dwtbd

With the calamity clause , it goes beyond ‘can’ or permission for ‘can’, no such permission is needed anyone can whenever they want ,yeah?

The calamity clause is a plan ‘to’ , and is AV and therefore dismissable , through the lens of AVRT.

lessgravity

wtf DD, I had no idea. I don't frequent this board so I missed your post.

Have to admit it upset me. Strange eh? This internet non-entity connection that we have/don't have on this site?

Was a bit crestfallen I think is the best way to put it.

I don't want the pain you must be enduring. Hope you surface again soon.

nez

Any drinking for me would be a detriment to my health as my mental health would go straight into the crapper. I have been there and have no desire to return and I know without a doubt that would be the outcome as opposed to being a solution.

fini

dd,
a thought experiment of sorts:
let's say you decide (or your beast decides?? not familiar enough with this paradigm to know) that yes, in face of a specific calamity, you would drink.

put yourself there, picture it, the calamity, the getting of booze, the opening of the bottle, the first swallow.....

if that is still part of the mindset on what to do in a calamity, will you soon be hoping for this calamity?

doggonecarl

...as well as redefining what constitutes a calamity?

Fusion

Hi Daredevil, I do hope you’re still reading. What are your thoughts today, regarding the drink issue. Do you have a plan? Oh my, I’ve morphed into Dee (that’s laughing in a respectful way, by the way.....Dee is one of my sobriety idols).

daredevil

fini: I’d never welcome a calamity, just threw it out there as a contingency to justify future drinking. Ultimately it’s just keeping the door open.

Tatsy: will probably up my meetings in the ensuing week or so while the situation is still precarious. Maybe get some feedback from the folks at SMART. I’ve heard people articulate similar patterns: months of sobriety followed by binges.

GerandTwine

I think there’s no reason to keep the door closed. There’s no problem with seeing what’s on the other side.

I also see the threshhold on the floor, and it’s a threshhold I will never cross, no matter how much time I spend looking forward into various possible calamities.

lessgravity

You drinking still?

daredevil

No, less--I'm not. But I've always been more inclined to drink in the couple of weeks after a binge than thereafter.

That's what I meant.

lessgravity

Yes me too. Crack in the dam and it leaks over everything in my life.

Your perspective is refreshing and valued on these boards, hope you find a way or ways to keep sober.

dwtbd

You don’t do anything to keep sober.

Sober is a word we use to mean a natural , umolested state of mind/being.

Not drinking (sober) is a passive state , artificially incorporating intoxicants in one’s system is an action . Viewing keeping or staying sober as being a result of actions taken is reversal of cause and effect, yeah?

Being or staying sober isn’t really a choice, it’s pretty much metaphysical .

Drinking is making an action choice. The AV portends the near inevitability or practical metaphysical-ness of more drinks.

You don’t stay sober by not drinking , you don’t get drunk.

And only AV portends an inherent difficulty in being in a natural state.

lessgravity

Like this, thanks.

daredevil

A brain habituated to alcohol has entrenched neuronal pathways compared to a never-addicted brain, so I think ‘staying sober,’ while the unmolested state, can prove difficult, at least for a while, until neuroplasticity works in undoing the entrenched neuronal pathways.

dwtbd

I think that’s true. But the neural pathways respond/react to the presence of alcohol .
The pathways do not override voluntary muscle controls , like all the actions required to purchase and consume alcohol.

daredevil

No redefinition of calamity is required: it meant its dictionary definition.

The relevant question is what constitutes a calamity.

Wholesome

Drinking again would be a huge calamity for me.

GerandTwine

What, specifically, would you imagine the most likely calamity be in your case?

It wasn’t until I made the Big Plan that I recognized I had burned a brand new short circuit in my neuronal response to any and all opportunities to drink. As soon as that old, habituated desire pops into mind the short circuit zaps it off to the “strictly an imagination not to be enacted” pidgeon-hole in the unimportant stuff area of my brain. And that started happening immediately after I made my Big Plan.

The Abstinence Commitment Effect (ACE of Rational Recovery) was that great feeling of knowing it was OVER, and my recovery was over, too.

lessgravity

This would be the same for me. Even if there is an urge for oblivion, the afterwards is just unsustainable. The older timer's saying, I might have another bender in me, but I don't know if I have another recovery, is apt for me.

Wholesome

This is reminding me of the original denial part of AVRT where the inherent wrongness of drinking is denied. Maybe other people can drink without it being wrong, but the fact that you are here on SR and attending meetings IRL tells me that drinking is wrong for you.

The rest of this keeping the door open for some future incident that for some reason would necessitate drinking is 100% AV, it's your Beasts desperate death throes because IT knows you are getting ready to go in for the kill. There is no bad situation that drinking won't make worse.

I'll tell you a personal story. My sister and her husband were both drugs addicts and they quit together many years ago. A few years ago my sister had a home birth that went terribly wrong and her baby died. I can't think of a worse tragedy, it just broke everyone's heart. Her husband's AV used that as the perfect opportunity to go back to drug use. My sister did not. Her pain was undoubtedly the worst, it was her child that she had carried inside her body for 9 months.... she had to go home with empty arms. Yet she decided that the worst way to honor her son was to go back to being a loser addict and deny herself her grief. They are divorced now because he never came back from that return to use and just continued landsliding. She is doing well and although the grief will stay with her forever she has been able to still succeed in her life, because she is abstinent. The AV will always use lifes tribulations as an excuse, that's what it does, but we don't have to listen to it.