I was drinking again this week. There were a number of things that set me off, but I recognize that they are just excuses.
I told my boyfriend and he got so angry, he threatened to 5150 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5150_%28Involuntary_psychiatric_hold%29) me, and made me feel like I'm basically never going to be able to stop drinking on my own.
I am afraid to tell my sponsor, so I'm telling you guys. I'm just so ashamed, after something like 4 months of trying to be sober I have relapsed almost monthly. I only got to 30 days once.
I am detoxing today. I don't want to drink. But I am so upset about my boyfriend that I just want to numb the pain at this point. But I DON'T WANT TO DRINK. I really, really don't want to, but I'm not sure if I can.
Now down to the Basics of AA. I don't need to know your answers but you do
1. Did you pray to God on the day you slipped and ask for his help in not drinking? I never slipped but I have taked to hundreds that did. If they were honest most said they did not pray that day.
2. Do you have a sponsor of the same sex, one with significant sobriety who has worked all of the steps? Absolutly vital to have one. By the way it does not have to be someone you like.
3. How many meetings have you been attending? For the first 90 days I attended two and sometimes three meeting a day. Sound excessive? Look at #1 above, I have not slipped. The first 90 days start again after a relapse past history no longer counts.
4. What step are you on? During the first 90 days I had completed, with my sponsor's guidance steps 4 and 5 and we went straight into steps 6 and 7. Step 4 is the beginning of the action steps. Until then all we have done is make some decisions. It takes action to stay sober. No amount of deciding to stay sober no matter how honest the attempt will work. We have an AA Waltz 1,2,3, slip, 1,2,3, slip.
5. Did you call anyone for help BEFORE you drank? The telephone is very difficult for Alcoholics to pick up but those that do call someone usually do not drink.
6. Did you get too Hungry Angry, Lonely or Tired, HALT and call someone immediatly
7. Do you really, I mean more than anything in world really want to get sober? If not it just won't work. Alcoholism is a Chronic, Progressive, Terminal illness. Chronic, it can't be cured. But all symptoms go away over time as a result of not drinking and working the steps. Progressive, it gets worse, if you live long enough you will want to quit more than you wan't anything in the world. Terminal, We all die with Alcoholism but those that continue to drink die from it in addition to with it. My Brotherin-law died from it. Not a nice way to go.
Bottom line is if you want what we have and are ready to go to any lengths we in AA have your solution.
Larry, --------------- Your 3 Choices, Locked Up, Covered Up or Sobered Up
Hey 12steps, What those above said and in addition, do not be afraid to tell your sponsor. This is how we survive. The honesty is very important. If you make a mistake, own up and correct it. 99.9% of us have. If your boyfriend does not understand the problem, he needs to attend alanon to figure it out and take the pressure off you. Get to a meeting and start the process over. Keep practising the program! Prayers, Tom
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"You're in the right place. That's the door right there. Turn around."
very sorry to hear this 12steps. I had a hard time getting sober. It took me two years of trying and I only got 60 days twice in that time, of steadily going to meetings. I was trying to keep a marriage together and finally came to the conclusion (with the help of my sponsor) that I probably wasn't going to be able to get sober and stay in the relationship. Think about it, you're very upset right now as a result of your relationship. Alcoholics don't generally do to well in relationships and trying to get sober in a dysfunctional one is damned near impossible.
Sorry about your predicament. When you said your boyfriend threatened to 5150 you, I thought you meant leave you. You meant, commit you? Hmmm... either way... you need to find a Power greater than your "spouse", right? If your boyfriend could motivate you to recover from booze, it would have happened by now. He's got his issues it seems too.
But you're back and I offer you this; you can get and stay sober for the rest of your life if you find that you really need sobriety and that you are really willing and able to live the rest of your life by a few simple rules.
If A.A. is your path, let's look where you are at. Someone above suggested you several things. I'd ask you just one thing; What step are you on?
Are you having a problem with booze? Y/N
If yes, do you want to do something about it now? Y/N
If yes, there is hope for you. The program of action A.A. suggests is up to you now. You are responsible for doing the steps from here on out. It's up to you. Either you're going to do A.A. or you're not.
Where are you will a Power greater than yourself? Are you willing to seek this Power and are you willing to believe that this Power can take you further in all areas of your life? Do you believe that this Power has your best interests at hand? Y/N?
If yes, then decide (see pp 60-63) Y/N?
If yes, then proceed;
Have you completed an inventory and 5th stepped it? Did you find your defects of character and ask God to remove them? Did you write a list and become willing to the list? Did you go out and make all those amends? Y/N?
If yes, then proceed to prayer, meditation, helping others and practicing these principles in all our affairs. Have you done all this, Y/N?
If Yes, then... wow! If no, then join the club. Probably none of us has done all that perfectly. What an order! I can't go through with it. Do not be discouraged.
But give it a shot. I've come close to this as I can and I don't even want to drink booze. In fact, here are some of the 10th Step promises:
"And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone - even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality - safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition."
Going to meetings is one thing. Doing the deal is another. Don't beat yourself up. Some people in A.A. can stay sober on less than what's suggested. I cannot. Hope you find your path.
Thank you for the kind words and support. I am really beating myself up right now (as I probably should) and they are much appreciated.
McGowDog, I am currently working on my 4th step inventory but haven't really completed steps 2 and 3 yet, which I think is a big part of my problem. I was not raised with religion or any concept of a higher power and I've had great difficulty in actually believing there is someone listening when I pray (which I do anyway, sometimes it's good to just verbalize the thoughts, I think) or looking out for me. I really wish I could believe it -- it would be so comforting! But this is a big stumbling block for me.
Larry, that leads to your first question -- no I was not praying that day. Thank you for that advice. My sponsor is also a woman with 14 months of sobriety who has done all of the steps. I go to a meeting every day, trying to do 90 in 90, although I didn't go that day.
And yeah -- if I had called someone I probably could have avoided drinking, but I really wanted to drink that day, unfortunately. So I didn't want to call someone and have them talk me out of it, quite honestly. Big part of the problem -- I know.
Again, I really appreciate your replies. Thank you.
Aloha GG...Alcoholism is not a moral issue and therefore you are not a bad person but a sick one in need of a spiritual solution. There are no saints here and neither are there any perfect specimens of humanity. Don't even attempt perfection or you set your self up for failure. You are doing some good "next right" things and may be forgetting that this is a disease of compulsion of the mind with an allergy of the body. It is cunning, powerful and baffling and if not arrested by total abstinence can and has resulted in insanity and death. I read your post and hear the insainity...I don't wanna drink but I do anyway. The compulsion is very strong and I must stay very alert because it works more hour than I do trying to get me to participate again. It works on the subconscious level so unless you surrender at that level "I cannot ever drinking again or I die" and reinforce that thought to where it becomes a part of your consciousness and identity you more than likely will struggle with relapsing. Relapsing isn't about going back to where you started (we don't get that reprieve) it is about picking up where we left off. When I stop drink the disease counts the number of drinks I need to make up for when and if I go back out. It can continue counting; I working on not going back out. I keep in mind my thinking and thinking patterns to be on top of this all. It is there that I get the hints and clues that alcohol is trying to make a move on me. Do an invertory about what you were thinking and feeling a couple of days before that "first" drink up until you stepped up to it. You'd be amazed at the manipulation and trickery "it" can run up on you.
I remember being fearful that the program was another "religion" try to get me in and I heard them say "we are not a religion" right up to the next word "but" and as I held on to hear the rest of the truth they said, "If you practice these steps religiously" which for me now means 24/7 every second of the day, live by them, work them only and leave other beliefs and philosophies to the side, I would get and then remain sober and serene. Their promise has come true and I have done the work for it. My Higher Power has revealed it's self from watching a whale breach the surface of the Pacific Ocean just 200 yards off of my home meeting to holding an infant in my arms watching it consider me a fellow traveler. There are many many other pieces of evidence which convince me...the only thing I had to do was believe without reservation and it was taken care of.
The suggestion of Al-Anon for your boy friend was a good one and maybe he wouldn't consider anything that would help him because "you're the problem". For me the program requires going to any lengths to get and stay sober which might include letting go of anything and everyone who might be a detriment.
You're not at perfection...you're doing good and don't let good get in the way of better.
Well I am sorry you are having difficulty, but it isn't easy, simple but not easy
enough willingness, honesty and humil ity to establish and maintain the new order of things, were the essential requirements. Simple, but not easy; a price had to be paid. It meant destruction of self-centeredness.
Have you read Bill's Story very very carefully? His antipathy towards religion and God, and the key that got him through that door?
My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea. He said, " Why don't you choose your own conception of God? " That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last.
It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning. I saw that growth could start from that point. Upon a foundation of complete willingness I might build what I saw in my friend. Would I have it? Of course I would!
If you are ready, willing and able to go to any lengths, I suggest finding a sponsor willing to sit down with you and read the book with you
In the Doctors opinion asking if each thing is true if you ask it about yourself by putting your own name in his statements about alcoholism and turning them into questions
Reading Bill's Story with you and showing how Bill used all 12 steps to get sober before there was an Alcoholics Anonymous
Reading there is a solution with you, and More about alcoholism, stopping for plenty of question and answer, then reading "We Agnostics" in short going through until reaching "How It Works" right after "C God could and would if he were sought" it says we are now on step 3, it gets very very specific from that point on, you don't have to believe in "God" ie the Christian Deity or any sort of sentient being, you can choose your own concept of God, it can be almost anything provided it is a power greater then your self, it can be "Group Of Drunks" or "Good Orderly Direction"
You "work" step 3 by working steps 4-9, by the time you get to step 10-12 you usually have a little better idea of what your higher power is because you have met it
Finding a good sponsor and working the steps right out of the book has worked for millions of us "hopeless cases", if you are one of us, it will work for you too, I am like McGowdog, and you may be too, lesser or "half" measures don't work for alcoholics of our type
Here was my step 3 if it truly is a stumbling block for you, but get ready for a lot of reading
Good stuff ago. I didn't read all of the 3rd step post of yours, but I did read what I needed for now; up to your first bolding.
The way you present that is exactly how I was shown, but worded differently, when you say "Don't worry about God until you get to the 3rd Step". The way I was instructed was, "Be open to your 1st Step, and be open to the 2nd Step"... while I proceed on.
Setting aside differences we all may have with our "conception", which to me means 'born within', I would agree that these spiritual concepts should be personal to you. That's regardless of whether you're an agnostic, an atheist, or even a "believer". I have often thought I was a believer, but what I thought I believed was not "born within". It was just dogma that I've picked up throughout my life. I had to come to the place where I realized I did NOT believe, to choose... across the board... what I did believe.
My current conception of God now is... both transcendent, or That which manifests existence of the realm of form, the universe as we may conceive of it and beyond that which we cannot conceive, and also God is immanent, within me as my true Self. The Bhudda Nature is as real as the God immanent, the Pure Potentiality, the Void, the Godhead... and is as real as the God transcendent. This concept can be said to cross religions or concepts of God, but oh well. What I mean by that is that some from Christianity would consider part of my concept blastphamous. I could get further into this discussion, but it would bring up concepts of God which are off topic here. It's no secret now; I'm a David R. Hawkins fan. I'm more interested with the application and getting on with my concept of God in order to get on with the rest of the steps than anything else.
I am glad tha Ago has found success in A.A. with his position on Spirituality. He is an asset to the program of A.A. and others like him can use him as a resource. There are many that stay far away from A.A. and 12 Step for being of the same position.
One argument that our detractors use against us is whether or not A.A. is religious. Well... after considering both sides of the debate, my answer is, "It's not religious for me."
It is entirely too much to fathom never ever drinking again. We do this one day at a time 12steps...
WE do this 1 day at a time.
That WE part means there is a whole fellowship of people out there to help you not drink each day. Hundreds of people there to help talk you through life's difficult situations...even whether it be your boyfriend left and packed his bags...you can get through it for today with the help of your fellows and a higher power. That is AA in a nutshell (at least to me). My head was spinning around complicating things and worrying about staying sober forever and making catastrophes all over the place too in the first few months. You are not the first person to have this experience with relapsing in the beginning of the program. It does not mean you are a failure or will be one in the future.
You just need to make full use of the tools being given to you. Call your sponsor whenever you feel like drinking. Go to a meeting...go to many meetings. Get involved and build a new life with AA...Everything will fall into place. If you do not believe this than believe that I believe it for you.
Mark
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Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
Twelve Step, I just remembered you are in San Francisco.
Would you consider moving to a sober living house? There is a GREAT one right across the bridge called Marin Services for Women in a nice neighborhood with a reasonable payment plan that many times you can pay back later, that starts with an in-house facility but puts you in "sattelite housing" nearby fairly quickly (nice little houses, I got my sister in one a few years ago) or do you have a car?
I have numbers of a few dozen women in Marin with between 17 and 30 years of sobriety, all of whom would be happy to work with you if you were willing to go to any length to stay sober, but who come in all shapes and sizes as it were from hardcore to pretty gentle (but they will have willing to go to any length as a criteria) if you wanted any of their phone numbers, many of them work in the city I think so could maybe meet you there, or at the very least put you in touch with sober women living in SF. These are women who all got sober in their 20's and have a LOT of experience with living sober as young women, boy problems haha etc not like housewives that got sober at 50 that didn't have to face the issues you are facing today
PM me if you are interested, these women could help save your life if you were willing to abandon yourself completely to this program and listen to suggestion
-- Edited by AGO on Saturday 3rd of July 2010 05:32:47 AM
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Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a night, light a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life
Again, thank you so much for the support and advice. AGO, I found your Third Step post particularly useful, thank you.
I have two dogs and a cat from when I was married (and lived in the burbs with a yard!) so inhouse sober living is probably not an option for me -- but I live alone so at least I can control not having alcohol in the house. My apartment is my own sober living space. :)
I would greatly appreciate those phone numbers. I have met lots of great women with long sobriety at SF meetings, it's just a matter of having the guts to actually call them. Tonight I did pick up the phone and call someone I know from my meetings for the first time. Then when it was 3am and I was still sleepless and anxiety-ridden, and it was too late to call anyone, I called the 24-hour AA hotline. The guy doing teleservice tonight was so great.
Trying to learn to reach out more because I know how key it is to recovery.
Are you really basing your decision not to go on having pets? I had a house payment, a wife, 2 kids, and all the bills and responsibilities that go with them, and I did a 90 day in patient program. I was ready to go to ANY LENGTH to get sober. Any length. You would not believe all the grief I got from others, telling me how selfish I was for up and leaving for 3 months. Maybe so, but it wasn't nearly as selfish as putting alcohol ahead of everything and everyone else.
At work (a rehab center) you would not believe the "reasons" (just excuses) I hear for why they can't do "whatever". It's amazing what some people will put ahead of their sobriety. Anything I put ahead of my recovery I WILL LOSE. It may not be tomorrow, but I will lose it. Today I got my family back, because I became willing to lose them. I still have a home because I became willing to lose it. Thinking that there's anything in my life I can't give up is self centered.
There are 3 things I have to practice everyday, all the time...Honesty, open mindedness, and willingness. If I fail on any one of those I'll get drunk again. In the past I had excuses, and they all kept me drunk. Today I have reasons not to drink.
Pinkchip is right. There is no "the rest of our lives", it's one day at a time!
Brian
-- Edited by Reffner on Saturday 3rd of July 2010 10:55:58 AM
good morning GG, my prayers are with you. the experience strength and hope i can offer you is that of a woman who needed to get sober in her early 30s, but didn't. i stayed in denial, put everyone and everything ahead of myself (accept the alcohol). i was a functional alcoholic so i worked full time and got smashed every night. i was too embarrassed to go to meetings or call the hotline. i had a lot of pride about being a functional alcoholic. the disease is strong and patient. if you choose to do nothing, it grows. if you choose to 'treat it' alone, it usually fails. just ask me. ;) the sooner you abandon yourself to recovery, the sooner you can start living what AA calls 'happy joyous and free' ... it took a long time for me to do just that. i cannot look back and wish i had started recovery 25 years ago, doing that lets regrets rule my life. i only have today, so i share my hope, strength, and experience with you to take action, no more waiting, no more excuses. maybe some of AGOs friends can help you find a vacation home for your pets while you recover... start as soon as possible for your own sanity. we are here cheering you on with love. jj
Not just the animals, there are other reasons like my whole support network is in SF and I think it's important for me to be close to them right now (I know how devastatingly isolated I felt while living in the east bay)... and most importantly, I just started a new job a couple of months ago after getting laid off in December and I think it would be a bad decision to take that kind of time off right now -- or to tell them the reason. Once they've had a chance to build trust in me and my work (and get to know me a little better personally), then I would feel more comfortable doing that.
I did a lot of research on rehab this morning (I pretty much know zero about it, what happens there, do you go to work? etc.) (thanks to the AA Central Office and various other organizations for picking up the phone and talking to me on a Saturday!) so I am definitely feel more prepared today with considering it as an option in a few months if I keep relapsing.
Rule 62, congrats on getting your family back! I'm so happy for you.
JJ, I really appreciate the share. I am also a functional alcoholic (so far) and the reason I came to AA now was because I could see that future down the road. It's what my mom looks like. :)
Again, thanks very much to you all for your support and advice. All of these replies are really appreciated.
I'm headed to see some good and supportive friends at a BBQ and then have 2 meetings lined up for this afternoon/evening. I am determined not to drink tonight!
Glad you are doing so good GG. one thing my sponsor always tells me, if you plan to do something, always have a plan B. never get 'stuck' in a situation of being uncomfortable and not able to get away from it. have a great BBQ and some great meetings. jj
