TeeJayVerm

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

This is the third time in the past two months where I quit drinking for several days (from one to two weeks) then caved in and was determined to have the discipline to drink in moderation.

The end result every time is resuming my previous level of drinking within two weeks.

PhoenixJ

but you posted, and that is important..support to you

GerandTwine

I no longer see that behavior as insanity at all. I now see it as, I had a healthy, but misdirected, pleasure-seeking survival drive; one that I didn’t recognize as such at the time.

For example, It’s easy to imagine “moderating” food, sex, or sleep to the point of great frustration through lack of full consumation. That’s what trying to moderate drinking is like for an alcohol dependent person.

It’s possible to experience that very frustration within the next five minutes. Hold your breath for a long time and then take only two breaths. Hold it again on the intake of the second breath. Continue this for several minutes. You will soon see how nice it is to finally start breathing normally again.

As an alcohol dependent person, I expected the deep pleasure that comes with drunkenness almost as much as I expected normal breathing. Trying to moderate my alcohol intake was like trying to moderate breathing, a totally frustrating drag.

The second unrecognized factor to my ridiculous plans for moderation were that I repeatedly minimized the fact that alcohol is MIND-ALTERING. So, MY plans to moderate went along until its mind-altering effects rendered ME absent from the universe. I simply wasn’t there any more to stop and proceeded to get drunk again. And the drunken me had NO SUCH PLAN for moderation. I would hear “What a stupidly frustrating, timid, prudish, sissy-boy idea that was. Only two (maybe three) drinks per night? I mean, seriously, look at how fantastic you are starting to feel with just three. Let’s keep this thing going!! mmMMMMMmmmmm!!!”

For ME? It came to the point I decided it was simply WRONG for me to drink anything at all ever again. Overnight, after a really bad drunk, I turned arch-traitor against what had been my good ole buddy drunken me.

And the Big Plan nailed it down. Done. Finis. The totally sane, but misdirected Beast of Booze was caged and helpless. Forever.

Dropsie

Great posts.

Always good to be reminded.

RecklessEric

I wasn't able to moderate my drinking.
I know some people can but it caused me too much pain and heartache trying so now I don't try.

JeffreyAK

So what do you think you'll do differently, next time, to avoid a fourth time around the same dark star? Something's not working.

TeeJayVerm

The bottom line is that I feel that I continue to raise my self awareness each time this happens. I am reflecting back and realizing that I feel so much better about myself (and feel better in general) when I am not drinking . At the same time, I am recognizing the "triggers" that lead to consumption... boredom and stress, mainly.

That being said, it is just a matter of time... learning a lot more and gaining more insight as the process goes on. I have learned more over the past two months than the 20+ years before that when I was on autopilot with my drinking.

In addition, I have made some tweaks to aid in my recovery, including being more up front with my spouse about my plans so she can support me, more actively seeking support from others, and tracking calorie intake and seeing the alarming number of empty calories consumed when drinking alcoholic beverages.

Thanks for the kind words everyone! I am on a mission of personal growth and know I will figure this all out very soon!

TeeJayVerm

I know. Moderating is such a pain in the ass... sitting in the car at the liquor store for 5 minutes debating if I should go inside, trying to stop after drinks 1, 2, 3, etc. with increasingly deteriorating inhibitions, waking up in the morning and making amends to myself in preparation for the day ahead. Self bargaining... guilt... financial burden... regret... it is not worth it.

Ironically, I don't eat sweets anymore... I can be at a birthday party in a room of 30 people and they can all be eating cake and I don't feel tempted or deprived at all. I've convinced myself that sweet food only provides temporary pleasure that I do not need. I just need to get that mindset with alcohol as well.

TeeJayVerm

No responses... is my line of thinking flawed? Please be honest.

GerandTwine

I don’t think it “ironical” that you’ve quit man made sweets and not yet alcohol. I’ve done both, but quit the sweets long after the alcohol. You are simply doing it in the opposite order.

I quit alcohol for moral, social, health, and personal self-respect reasons. It took a lot of negatives to finally overcome that survival-type-appetite-driven Deep Pleasure of the drunk. In other words, I became a common teetotaler, a permanent abstainer.

Whenever the idea of drinking again came to mind, I would tell myself “Oh, I already made my decision that I would never even consider moderating again, let alone go get drunk.” And I’d quickly get on with what I had been doing before the idea came to mind.

I quit man-made sweets strictly for health reasons. I decided, whether it’s true or not, that all that sugar was worse than fat in my diet. I do still enjoy fruit.

For me, there was a strong similarity in how I ended up quitting both alcohol and man-made sweets.

rjyerkes

The fact that you have to work THAT hard at moderation suggests that your brain, like mine, is missing the alcohol "full" gauge.

When others consume alcohol something, somewhere inside them becomes satisfied at a certain point. Full.

When we consume alcohol something, somewhere inside of us opens up. An abyss. An unquenchable, insatiable desire for more. It's all we can think about. All we care about, and in that moment, it's the only thing that matters. We will stop at NOTHING to get more, and then more, and then more. The only thing that stops us is passing out. Mercifully, for us and everyone around us.

Our types of brains should really never be exposed to alcohol. For our sake and everyone around us. It's hard to admit that there's something actually wrong with us. A real medical condition. Something out of our control. The sooner we can make peace with that truth though, the sooner we can get that monkey off our backs and have peace....and sanity

fini

hi TeeJay,


here's my experience and honest opinion:
.... then caved in and was determined to have the discipline to drink in moderation.


yes. i did that, over and over. determination to be disciplined, made rules about when to drink, blahblah...after a much-too-long time had to admit that determination to be disciplined wasn't working nor kept me away from drinking after i had decided to quit.

The bottom line is that I feel that I continue to raise my self awareness each time this happens
That being said, it is just a matter of time... learning a lot more and gaining more insight as the process goes on.
I am on a mission of personal growth and know I will figure this all out very soon!

my reading of these statements is : ultimately it's useful for me to keep doing this, because i learn so much from doing it.

and yes, we do learn from returns to drinking and having no control after being determined not to ...but what are we learning?

figuring this out soon...leaves drinking intact.

my real "personal growth" couldn't happen until after i had quit drinking for good.
i wish you all the best with that, but have just realized also that you haven't said if you want to actually quit for good.
do you?

TeeJayVerm

That's very interesting... thanks for sharing! Do you have a "vice" that replaces the alcohol and sweets? A lot of people I talk to and observe tend to hang onto or get attracted to another vice... in my case, salty snacks. I honestly don't know if that is a key to recovery or inhibits recovery since the addictive part of the mind continues to be triggered. (I am sure there are a lot of opinions on that subject.)

TeeJayVerm

That's a great analogy. My "full" gauge isn't missing but it definitely isn't calibrated properly. I won't drink to the point of passing out but to the point where it poses serious risks to my long term health and comes with a lot of other baggage. Regardless, you are right that my brain should not be exposed to alcohol.

TeeJayVerm

If you have ever watched a movie called "War Games" from the 80s, a computer that teaches itself plays simulations of a game called Global Thermonuclear War over and over again until it finally realizes there is no winning moves and decides its only suitable option is to not to play the game at all.

That is how I feel right now. I am of the mindset right now that I have learned it is best not to play the drinking game and my last relapse will be my last relapse and I will quit alcohol for good. However, I don't want to be discouraged by my past relapses and use them as learning experiences.

So to answer your question, I do want/need to quit alcohol for good. Your post (and other posts) really helps reinforce that.

That being said, I really hope you saw that movie... it may be hard to follow my analogy if you didn't.

rjyerkes

LOVE that movie. Best line is when the teacher asks him if he knows who first thought of reproduction without sex and he responds, "uh, your wife?" I was 12. It was hilarious lol

JeffreyAK

OK, a couple things cause my ears to perk. This,

"Figure this out" is really not what we need when we have serious drinking problems, what we need is to stop drinking - even if we never, ever figure it out. Quitting is not a mental thinking process, it's an action process - I will not put a drink to my lips no matter what, and I'll do anything I need to do to help myself achieve that, at the very highest priority above all other things. Quitting doesn't require figuring out anything at all, it just requires that you not take the action of putting a drink to your lips. When we get too cerebral about it, we tend to fall into the trap of treating relapses as necessary steps along the path to some nebulous goal (wisdom? to drink moderately?) that we never get to, because we're too busy relapsing regularly.

And this,

Notice you used future tense, will quit, want/need to quit? Sounds like you're leaving the door open for yet another "learning experience" on your path to figuring it all out, but haven't you relapsed enough already?

You did ask for honesty.

GerandTwine

I have a much different perspective. Scotch on the Rocks! Yes, thoughts can be “triggered”, but, very clearly, the complex action of drinking cannot. And thoughts are just invisible, tiny, harmless chemical/electrical impulses in my head.

Eliminating my habituated role as a besotted inebriate freed up a lot of time and effort and that naturally led me into some new territory, but I never accepted that new territory as being limited to just another “vice” or habituated behavior due to some hardened condition of my brain or personality. That kind of rigidity sounds to me like something an addiction treatment professional might suggest to a customer in order to implant the suggestion of further treatment down the line.

LoveHateWhine

Hi - just surfing the forums and came upon your post.

I suggest you try The Alcohol Experiment. It's at wwwDOTalcoholexperimentDOTCOM. (Wasn't sure if a link would post here or not hence the cryptic website). It is a 30-day "experiment" where you go alcohol free for 30 days. There are daily inspirational e-mails, videos and even a forum like this one with others who are also partaking in the "experiment." It was started by the author of the book This Naked Mind. It presents a more scientific based approach.

I am a member of another forum on SR, and there are a few others who are also trying it.

Good luck.

Bullwinkle1944

This saying is a matter of context. I've heard this over the years in recovery groups. "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." For me it wasn't and isn't.

Insanity in legal terms pertains to the ability to determine right from wrong when a crime is committed. Insanity mental / illness as such is of a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior. I experienced abstinence many times based on self-will and eventually I surrendered and now experience sobriety. My recovery process was sane behavior.

As a new salesperson, with suggested guidance from my sales manager, I followed her direction and I did the same thing over and over again, realizing that I’d experience rejection the vast majority of the time, but knowing based on my guidance, that eventually I’d make a sale, which is a different result from rejection. After that first experience, I had a frame of reference which helped me become successful.

Also, Page 59, Alcoholics Anonymous reads…Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to “sanity”. Their use of sanity 80 years ago when Alcoholics Anonymous was written was based on ignorance (lack of knowledge).