tursiops999

breathe deeply, and watch the beast. It can scream in your ear all it wants to, but it can't drink the beer by itself. It has no real power.

Hang in there, JustFine!

JustFine

Very true.... Of-course I didn't drink them... Nor will I. Too many reasons not to drink. Just becoming a non-drinker AGAIN is difficult at times. Re-learning separation from the beast. Recognizing the voice and not letting it attempt to get me to Reason with it.... That is the key. I keep reminding myself that this process is only as difficult as I allow it to be.

fred59

JustFine, dump them out and welcome back do not beat yourself up for drinking again. I had a couple decades sober and yesterday I had 4 months. Today is one more day sober and that is good enough, have a plan stick to it and if the beer temps you get rid of it.
Smart Recovery is a good program

shockozulu

if RR is like SMART, neither a lapse or relapse is considered, Bad thing. However tools and worksheets on tools repaired the process during Christmas time.

JustFine

My beast is giving me hell right now. I can see myself drinking a few, having a few more.... It all being so fun and I can't seem to play the tape through the rest. It just wants to drink. It's Saturday it says. It one or two it says. Two weeks is no big deal start over tomorrow it says. Why did you make a stupid Big Plan anyway..... Thanks Fred. I needed to read your post. This beast and I are at war right now!!!!!!

dwtbd

When you woke this morning, were you pissed you didn't get blotto last night?
I haven't regretted sticking with my BP , even one little iota. The Beast and AV , heck, pissed off royally, but eff 'em, I deserve better than even one more 'hurrah'
Stay strong, you deserve it too

JustFine

Not at all. Woke up this morning feeling sooooo happy I didnt drink, proud of myself and ready to move forward. Thanks.... I don't know who said it but someone once told me "no-one ever wakes up and says I wish I would have drank more last night". Lol

Elle126

Well done for fighting the beast just fine, you're doing so well, the beast can only have power if we let it.... Hang on in there, you know you can do this. Elle

JustFine

Thanks Elle.... It was not a great night but it's a good morning. Maybe two weeks isn't the two years I had but, I am grateful not to be on day one.

Elle126

You can do this just fine, you have already proved that and with every sober day you will find a new found confidence and your self esteem will rocket. Things that seem insurmountable when drink will no longer daunt you. Welcome to happy life
Elle

fini

hi JustFine
i didn't realize you were Jess until i saw your post in the other thread.

i haven't responded here because....well, frankly your initial phrase "there was a flaw in my Big Plan" stuck with me and took me back to my own issues with the concept of "make that commitment to never drink again and follow through" which ultimately i couldn't make work.
it's a simple thing, this BP, and there is no flaw in it as far as i can see.
it's rational, reasonable, simple.
the flaw isn't in the plan.
it's in us sticking to it, by making a diifferent decision at some point.
the reason why we make a different decision at some later point....well, there's lots of ideas and different experiences on that.
some say their reversal was freely chosen. others speak of triggers...for myself, i see that as part of addiction; compulsion. which i believe has "irresistible" in the definition .

so the concept of the BP isn't a useful one for me when people end up drinking regardless.

Jess, i've wondered what happened to you, and i'm sorry to hear you went back to drink-horror, but very glad you're pulling out of it and that you've shown up here again.

City

Don't give up! One year is huge. My goal is to be completely abstinent too. We can do this. We have another chance.

JustFine

Good to hear from you fini. After 2 years I have to say I flat out chose to drink. No compulsion just the idea that maybe now I could be a "normal drinker". Regardless, I went back to drinking and here I am. It is what it is I suppose. Thanks again for the reply.

dwtbd

What's a normal drinker? What I mean by that is, I know what drinking was normally like for me. A few always started the itch , the only question was how hard I'd scratch.
It's gotten a lot better after not picking that scab, I'd say that the scab is now just a faded scar, pretty sure if I ever picked at it it'd open up.
Did you honestly think you'd handle alcohol differently than in the past? Has this experience changed your perspective? If so, are going to make a BP, with an added emphasis on not changing your mind?
Wish you well and hope to see you around

fini

yes, i get that, Jess.
but the idea 'now i could be a normal drinker' is one thing and ideas aren't really relevant to the carrying out of the "i will never...and i will never..." BP.
this is the crazy part.
where the 'idea' suddenly trumps the most earnest plan.

this is where my question always was/is. i had many returns to drinking after committing/deciding/planning never to do it again and to never change my mind. the fact that i drank again over and over, which i could only see, at the time, as having changed my mind even though i had made up my mind to not ever change it....left me stumped.

tursiops999

how's it going today, Jess?

JustFine

Not so great. I have probably lost my career which I fought hard for. I am now " on paid leave" however as to dwtbd... I don't know why I let my beast convince me that "now your normal" . I do know at first I just recognized it then we got together and I reasoned it with it. Obviously my first mistake. Than I decided to drink.
At first I thought maybe I need a different program then I retread rational recovery with an emphasis on the drinking again section. I realized that I did not fail and it did not fail. I chose to drink. Easy. Simple.
Did ever really think I could be normal.... No. I decided to let my beast convince me I could.... So I could excuse my choice.
So I am unemployed, extremely depressed however I no longer drink now. So unless it's never not "now" then I will never drink again.
fini- I can't answer that question for you. I think it is a question that I have asked a lot over the last six months and all I can say is I REFUSED to even consider a BP since I felt like such a failure. Once I retread RR again the only answer I have Is I chose to rationalize with my beast, I chose to disregard my better judgement. I chose to drink and no matter what program I use I still have to always not drink now.
Trust me I have not been unemployed in years and last night all my beast said was "PERFECT EXCUSE.... Drink" and myself said I"I am not drinking now and it's not up for debate". My beast shut up.
Thanks for checking on me Tursiops... I appreciate it

JustFine

It's 4 am. I have likely lost my career and certification to work due to a bad judgement call based off a lot of exhaustion. I am still sober. I wanted to drink when I found out yesterday but my amazing boyfriend "talked me down". I have no idea who I am without that job. I lived it, breathed it, set my life around it.... There was no work-life balance. I lived to work and sometimes enjoy a Saturday off... Not a weekend. I have always worked... Been productive and now I don't know who I am. I turned 40 a week ago.......I got sober AGAIN 2 weeks ago. Became of that job ...and what I allowed it to do ...I lost my daughter's last year at home ( I was never here and if I was I was on my computer), I no longer exercised or went to the gym, I basically left my brother/best friend on his own to handle everything with my aging mother and I quit enjoying time with her and time is not on her side.
I can't sleep and I'm having an anxiety attack and it seems all I know about myself right now.... Is that I'm sober. Oh yeah and unemployed.

tursiops999

(((Jess)))

That's a lot to handle, of course you'd be anxious!! I don't claim to know everything you're going through, but I certainly relate to overworking, to the exclusion of relationships and exercise/health. I felt like I had a dual addiction to work and alcohol, and they fed each other. I'm not working right now ... in my case it was a choice, but it's definitely challenging to be away from work, when my life was organized in the past to be all about work. But it's also a good opportunity to catch up on those areas of my life that have been neglected.

As far as BP failing, that's a big topic, that many here have wrestled with... but in my own experience the difficulty comes in the "R" piece ... sometimes the AV can attack so quickly that, without sufficient mindfulness, I'm in danger of identifying with it, rather than recognizing it as the beast and dissociating from it. So I'm working on slowing down during stressful situations ... breathing, slowing down to heighten my mindfulness of my thoughts, before things start to snowball. I don't know if any of that pertains, to that period of time during which you chose to drink again.

In any event ... you can absolutely do this, and although this sub-forum is a little quiet, I know there are people here who are ready to support you in this, so please keep posting.

GerandTwine

Hi Jess,

It's not hard to understand the meaninglessness of "normal drinker" when one becomes familiar with the statistical facts about drinking in the USA. Check out this web blog article and study the graph at the bottom of the article.

/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-record-rates/

The ninth percentile of drinkers looks sort of like what I thought I would gradually settle into as my "experimenting" with binge drinking proved totally untenable at the end of my twenties. Well, I just couldn't do it. After two drinks "I" was no longer present in the universe. After two drinks, "I"had become a personality with a completely different idea of what to do with the rest of the day or evening and it always included having some more to drink.

Rational Recovery developed Addictive Voice Recognition Technique after I quit drinking, and I used AVRT to cement my permanent abstinence solidly in place because I had been spinning my wheels for years in the Recovery Group Movment's mentality that sobriety was a one-day-at-a-time proposition. I intuitively knew that to be false, but simply got caught up in the socio-politico-correctness of the recovery mythologies of the 1980's.

It was important for me to understand the transition Rational Recovery made over twenty years ago between its original affiliation with Rational Emotive Theory (RET) and it's present fully developed focus on Addictive Voice Recognition Technique.

The term Rational took on a new meaning for me in the context of AVRT. It's original meaning of disputing irrational beliefs was no longer useful. As you discovered, Jess, it feels a quite rational to decide to see if it's possible to fit into the ninth percentile of drinkers in the USA, after two years of abstinence. If you had made the Big Plan of AVRT, you would have realized that disputing whether a belief is rational or not is NOT what Rational means in Rational Recovery, and you might not have had more to drink.

To come to the point, for me, Rational in Rational Recovery means that it was finally time to take Irrationality to a whole new level. The Beast is a real entity within me that has the cunning "rationality" of an animal eternally dedicated to staying alive by regaining the pleasure of alcoholic inebriation. That form of rational is absent from the human-only rational of RET. I had to counter the Beast rationality of "drink at any cost" with a similar form of eternal, unchangeable, iron-clad plan that would FOREVER BEAT THE BEAST.

By the way, the Beast of RR is NOT the desire to drink more AFTER alcohol is already in the bloodstream. The Beast vanishes completely after it has got you to drink anything, because at that point IT IS YOU and there is no distinguishing difference.

So, to me, Rational Recovery means know the Beast is humanly Irrational. Understand and use AVRT and it will become CLEAR that I MUST create a HUMANLY IRRATIONAL PLAN to conquer the BEAST. And THAT, of course, IS THE BIG PLAN. A plan that is irrational to RET, but perfectly rational to permanently ending addiction.

As time passes, PhDs, Phormer Drunks who have made The Big Plan, realize and accept in a deeply fundamental and stubborn way, that NOTHING can happen that will cause them to drink again.

At two years, I was just beginning to have my drinking dreams taper off. I attribute a lot of my battling the Beast in my first years abstinent to my immersion in the recovery group movement pre-AVRT. The RGM IS a haven and playground for the Beast. I wanted to end my recovery just like I did my addiction. RR is a direct route out.
For many years, now, I have no recollection of what the physical sensation of being under the influence of alcohol is like. I have zero anxiety about drinking situations. So, why not consider testing out drinking again? Well, with me that's not even a valid question. It doesn't even matter why I quit. I believe anyone can "forget to do evil".

GT

PS. I'm sorry you gave up the last year of your daughter at home with you. And I hope your best friend relationship with your brother is while not drinking. AVRT describes well the comingling of Beasts. If you choose, you have a long, exciting life ahead of you.