's funeral in Melbourne, driving down from Gippsland, and being shunned by my daughters, their father (ex-first husband) and his partner. That particular episode was only in early 2010 not long ago.

Did I mention that just prior to my redundancy, I lived through the Black Saturday fires in Gippsland, early 2009?

My griefs have extended over many many years. They've been the kind that just kept on coming, and I'm only referring to those from about 1989-1990 and onwards. It was in 1990 when I really started heavy drinking. And then went on to somehow achieve the university stuff, followed by the project officer work. Combined with multiple house and location moves.

I shouldn't really be saying all this - given all the shite that so many here on SR have and are going through (not to mention those in current situations like Boston, Iraq, Texas..China......). But it's my truths. I've seen many counsellors (including psychiatrists and psychologists) over the years. Maybe I'm simply one of those who (to slightly amend the old AA saying) is 'constitutionally incapable...of being myself'. I just don't know. Some days, I'm positive. Others like today, I'm not.

Volunteering was my answer Vic - it may not be yours if its so hard to get into the areas that would interest you.

I think there's always probably less attractive volunteering around - soup kitchens, working with disabled folks, hospital visiting...but thats not for everyone.

(sudden idea: Academia may not be as you and I remember it but many unis offer free online courses and classwork now - no degrees, naturally... but that was never what I was looking for anyway...I expect you're the same? :)

maybe it's worth looking into?
https://www.coursera.org/unimelb)

I'm sorry for your troubles and for your tragedies - and they're just as real and just as painful as anyone else's here.

I had my share too - no need for me to recount them - but one thing I learned is drinking kept me there...for years after.

Instead of dealing with my past, and moving on, I relived it over and over again.

I was deathly afraid of facing my past - but the pain I felt when I actually did that was nowhere near the fear and pain I felt not wanting to face it, if that makes sense....

Again this is my life I talking about - but I think it's true of all of us - if we want to get to somewhere else, we need to look at whats tethering us to the spot.

I really hope you decide to do that Vic.

It takes courage and it takes strength - but you're not alone here....there's several hundred hands to help :)

D

I believe you do know, Vic.

I remember drinking while trapped inside my full-body plaster cast for months on end. Couldn't even get out of bed. Not even for the washroom. I drank vodka straight up as often as I could. A 26 oz bottle was a good day. A 40 oz bottle would put my lights out. I was often suicidal. I was also going schizophrenic, and would later be diagnosed as an undifferentiated chronic schizophrenic alcoholic. Disabled. Crazy. Suicidal. Lonely. Angry. And still a teenager. Yeah, I was in bye-bye land.

And still, things got even worse. Mental hospital stay. Night in jail as a robbery suspect. Sleeping in ditches. Black outs. Fights with bouncers. Living like an animal.

Alcoholic insanity. I know it well. Intimately. When you start drinking at 12 to be someone your not, to be anybody but who I really was, life absolutely goes to hell right quick. And now here I am happy, successful, and soberly sane. How awesome is that? The same opportunity is there for YOU too. Hell, yeah!

I understand you, Vic. I wish I could make you get sober. I wish I could make you quit drinking. I can't of course. I could only make myself quit. And now, I can only make myself stay quit. I can't do it for others. None of us can. We're all at best examples of quitting. At worse, we're examples of not quitting. Either way, the responsibility is our own.

You have a raw enough deal, Vic. Still though, quitting drinking can really make a difference. A life changing difference. I've been thru so much in my drinking years, I quit at 24. I had nothing. When I started getting sober, all I was at that point was a burnt out loser. A write-off. Sometimes coming out of blackouts I wouldn't even know my own name. Toasted. I still have enduring and persistent memory difficulties. Whatever.

I'm sober today because I quit drinking. I quit drinking because I didn't want to die drunk. I really didn't care about being sober, and didn't have a clue what sobriety was supposed to be. I just didn't want to be drunk when I died. Quitting almost killed me too. Talk about addiction ambivalence. Man, did I want to drink or what when initially quitting!? Absolutely I wanted to drink. Still though, I didn't ever drink again, and you can do the same quit too. You absolutely can quit drinking. And you can quit today too. :)

Victoria, we all die sooner or later. You have a wonderful life yet to live. Don't believe the lies your drunken mind is whispering to you. Even though it may look bleak to you sometimes, it would look a million times more livable and doable after some serious quit time experience. Give yourself a break. Don't give up on quitting. Give up on drinking.

Thanks for starting this thread, Vic.

:You_Rock_

No. You're not incapable. Believe me, you're so far removed from being incapable, its not even close.

I've worked with incapable folk while in my years in the field. Trust me. You're simply not of that type. You don't qualify.

No way.

:)

Typing through my tears-fogged specs....and I haven't had a little cry for quite a long time. But your posts, Dee and Robby, did indeed touch my heart, deeply. Thank you so much for UNDERSTANDING. And for telling a bit about your own lives too (you especially Dee, as I've heard a little before about Robby's).

Well, I've had a full tin of good ole Campbell's chicken noodle soup with a piece of bread n butter. Too much wine, of course, so need to go back to bed for a bit (the dog is deeply peeved at this prospect, seeing we've already had a nice nap). But it is what it is, for now.

I've also texted that real estate agent to say I'm cancelling tomorrow's inspection. I know in part that the whole notion is sheer fantasy. I just have to 'have faith' that I can live right here, right now.

Thank you, guys. You don't really know how important you are to those of us who are mostly alone in different parts of the world.

Awesome to hear you're feeling and thinking you have been understood, Vic. :)

There really are so many different ways to talk about addiction ambivalence when we get into our own personal experiences. There are also so many choices ahead, all workable, on how to sustain your quitting experience. Whatever works, works. And what doesn't, doesn't.

We're all here to build ourselves a new opportunity, hopefully something that we wouldn't have if we didn't bother to care enough about ourselves.

Even at 30+ years, I'm still open minded enough to know change is the key to unlocking everything that is good about any of us. I'm still in a flux of ongoing changes and I always will be, because that is my choice to be in constant change. Yeah, I am recovered, still though, a quality life is what I'm always wanting more of, and not simply more sobriety.

It's good to hear you talk about chicken soup. Awesomely good. :)

Oh jeez, Robby, you're a wonderful 'dag' (as we say affectionately here in Aus) :-) Finishing up your madly convoluted and inspiring posts with a great tick for chicken soup....heheh.

Sadly, it was only Campbell's TINNED chicken noodle soup. Kind of ok. But nothing like my much more awesome Italian peasant style minestrone which I make numerous times in the colder months. Just finished my last lot only a few days ago.

Full of various soaked beans, onions, garlic, carrot, celery, tomatoes and tomato paste, chicken stock, and some sort of available soup meat (on this occasion, as bacon bones haven't yet come into the butchers, kaiser fleisch - Non, are you listening???? This stuff's sort of like super-charged bacon - so smoked and strong you only need small amounts).

And then, towards the end of cooking, a few handfuls of a small pasta, the best is risoni, as the Italians and Greeks use. Plus vast amounts of course of continental parsley and whatever other fresh or dried mediterranean herbs you have. Ground black pepper. and a good quality sharp grated cheese - parmesan, pecorino, etc. on top. With a good crusty bread.

Damn. It's all finished now. I have to work out what to cook tonight.

Should I change the thread name to 'how to cook for yourself reasonably well while trying to get sober'? Oddly enough, I've mostly managed to cook up some good stuff through the years. Some days, only a couple of lamb chops and 3 or 4 veg, or bubble n squeak (Dee and some of the other Commonwealth members will get this): the staples of our childhoods.

Rambling? Yes. But I figure, hell, plenty of other SR members ramble. We talk about all manner of things. Which is one of the beauty of SR. And most of SRs can spell!!!!!! Very soothing on the eyes.

Two words. Rice cooker ;)
Gets me out of many a 'I really can't be bothered' cooking nights.

have a good one Vic :)
D

Rice cooker????!! Non,non, non! I still do mine the old fashioned way, boiling on the stove. Fortunately, my cheapie microwave has just packed up in the last week or so, so I have to simply go back to basics, you know: cooking stuff, even vegetables, in water. on the stove. Eek!

Anyway, it's just before the 7 pm news, but I've not done anything for tea yet. I had my first experience with waiting for a wildlife rescue person ( a lovely lady) to come and get a sick / wounded bird I'd found outside in the courtyard not long after my last post. It was only a poor young pigeon as it turns out (I'm not really a bird-knowledge person), so she will take it to the vet to be euthanaised - they don't try to save introduced species.

Poor little sausage, another little sentient being. Still, I'm glad I didn't just chuck it over into the bush nearby my place, where it would have died a horrible long and lonely death over this coming cold night. The small mercies, even that us drunks (ex-drunks or active) can still do.

Right, off to put on the ABC news, and fiddle about with something, anything, for tea.

Just popping in to give a little encouragement.

I understand exactly what you're saying in this thread. I think we've all been in that stuck place where the only solace we can find - though not the only solace available - is alcohol.

Have you ever read the book Heart of Addiction by Lance Dodes? I think it's a great compliment to Rational Recovery. The premise is that addictive behaviors are always substitute activities, but that the action we should be taking is in a blind spot, so to speak. Drinking is a response to rage at a feeling of helplessness, hence the phrase ("F*** it!) universally thought when we fall off the wagon. For example, someone is angry at his or her spouse but drinks instead of addressing the problem directly. I find it very helpful, when the AV sparks up, to ask myself what is a direct action I can take to address the helpless feelings I'm having. For me, very often its that I'm bored, and instead of the direct action of cultivating an interest in something, my beast is recommending alcohol. Of course, all this is complicated by depression, which is temporarily addressed and simultaneously worsened by alcohol.

You sound like a very smart, capable person. I know that someone like you can find something to do and someone to do it with. I also know that your beast has all the resources in your brain, so it is capable of manufacturing brilliant excuses for why drinking is your only option.

Bemyself
I can identify with your lifestyle. I live alon, with my 3 rescued rabbits and have long term health issues. Alcohol has been a comfort in my isolation. In the past couple of years I have volunteered at my local library but without alcohol I find it hard.