Not having much success, here
 

This song sums it up perfectly:

Carryin' on this way


Well, I've been trying. But I just can't seem to give up the fun of going out, even though I see how it causes other problems. I try really hard, but just can't seem to talk myself out of a few wild nights. It's weird, I was such an innocent teen, never touched anything, all A's, didn't drink in college...though I'm starting to feel like some kind of wild, adult delinquent, if there is such a thing.

I have been getting a lot of writing done, and also have been working on rearranging where we live to set up workshop space, to start working on some projects, in the hopes this will give me and my mate motivation to do other things.

But what seems to be missing is the social aspect, and what will replace that. I've never lived in a city where there's so much drinking, and I am easily drawn in.

I also think some RL support groups would be good, but I've had no luck there; they all meet when I'm at work. The computer is OK, but yet it doesn't seem all that real to me, or as immediate, or comforting...it's hard to explain. It almost makes me anxious, posting, then hoping to get replies, make friends, and stuff. Sometimes I get to feeling almost more lonely, the more I am on the computer. I think this is common in general, though.

Urg. Not doing very well at this don't drink thing, still :(

I have found that this site is the best forum for me. Lots of cool people here and I love how anonymous it is.

Husky have you tried things like Meetup.com to find sober activities to go to? I sometimes use that site to go to movies, on a hike, practice speaking Spanish, etc. It can be a nice way to get out of the house and be amongst people without drinking. Often the events will have alcohol there but not all, and very few of them are based around alcohol.

Fantail, thanks, and yes, I have tried finding sober activities, with some success. I do like nature and hiking, though it's hard, as it seems to take ages to get out of the city/sprawl. But it is something I hope to do more on weekends.

I think part of the problem is that in this concrete jungle I live in, in this 'arts district', it's hard to picture what it would be like not drinking, as odd as that seems. I'd love to move, but no $$$/bad credit and stuff have put a damper on that...

I've tried many methods over many years to try to stop, and just keep failing...I feel like I just can't find the motivation, there is a certain sense of hopelessness and desperation that sees to fuel this, beneath the surface, this kind of reckless, so what if I die feeling.

I have times when I feel motivated, but I find it really hard, especially on my own.

Edit: It's been about 8 or 9 years since I decided to stop. Most I lased was maybe 70 days???? And besides that, about 27 days. But generally not much more than a week. Tried a lot of things, and have had a very strong desire, but something in me seems to keep breaking down.

My ABF has big issues with this too, HuskyPup. He loves the social aspect of drinking and going to the bar is definitely his Achilles heel. (I was a behind-closed-doors drunk myself.) I keep telling him that he needs to make sober friends.

If you live in a city, there has to be evening meetings somewhere. Even AA meetings are good places to meet sober people, even if you work a secular program. You don't have to actively participate - just stick around and socialize. I do that occasionally.

Meetup is a great idea.

Wait...you need to drink to be a wild, adult delinquent?!
I guess I'm doing it wrong then.

I can relate to a lot of what you wrote- especially feeling lonely when online. For me, it is hard to stay sober when there are unresolved emotions and unresolved issues below the surface. Because you mentioned the hopelessness, desperation, and so-what-if-I-die feeling, I wonder if therapy would help to resolve some underlying emotions/issues.

It would be difficult, since you enjoy going out. Your plan of finding more sober things to do makes a lot of sense. I've been pushing myself to try new things lately, because I was getting depressed and too close to drinking again. I think it helps to fill our lives.

You mentioned it's fun to go out drinking. What makes you want to be sober?

I know you're sincere, HP, so I don't mean this to be snarky... but are you having fun? I've sensed in your posts sometimes the same profound emptiness I felt the last few years I was drinking. Sorry if I'm just projecting here, but for me drinking wasn't really fun anymore. It was just a brief respite from that emptiness. The thing is, it wasn't a cure at all. It was the cause.

It's a lot more fun on the other side — that came as a total shock to me, but after I had put a few months between me and my last drink, things got enjoyable. Exciting, actually. Bright and new. But that's not even the best part. The best part is being content. Not needing anything at all. Just enjoying the moment. I never had that before, not even after drinking everything in sight.

Give it everything you've got, because it's absolutely worth it.

Part of it is release from pain and tension, as in physical pain. I've tried to mange this medically, but only with pretty limited results. Doctors don't seem to very much car about/understand pain, and treat you like some kind of addict, like you're making it up. So you could say I self medicate for issues related to TMJ/facial/neck/head pain.

Part of it is that I really love the feeling of being buzzed and listening to music...it seems to make it feel so much broader, especially certain music. It's hard to explain.

But a big part is getting home at a time when all the kinds of meet up stuff is already over...at about 8:30-9:00 PM. Then, it's dark, the city parks are all closed, and I get to feeling shut in, and I tend to go stir crazy.

I did try AA for a while, but it drove me crazy, sitting there, listening to the same things over and over and over, like a bored kid in church. I hated the rigid structure, the back-biting 'sharing', the passive aggressiveness of it all, the creepy, cult-like feel, the Bill W worship, that horrid book that was treated like some kind of Bible, the same people over and over, the cliques, the way I felt like I was only conditionally welcome. It was after AA that I decided I'd rather die a drunk that go there anymore. I know that sounds harsh, but it's how I felt, after a few months of going a few times a week to various meeting I thought would be more liberal/open to different ideas... agnostic, GLBT, but they all had the same prayers, and would spend half the meeting reading all this God stuff, over and over and over.

I want to stop drinking to improve my life and health, and I know I should try harder. But I feel like I have not been able to do it by myself, or even with a therapist. I would love some person to person support...I think, the type of person I am, it comes to that. But then, I'm faced with only AA being around.

I'm not using this as an excuse, but from looking back over the past 8 years, and thinking that when I did have a SMART meeting to go to, even if it was just 2 people, how helpful that was...or some kind of dedicated support group.

I'm really shocked that in this day and age, and in such a huge city, we don't have more options for support groups like this...all we seem to have is the same cookie cutter steps stuff, and if you are not a 9 to 5 worker, well, you're out of luck.

I'm sorry to sound all wound up. It's just hard. I try. I try really hard, and feel like such a worthless failure.

:cries3:

No need to explain, for me anyways. I get the loving of the feelings of being buzzed. Back in my day, I loved doing LSD with vodka while lazily smoking grass / hash through a water-pipe. Days and nights strung out blurred into a seemingly single timeless experience. Loving those times was a definite roadblock in successfully quitting. In fact, I was really doing myself in (dying) even though I had a love for the experiences.

It's the addiction which does us in, not the surreal experiences, speaking for myself anyways. I don't regret my alcohol / drug trips. Even the downers and crashes have a place in my past experiences which make up a significant part of me today, even after decades of abstinence.

It really became a matter of survival for me. No matter how much I loved tripping, my dying for it was too much of a price to pay. I learned to hate myself even more when I discovered my quitting was being sidelined by my addiction ambivalence struggles. The love/hate thing was really jamming me up. For me anyways, I required ton's of introspection to eventually figure out how quitting could work for me. Cookie-cutter one-size-fits-all simply doesn't work for me. I also don't believe it works for anyone else either, but that's a different conversation, lol.

I was living a sham life while using. All my efforts for self-control were useless as long as I bought into my love for being high. I really needed to understand how my quality of life was zero because I was being controlled by my addictions.

And even that is a kind of mind-***-game, because my addictions could only control me by my first believing that I was actually in control while drunk with my DOC alcohol. Ignoring the costs of my abuse made it easier to abuse.

I am fortunate my addiction abuse ended at an early age. I started age 12, and was toasted by 24 years young. Haven't looked back since. Being addiction free of alcohol / drugs rocks.

My eventual hatred for my addiction ambivalence struggles is what set me up to successfully quit for good and all. Those horrific struggles really helped me understand the core of intimate dishonesty I held within myself and my drunken lifestyle. I was clearly deluded and naïve. A kind of slow-suicide was really what was going on. How sad that I found selfish enjoyment in too many of those intoxicated experiences :(

Anyways.

Take a look at the other side of those good-times, and I'm sure you already know without being otherwise told what the sum conclusion of looking at both sides of your addiction struggles eventually have come to cost you. The writing is on the wall, and the math is obvious.

Feeling like a failure is a cost which you can't really afford anymore, I'm suggesting I suppose. For me, addiction failure became equated with dying from the inside out. Failure is an old friend of mine. I've learned to take my failures in stride, and build my successes on the life-experiences of my past times good, bad, and indifferent.

You can make a difference in your own life, HuskyPup. Really, you can. It begins and ends with YOU. Failure can be turned around. Victory is a real choice that YOU can absolutely go forward with, and not look back ever again at having to get buzzed.

:)

HuskyPup, I live in a small city where everybody, including me still has one foot in the cave if ya know what I mean, and there is just as much booze and dope here as anywhere else, so there's no where to run to. I used to think that communicating with people via the internet was not real but that just isn't so. I can clearly sense what you are going through as well as if we were talking face-to-face. CyberSpace isn't for physical contact, but there's a lot more to a life than physical contact. I lived a lifetime of going out, physical contact, and all that stuff, and now I do have some regrets about it. Going out is one thing, going out drinking and drugging is something else. My hope is you get rid of "chemical dependence" problems at a young age. Rootin for ya. :egypt:

There are many clubhouses that have coffee counters and have activities for anyone who want to join in. Drop by one of them and check out their bulletin boards. You don't have to go to any meetings, but can just hang around and talk. You can do many things this spring and summer with clean and sober people.

Hey, HP. I can relate to a lot of what you said. Most of all the same two points Robby highlighted.

First the music—I felt EXACTLY the same way! I used to spend hours drinking and listening to albums, and it wasn't just a journey of the ears, but the mind. My emotions would ride along songs like a raft on a river. It felt so deep. And I was convinced I would never feel that again without the booze... But guess what? That's yet another lie our addiction tells us, to make us think we're actually giving up something good—but you're not, the good stuff comes with you! In fact it is even more enjoyable, because now I'm able able to fully enjoy art for its own sake, without it being all tangled up in that obsessive need to fill the emptiness within. I did take a break from certain albums for a couple of months because I so closely associated them with drinking... but now they're back in rotation, more beloved than ever. :)

The other thing that struck me is what you said about feeling like a failure—yeah, for sure, that's a natural part of feeling trapped in addiction. Only a crazy person wouldn't feel bad. But again, that's caused by drinking, not cured by drinking. That's the greatest lie of all, the way our addiction convinces us that it's sparing us from pain, when really it's the root of it. And it tells us we can't succeed, that we should give up. But the truth is, you can do this. Cast aside those doubts. You know more about yourself and addiction than you ever have before. You've never been in a better position to succeed!

Thanks, everyone, and sorry to have been so wound up. I hope I didn't sound too snappish and unappreciative; I know I can be a handful, sometimes.

I started out pretty late in life with drinking; I was always afraid of it, due to my family history, so for my first (roughly) 30 years, I avoided it. But now at 45, it's become a problem.

Feeling like a failure and self esteem are issues that go back a long way...I can recall having these feelings very strongly in first grade, and very intensely throughout my youth/teen years, and especially after graduating high school and college and getting really good grades but in an area nobody cares about, and then not being able to make enough money to really live on, and feeling like what I have to offer, the world doesn't value. And so because we live in this society where we exchange goods and services, I feel like a failure, in addition to feeling like a failure due to earlier self-esteem issues that date way, way back, such that the two are tangled up together.

So not believing in myself has always haunted me, and it's something I've struggled with overcoming my entire life. I've been talking about this in therapy a lot, it seems to help, or at least I hope so.

My therapist suggested maybe going to some step meetings, and passing out flyers/hanging up flyers to form an alternative recovery group. I know this might make some people mad, but I think it just might be worth a try. I figure, so what if a few people get mad? I'm fighting for my own life, if this upsets them so much, they don't have to go, nor do they even have to be upset, if they don't want to.

So I'm looking at other places to go recreationally; there's a local coffee shop, movies are an option, and these are just a few blocks away.

Then, I have been at least working on my writing, and I need to keep pushing that. I'm drafting a cover letter, so I can begin submitting some poems to literary journals, with the hopes of building up a publication record. I figure then, maybe I could teach even without a certificate at a private school, I do have a BA in English. It's just that to get that certificate, I'd have to quit my job to do student teaching, and I couldn't afford to do that, so I'm looking at alternate routes. I'd prefer to teach grades 8-12, and preferably not in a public school, due to the prevailing trends there. I'd probably end up in the principals office more than the kids, what with my mouth.

Plus, I feel a huge loneliness, or blank spot in me, in that I never had kids, and now, it's too late. This may not seem all that meaningful to a lot of people, but it's one thing where I feel this big, burning area of emptiness in my heart. I wanted to adopt, but never made enough $$$, even before I drank, not to mention, the legal troubles of a gay male adopting are a bit more complex, and were especially so when I really wanted to, about 15-20 years ago. So I thought this might be some way to help fill this whole, and also possibly be of some help to the next generation, imparting whatever wisdom and skill I have in writing, perceiving, intuition, there must be something of value to me, I keep telling myself.

Without a doubt. You're of value right this moment; you always have been. :) I have no doubt there's much more inside you, waiting to be set free. That's the whole point of this recovery business, HP. The future can open up for you—and don't give me this "too old" business, you're still a youngster to half the folks around here. But you have to quit drinking first. I wasted years trying to fix the other things first, figuring once I was no longer lonely or lost, it would be easy to quit. The reality is I had to quit first—only then would I be able to open up the other doors.

That's good in a way—it lets you focus on just one goal, just one issue. Table all the rest, my friend. Deal with addiction first, and you'll be amazed how much more manageable the rest becomes. :)

Thanks for the support, there.

Well, I mean I am too old to adopt, even if I got sober, and that often makes me sad.

I'm not sure I'm able to just table the rest, as I quit drinking first...I think it will happen as a kind of package. I do see how stopping drinking 'first' makes things easier, certainly, but one can't just put their feelings and lives on hold, so that as I try to stop, the very motivation to stay stopped comes from looking at these issues, if that makes sense.

I stayed in last night, got a lot of sleep today, though feel kinda blah...not drinking, but just feeling sorta empty.

I'm still considering how to start a non-step based support group, in real life...I think I may have to just try and do it myself, here. Has anyone else ever tried this? I feel like having a group to share with is very helpful, just not one that has to have everything done a certain way...that part was very harmful.

Yeah, me too. I got that in spades right here, in the Class of December 2010 daily support thread. :)

I would have loved to have found face to face support that felt like the right fit for me, but I never did. I'm glad I didn't let that stop me. I lost too many years waiting for all the other stars to align. The right relationship, the right job, the right this, the right that... then I would quit. Now I see that was just the addiction whispering in my ear, feeding me excuses to put it off for another day.

You can do this, HP. You can start anytime you want. The proof of it is all over SR. :)

Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS)
 

This might be of some help to you HP. Perhaps there is already a non-step program around you.

S.O.S. Secular Organizations for Sobriety

Genie

I'm still going to quit, though I', very afraid to post outside of this section. The last time around, I recall somebody said to me, 'Go ahead and drink yourself to death, for all I care', and it seemed like a very mean and judgmental place, on the non-secular threads...so though I'd like to post where it's more active, I'm just not sure I can deal with the militant hardliners. Maybe it's changed, but at the time, about a year ago, it was pretty ugly, and after a while, I didn't see where insults and fighting were helping.

I'll have to see if SOS has some more active daily support threads...until then, I'll keep posting here, till I'm sure it's safe.