I drank because I have an obsession of the mind coupled with an allergy of the body that combined create the "disease" of alcoholism, which is an unhealthy condition of mind or body characterized by recognizable signs and symptoms, which if left untreated guarentees I will drink, I can't -not- drink if "untreated"
It's said that relapse isn't possible without recovery, in other words if one works the steps and puts together some substantial sober time, and then drinks, that is a relapse, otherwise it is just active alcoholism
Have you worked the steps? Do you attend meetings? Do you have a sponsor, home group, and support network of sober alcoholics? Are you willing to go to any lengths to get sober?
Without -all- these -actions-, I was also unable to stop drinking, those are a tried and true group of -actions- that have been shown to lead to recovery from active alcoholism
-- Edited by LinBaba on Monday 6th of December 2010 07:00:49 AM
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
Aloha Keith...You're not alone. When the compulsion for sobriety becomes stronger and more desirable than the compulsion to drink the chance increases that you will arrive at more continuous sobriety than where you are at now. I spoke with an AA fellow, close recovering brother this morning who I have journeyed with over the last 16 years. He recently pick up his 2 year chip. He and I spent a sober portion of the day together. That was after he and a bunch of others in our fellowship hugged and supported another recent relapser who came to the meeting under the influence.
One hear the message that keeps us sober and the other has to wait for another day. The one who has to wait had sober time and needs a stronger, louder, hotter, wider, compulsion for sobriety.
Our friend was given the reason for why...repeat this...Admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanagable. He understands that he needs more powerful management. He needs to fire himself as manager and ask a Power Greater than himself to take over and then allow another drunk who knows how this program works and can reveal a history of unbroken sobriety to go over the manual (Big Book) with him.
Keep coming back...you are not alone here and we can help you get and stay sober if you have the capacity to be honest and are willing. Don't attempt to read this if you have been drinking.
Kieth I was right were you are now. I just knew I was different than everybody else. And you could not possibley understand what I am going thru. And I was sure it was everyones fault. For all the problems I had could conrol how I was feeling .mostly mad all the time. Felt like I was a waiste of flesh that I was this drunk that noone wanted around . I could not stop drinking until I came to conclusion that I had no choice .I was either going to listen to some else on how to do this or continue to kill myself.which some days seemed better then getting sober .I really thuoght I had a choice whether I could drinkor not .bottom line I lost that choice. How do I know I looked back on how I drank .it was drinking against my will. I had to asked for help from some thing that was bigger than me and bigger than my dis ease. I was told to pray I did that and contnue to ask for help and at the same time. Was shown how give this all away to stay sober.o was not willing until I found out I was thru. Tore out the frame.god came to me .alls I diod was asked him for help and he took care of me and still does. I and a million or so drunks are praying for you. If you need any thing I am willing to do what ever it takes to help .thank god for a twelve step program
That was why I came into recovery. I kept on doing the same things expecting different results until I found a group of people who had found a way out of this insanity. I joined then very sceptically, in the beginning and I have been with them ever since.
Why? Alcoholism. That's the problem. We WANT to be normal, and drink normally and not be drunken !@#$%^&*. 's. BUT we can't quit. We tried. Really. It didn't work. We tried all kinds of stuff.
We want to not; but we do.
And we couldn't stop.
Can you tell us a little more? Because I thought this was a trick question.
Here's me and what I wrote a couple of days ago.
Familiar?
"...Choice is yours."
But that's the problem isn't it? The choice isn't hers any more that it was mine or yours. I had long passed the point of having the choice to drink or not drink. I was going to drink. Even if I didn't want to, and KNEW that only misery would come of it, I had lost the luxury of walking away from alcohol. I was going to drink, and nothing and no one was going to stop me. I didn't want to be who I was, or do what I did, and I couldn't do a thing about it.
Here's a nice bit of work that someone did, enumerating the reasons that we drink (after sobriety). The numbers on the left are the numbers of examples for each item, a-h.
One or more of them might sound familiar to you.
Causes of RELAPSE (according to the Big Book)
count 7 .. a. Failure to grow spiritually 4 .. b. Fighting with or harming others. 3 ...c. Failure to work with other alcoholics 2 .. d Failure to take step 5. 2 .. e. Attempt to shield from alcohol. 2 .. f. Failure to make amends. 1 .. g. Selfishness. 1 .. h. Resentment.
Welcome Keith. Yep, all of the above. I used to puzzle and ask myself why I would drink again, knowing all of the things that had happened to me when I did last time. Others -- like my wife -- would ask me the same thing.
I drank again after a little while in the Fellowship and again asked myself -- knowing all that I know now, why did I do that. My wife asked me the same thing too.
I now realize that the simple answer is: because I'm an alcoholic.
But because I'm alcoholic, I now can benefit from the 12 steps of AA. When I drank again after being in AA for a little while, it was b/c of many of the factors listed above. I wasn't really working the program with a sponsor and I had been skipping meetings, since I thought that I was better. And b/c I was "better" I wasn't connecting much with other alkies.
So, today, I work the program with a sponsor, I pray, I read the Big Book, I make meetings and I connect as much as I can with other alcoholics.
And I've not had a drink today and I'm not going to.
Keep coming back -- it really does work if you work it.
Great post to read this morning. I am trying so hard to get some sobriety behind me and doing well a day at a time, mostly on my own (as my husband is supportive but doesn't really understand my emotional ups and downs and gets frustrated easily and turns his back on me when I need him the most). However, it is not his problem, it is mine. He doesn't drink and he is as supportive as he knows how to be. However, I also have the help of a couple of new AA friends (and am meeting a possible Sponsor for coffee Thursday before our meeting). I learned to pick up the phone more and call another drunk when I know I'm getting into trouble mentally and that urge is so strong despite the fact that I know the misery that will follow the next morning. When I say misery, I refer only to how badly I will feel about MYSELF. Forget all the possible things that can happen WHILE I'm drinking... disappointing my family, falling down, hurting myself or others... and a million other 'yets' that I am fortunate enough to not have had.
The funny thing is when I was active and not ready or trying to recover, I never really had a hangover no matter how much I drank - and I drank a LOT of grey goose... but I knew how to drink, what not to drink to avoid a hangover, etc... Now the couple of times I have slipped, I woke up so sick. I choose to take that as just another sign of many from God that he does love me and want me well and he is trying to remind me, to help me see - literally... that to me, the alcoholic, alcohol = poison: POISON to my mind, my body, my spirit. So if I slip, I have a day of sickness to think about my addiction. By the grace of God, I have made it through two very hard moments just this week and another is lurking: Loss of a job I love due to this economy... But I'm trying to keep it in the moment - moment by moment... and nothing that happens means I have to drink. As they say in the meetings, for an alcoholic, we only truly have one big problem in the world, and that is AVOIDING PICKING UP THE FIRST DRINK! Sounds so simple, doesn't it??? I guess that is why the saying 'keep it simple' makes so much sense!
I'm reaching out more and just trying to ride out the mental and physical cravings with the help of meetings, people, new hobbies, prayer, patience... whatever it takes. I try them all.
I am going on a vacation on Saturday to Aruba. Scared to death. I will have a laptop and will have this outlet for support, as well as my big book and some other reading... I want to 'relax' and enjoy... but I need to NOT count drinking as part of my relaxing and in terms of vacations, that has always been the mindset... I plan to exercise, meditate, read, eat nice dinners (my hardest part as a martini always went with my dinners... but my recovering friend will be there too so that is a good support). However, also many drinker friends will be there too. Please pray for me, give me advice... I am going to the Aruba tourist site to inquire about meetings... and if need be I'll call AA.
One day at a time...
Jeanne
Beyond that... It is up to me and my higher power next week. But for now I need to keep it in today.
Bring speaker tapes Jeanne. Read AA literature some each day. Schedule meetings with your friend if you can't find any others. It only takes 2 alcoholics to have a meeting. If you have a sponsor call her daily. Avoid bars and plan other fun stuff.
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Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
ABETTERWAY wrote:I am going to the Aruba tourist site to inquire about meetings... and if need be I'll call AA. Mark makes some great suggestions
Meetings are actually fun on vacation, we get to meet new people and even get phone numbers for "on the spot" help, as well as make new friends and find out some behind the scenes fun stuff to do
So just an idea, rather then make this "something hard", a difficult task to overcome, why not make this something fun to look forward to?
If you didn't "need" AA you wouldn't be here, you'd have stopped or moderated your drinking already, and a vacation in early sobriety is a veritable carte blanche to drink, without help an alcoholic will drink on vacation, "the obsession" ratchets up to "11" in my experience
Anyway, as I see it, the vacation could go one of two ways, white knuckle while you are there, sweating as you obsess about drinking and drink or not, although I'd put your odds of drinking at about 90% without hitting a meeting but a miserable experience not only for you but everyone around you, or call AA now, find some meetings while you are there and make it a positive experience, make it a "sober vacation", make new friends and have a great time
I mean literally change your mindset and make this something to look forward to, rather then a difficulty, an opportunity
-- Edited by LinBaba on Tuesday 7th of December 2010 09:12:38 AM
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
To abetterway who is going on vacation. Wat cool I went to the outbanks early in my recovery. I remember praying a lot.cause it is a big party spot.the reason we went there was purely selfish on my part.when I was drunk I used to live in great bridge virginia ten miles to the n c state line by the coast.to drunk to make it down .another I'm gonna do that never happened. So anyways the coolest thing is this my god is in the impossible bussiness .so when we were checking in I asked the girl if she could get me in contact with freinds of bill w.she flashed me a smile and gave me address and directions also a contact number. Mt sponsor makes me bring him a meeting schedule from evey where I go .just my experience. I felt closer to my god every time I reach out for help. I never wooried about what people thought when I was puking in the lobby drunk! But my disease will try to trick me !cunning the right now part.god gives me every thing I need .I had a great time on that vacation.so did the wife and kid.I was a gentleman.to my wife and a dad to my son .I went to meetings every daywhile I was there .and made some freinds too.up to date this year I have met and kept in contact withpeople from chicago little rock.you know people who were on vacation here in cleveland.
- Get to Mc Donalds & Wendy's corner near near the Hyatt Hotel - Drive up the Palm Beach road to the next traffic light (Rio Grande Bar) - Keep on driving straight after the traffic light - In 1.0 Km from the traffic light on the right side is the Club House.
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Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
There ya go -- call me nuts, but man, I'd love to be able to go to a meeting Aruba.
I go to meetings now whenever I travel -- and for me, it's impossible to describe just how cool that is.
Here's just a few of the benefits: you have an in with the locals, you're no longer just another tourist -- you *know* people now, you are safe from drinking in a meeting, you will find people locally that you can call if things start to get troubling.
I HAVE NEVER HAD A DRINK TRAVELLING NOW and I can travel quite a bit. Before, I planned my travel around drinking -- if it was work travel, the business meeting was merely the means of financing the spree.
Vacations and meetings -- about as good as it gets, in this alkie's opinion.
And keep coming back -- we're here, wherever you are... :)
Wow, thank you Pink Chip... Wrighting all that down now... Aruba is like a second home to me and this is going to come in handy. I know exactly the places mentioned in the directions and we have a car that we rent so I can get there. Ironically, we were hit by drunk/drugged drivers 2 years ago in February in an accident and my motheri n law ended up in the hospital there, and we made it to the front page of the newspaper. The person in our car was not drinking at all and my kids were with us... scary experience... The car load of 'kids' took off but a local chased them down. Never did find out what happened to them.
I also like LinBaba's advice... this doesn't have to be misery.
I want to have some sober fun. Because my drinking was in its worst stages (yet) in the summer, I had an absolutely joyless, miserable summer... We vacation in the winter and I choose to enjoy the nature, the sun, and everything about it, praying to remain sober.
And I do know the odds are stacked against me, but that doesn't mean I'm not goinginto it with an open, sober mind and a plan of action.
I've been to several rehabs and detoxes over the past 3 years and have a lot of experience with relapse. I relapsed over and over because alcohol still worked, albeit marginally, and I was too fearful of being a part of anything. Getting outside of myself helps me to keepp my sobriety. Don't drink and do something small that hekps someone else.
I've been to several rehabs and detoxes over the past 3 years and have a lot of experience with relapse. I relapsed over and over because alcohol still worked, albeit marginally, and I was too fearful of being a part of anything. Getting outside of myself helps me to keepp my sobriety. Don't drink and do something small that hekps someone else.
I am Confused
If Alcohol still works "even marginally" why do you keep ending up in detoxes and rehabs and having unsuccessful stints to get sober?
People for whom alcohol "works even marginally" either moderate or stop, alcoholics that are unable to stop come up with every excuse under the sun why they continued to drink.
My experience with alcohol "not working" is not that it didn't get me drunk any more, it's that it created more problems then it solved, my solutionto life WAS drinking, but then it became my problem, and drinking was only a symptom of my real problem, which is an inability to handle life on life's terms without eventually returning to alcohol or going crazy
What ALL practicing alcoholics have in common is a heartbreaking desire to enjoy and control their drinking, and delusional stories to themselves and others why they continue to do so
but
If they are enjoying it, they aren't controlling it, and if they are controlling it, they certainly aren't enjoying it
Alcoholics drink because they have lost control of their drinking, we drink even after we try to stop drinking because we are delusional, and until we learned we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics and we have lost control of our drinking we continue to drink. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.
As long as I still had "stories" that I believed about "why I drank" other then "I have an obsession of the mind coupled with an allergy of the body" and an inability to live life without alcohol, there was always one more return to drinking
it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.
We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.
We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals usually brief were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.
We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones. Neither does there appear to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of our kind like other men. We have tried every imaginable remedy. In some instances there has been brief recovery, followed always by a still worse relapse. Physicians who are familiar with alcoholism agree there is no such thing a making a normal drinker out of an alcoholic. Science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn't done so yet.
Despite all we can say, many who are real alcoholics are not going to believe they are in that class. By every form of self- deception and experimentation, they will try to prove themselves exceptions to the rule, therefore nonalcoholic
The first casualty of addiction, like that of war, is the truth. At first the addict merely denies the truth to himself. But as the addiction, like a malignant tumor, slowly and progressively expands and invades more and more of the healthy tissue of his life and mind and world, the addict begins to deny the truth to others as well as to himself. He becomes a practiced and profligate liar in all matters related to the defense and preservation of his addiction, even though prior to the onset of his addictive illness, and often still in areas as yet untouched by the addiction, he may be scrupulously honest.
First the addict lies to himself about his addiction, then he begins to lie to others. Lying, evasion, deception, manipulation, spinning and other techniques for avoiding or distorting the truth are necessary parts of the addictive process. They precede the main body of the addiction like military sappers and shock troops, mapping and clearing the way for its advance and protecting it from hostile counterattacks.
Because addiction by definition is an irrational, unbalanced and unhealthy behavior pattern resulting from an abnormal obsession, it simply cannot continue to exist under normal circumstances without the progressive attack upon and distortion of reality resulting from the operation of its propaganda and psychological warfare brigades. The fundamentally insane and unsupportable thinking and behavior of the addict must be justified and rationalized so that the addiction can continue and progress.
One of the chief ways the addiction protects and strengthens itself is by a psychology of personal exceptionalism which permits the addict to maintain a simultaneous double-entry bookkeeping of addictive and non-addictive realities and to reconcile the two when required by reference to the unique, special considerations that àat least in his own mind- happen to apply to his particular case.
The form of the logic for this personal exceptionalism is:
Under ordinary circumstances and for most people X is undesirable/irrational;
My circumstances are not ordinary and I am different from most people;
Therefore X is not undesirable/irrational in my case - or not as undesirable/irrational as it would be in other cases.
Armed with this powerful tool of personal exceptionalism that is a virtual "Open Sesame" for every difficult ethical conundrum he is apt to face, the addict is free to take whatever measures are required for the preservation and progress of his addiction, while simultaneously maintaining his allegiance to the principles that would certainly apply if only his case were not a special one.
In treatment and rehabilitation centers this personal exceptionalism is commonly called "terminal uniqueness." The individual in the grip of this delusion is able to convince himself though not always others that his circumstances are such that ordinary rules and norms of behavior, rules and norms that he himself concurs with when it comes to other people, do not fairly or fully fit himself at the present time and hence must be bent or stretched just sufficiently to make room for his special needs. In most cases this plea for accommodation is acknowledged to be a temporary one and accompanied by a pledge or plan to return to the conventional "rules of engagement" as soon as circumstances permit. This is the basic mindset of "Ill quit tomorrow" and "If you had the problems I do youd drink and drug, too!"
-- Edited by LinBaba on Tuesday 7th of December 2010 07:01:01 PM
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
Why are u confused? I used to relase because it was still easier to drink than face life. I'm sober now so don't know how to take your last post
Congratulations on getting sober Dods, that's good to hear, I have been watching you and Tipsy McStagger struggle over the last few years, so I was reading about how well alcohol was "working" for you as you posted about it, getting kicked out of rehabs and detoxes, stealing from your parents etc so I guess we just have a different definition of what "alcohol worked for me" means
My point was as long as we still have a "story" about why we drank, we haven't taken step one, and until we take step one completely, a return to alcohol is pretty much a given, as long as we have a "story" it means we have a "lurking notion" somehow we are different, we are unique
and there is no "relapse" without "recovery" ie until we work the steps and are recovered, it is just active alcoholism, not a relapse
Anyhow that is good news to hear that you are sober now, did you get sober after the hydrocodone bender at your parents house in June?
Tell us about it, what is your sobriety date, what step are you on, do you have a home group, sponsor etc It's important for everyone we hear how everyone finally makes it, especially someone who has been struggling on this board for the last few years, it's a great example of the program in action
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
