This is the meat of the matter.  First off, alcoholics Hate change.  It disturbs us to our very core.  Just when we thing we have the game (and how to manipulate it) down, the rules change.  This all started with our childhood and our parents inconsistency, but that's another topic.

What we have to believe, is that we can change.  We can change into any form that we desire.  And that we will like where we are at, and who we are, when the changes are completed.  The first things we need to change is our attitudes about everything.  As a text book alcoholic and a neurotic,  I pretty much disliked everything and everybody for some reason.  Almost nothing was exactly to my satisfaction. I could find fault with anything, as if it were a game of "what's wrong with this picture".  I actually thought that it was my job to go through life complaining about how this sucks and that's ****ed up.  What I didn't realize is that it was all merely a projection about how I felt about myself.  I didn't live up to my own standards and I continually set myself up for failure.

The steps, and the other tools that we acquire in recovery, when applied regularly will bring about a change in our attitudes about people places and things, institutions, nature...   We will realize that we're not in control and that everything works pretty well without our "input".  We will also gain acceptance about ourselves.  We will lovingly hold ourselves as special in our abilities and learn to ask for help to deal with our weaknesses.  We all have them, and today I can accept mine in my humanness. 

But biggest of all, incorporating the above, is realizing that we really can Decide to Be Happy!  And that Happiness Is a Direct Result of  Acceptance and Gratitude,  and mostly a Daily Meditation about Gratitude.  It's when we move away from acceptance and Gratitude, that our defects of character raise their ugly heads, cloud our vision and try and wreck our serenity and our future. 

Start the morning off with a routine that involves getting in touch with nature (<---that's the closest thing to spirituality that you can get close to)  and experience gratitude for how very fortunate that you are to be alive and breathing, right here and right now. 






-- Edited by StPeteDean at 10:06, 2009-01-01

I am happy without drinking. It is kind of like I need to ruin my life up a little by drinking too much. I don't know what I am supposed to change other than not to drink? My husband and I did stop drinking for 2 years. It is hard to believe. It made life a lot more simple. We missed the drinking and started up again. We like to go out and have drinks with dinner, at the beach, at get togethers, with some family members.

I do not know what I should do to make it right. How to do this and not look back.

It is true that I don't like changes, although the changes are happening all around me. I suppose it scares me a little sometimes. But drinking sure does make that scare feeling worse. I felt absolutely rotten this am after an evening of stupid drinking.

Anyone have some advice? I could use some change !!

I can stay sober for a day easily. It is the 3rd day that is the problem! Then it can be a reward to drink a few.. What a terrible mentality. I never ever dreampt I would be like this. I have been called Pollyanna on more than one occasion, course not lately ... I told my daughter to never drink. She said she won't! She said we need to take up yoga or join an exercise club. I have an aversion to it for some reason.
I used to do more active exercise....ok one day at atime.

One of the things neccesary for me to have had a personality change, or rather a "character" change, is that I had to stop hanging with the people and in the places that I used to drink with/at. And in order to do that, I had to find something else to "fill the void" left by giving up people/places that I had come to be comfortable with for so long.

That is where meetings came to help me the most early on. I am a creature of habit, and I cannot simply "quit something" without something better to do in it's place. I would get squirrely in the evenings, at the time when I would normally start drinking (or be drunk already), so I would go to a meeting. Not only did meetings fill the time-void, but they helped get rid of the craving for that perticular night. I could sleep better after a meeting. I met people who would become an integral part of my social life and my recovery.

The rest has come through working the steps. The changes do not happen overnight. And thank goodness, or I would have been in quite a state of shock. Little by little, we recover.