I am not sure if anyone remembers my post a couple weeks ago about me having a job where I travel a bunch and end up eating dinner and lunch at the hotel bar because thats where my co workers congregate. I got some suggestions to not eat at the bar, so tonight I bought a couple of appetizers and moved to a table. The drinks flowed and I drank diet coke. The voices rose and I started looking at my watch. The topic went to politics, and I excused myself as the words were starting to slur and the tempers rose. I am glad to be sober!
__________________
"You're in the right place. That's the door right there. Turn around."
Aloha TG!! After I stopped drinking those situations use to freak me out and I would feel weird being around people who were drinking. It became hard to believe that I was a player in those events also. I just love the "decision" story from Bill W from the Big Book when he stood in the lobby considering turning left into the bar and instead turned right to the phone kiosk and called, I believe a local hospital asking if there was another drunk there he could talk with. Next time you get to the decision? consider turning right.
What a VICTORY for you! Congrats!!! My voice raises when Politics come up, and i am sober! LOL i can't imagine trying to discuss such drivel whilst inebriated!
Good to see you Posting. And that is such a good way to celebrate our own clear and Sober thinking.....as others stop being present.
Question: Are some of these hotels you stay at, do they only have a dining room with a Bar on one side. Is that how you get yourself into having a Bar in the same room.
If they have another seperate dining room, how about asking one of the "guys" to go the main dining room, with the excuse of "it gets too loud in there, just want to relax and enjoy my dinner" (Just thinking out loud here, was trying to understand why this keep coming up)
I never really drank in bars either, (bedroom closets, now thats another story, haha) and if you think that Palm Trees and having time on your hands is a slippery place, glad I don't share those feelings, I can see about 100 Palm trees when I look out my windows, and do have some time on my hands. Viva la Differ'ence , right.
I have to share Deans thoughts or rather how he feels, like cringing just a little when I see you repeating the "In the Bar, and choosing to take a table", that is a big step, granted, but I share in the thought of just staying away from any and all bars.
As you probably know I had a 10 year run of going and not getting the Program and going back to drinking, spent the 3 or 4 first years of that going to Newcomers Meetings, raising my hand as a Newcomer almost all the time, but I would manage to put 30 days together and once 60 days. These were the exceptions, not the rule. At that point, concluded I was never going to get the Program, and stopped going altogether.
My point to this is we all have different scenarios of how we slip, or relapse, and when the AA Program finally kicked into gear, I was willing to do Anything and Every thing to do whatever it took, to not return to relapsing. Grabbed all the tools, found a Sponsor, a woman that I still to this day think of as Tough as Nails, I knew when I was introduced to her, that she was not going to be taking any BS from anyone, so I asked her to Sponsor me, and she agreed. Which turned in complete success, thanks to her.
So I did my own reading of other Books, the book on Relapse Prevention, by Gorsky, and he repeated over and over in that Book, that a Drink is the END of the Relapse, NOT the beginning, I knew I had to really do some work in understanding that, if my own, now cherished recovery was going to Hold.
And I was thinking of how you had a slip, or relapse of a short duration, this year in May, and one the year before in June, dont know how long that one lasted? Obviously what I am getting at is how about looking into the part of that Concept of the Drink is the LAST part of the slip. I believe our own subconscious mind is stronger than our conscience mind in what we do everyday, in many ways. Just like driving our cars, is it not our memory of how to drive doing most of the driving, we of course are conscience of the traffic, and when to stop, and when to start, what traffic speed is necessary, but we drive mostly from the subconscious memory of HOW to DRIVE. My take anyway.
I call my Disease of Alcoholism, My sleeping Gorilla and need to keep him sleeping, and honestly if I had a successful little slip, twice in two years, I would think that my Gorilla was taunting me with see if you do it like this, fast and short, then someday I will let the Gorilla out of his cage, and have a real party.
We Alcoholics just dont ever know, after taking that first drink.if we will EVER be coming back, I know my own Disease sure as hell wound not want me to ever return to living a Sober Life, in my Heart, Tom, I have never ever felt I had one slip left in me, and with the Progression of this Disease, and where it took me, I would be dead or just wishing I was, way before the second drink.
Collectively speaking you have many more years in you than I do, of Sobriety, and I respect that, it took one hell of a lot of work for you to have achieved that.
I have been sitting here just thinking out loud on my computer, hope this response made some sense.
So if you want, I can send you some 3M Post-its, with some little notes on them, like "it is in our thoughts and behavior BEFORE we pick up a Drink", "The DRINK is the very LAST Part of a SLIP", and of course could not resist this one, "If you keep going into the Barbershop, you WILL get a haircut."
Hugs and Love with this note. Toni
-- Edited by toni baloney on Wednesday 29th of July 2009 03:01:11 PM
