Forgive me for sounding like a Debbie Downer but, lets be honest, I wouldn't be here if I was feeling great. My problem is that I'm racked with fear of failure and paralyzed with self doubt that I can make any sort of lasting life changes. I have tried quitting smoking about a gazillion times and done well, until I stop doing well and start smoking again. I have become a vegetarian dozens of times swearing I'd never touch murderous meat again. The longest I've lasted is 3 months. I've started countless fitness routines, hobbies, projects, classes, etc and they all end the same way. I lose interest and move on. Drinking has been the same. How can I feel any confidence that I will stick to anything that I try? Tell me that huh :|
This is exactly what we learn from the BB ...
"After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery."
This is also why we work the steps as they are presented to us ... to make that change Dr. Silkworth referred to ... We need to put our heart and soul into the program, else we may die a very horrible death ... and make others miserable in the process ...
-- Edited by Pythonpappy on Monday 18th of November 2013 04:04:56 PM
__________________
'Those who leave everything in God's hand will eventually see God's hand in everything.'
Forgive me for sounding like a Debbie Downer but, lets be honest, I wouldn't be here if I was feeling great. My problem is that I'm racked with fear of failure and paralyzed with self doubt that I can make any sort of lasting life changes. I have tried quitting smoking about a gazillion times and done well, until I stop doing well and start smoking again. I have become a vegetarian dozens of times swearing I'd never touch murderous meat again. The longest I've lasted is 3 months. I've started countless fitness routines, hobbies, projects, classes, etc and they all end the same way. I lose interest and move on. Drinking has been the same. How can I feel any confidence that I will stick to anything that I try? Tell me that huh :|
I can totally relate to what you're saying Butterfinger. I've failed at sobriety more times than I can count. I don't even tell my family anymore when I'm attempting sobriety for fear of letting them down again. But for me, I can't stop trying, I read somewhere its not how many times you fall but how many times you pick yourself back up that matters.
So, for today, I will not drink, and I will think of what I can do differently this time (like work the steps, make meetings, take suggestions, etc) to maintain my sobriety. That's for me, I pray you find what works for you.
I don't have the solution to a life of absolute perfection. Gawd knows I sure as heck ain't perfect. But I do manage to take really small steps towards a better me... if not every day, every other day or even once a week. Tonight...yes...I had a solo experience with (sin here) ICE CREAM! Does that mean I failed at a diet? nope...it means I don't have to do it again tomorrow. or the next day...and I get to choose tomorrow what I am doing for the day and then I get to make another choice the next day.
I quit smoking cigars 717 days ago. I found a support on the web to help me out. I make my choice about smoking daily. Every time life gets tough I have to find new answers and solutions to the problems. Call it a different kind of homework. I am still a smoker and I am quit today because I choose and chose to be quit for today.
I thought quitting drinking would be similar. But I'm discovering quitting alcohol is different, yet again, new recovery pattern, and still its the same idea... a baby step today...means I chose not to drink this morning...and I chose not to drink this afternoon...and I chose not to drink tonight. Instead I'm using other tools and coming here to read and occupy my brain/urges with a gluttony of words.
My point is, the minute I give in to my needs to be perfect, I've failed. Instead of being perfect forever, from this point onward, I claim the little choice that says nope. My tools for this have moved beyond the rubber band around the wrist. Now I have to be logical and why I want what I want, and then I have to see that reason and act upon it. I am quit of smoking, I am quit of drinking, I am quit of lying to my spouse about either one, and I am quit of failing myself.... for today... right now.
I don't live in the future, neither do you or does anyone else. We all live in the present, the now, you can't choose for tomorrow, planning for tomorrow is allowed, but you can choose what you are going to do right now, how you react to work stress, family stress, perfectionistic/analretentive/obsessive/complusive/insane stress.
How can you feel any confidence that you will stick to anything that you try? The trite answer is to remove the word try. Yoda says, "There is no try, Only Do" (paraphrased). so...instead ask, How can you feel any confidence that you will stick to anything that you choose to do? Little steps, for now, this second, this minute, this hour, Right NOW I am not a smoker or a drinker. And I ate to much, and I should be sleeping, and I am learning to be a different person than I was yesterday. Confidence I can stick to it? Nope... I just know I am quit and I don't want to lie about it. I choose it.
Another thought also comes to mind; look on all those practice attempts at being quit as your chance to learn about being quit. What led up to smoking, drinking, binging again? Treat it like a scientific study and take apart the stuff around it. Don't attach emotions... just ask what did I do that I change the next time? what did I react to that led me to make that choice? Every time I tried to quit smoking (hundreds of times) I learned a little lesson. And eventually I got it. I have it. today, for now. And drinking? I am making that choice right now, in response to day 4 of 16 hr work days tween two jobs paying the bills. I chose not to buy a bottle. I choose not to sneak the wife's sipping stuff or open a bottle of wine. I am better at this than I was yesterday, but I am not perfect.
So... who do you want to be? How do you want to be that person? What are you going to do to become that person?
and...I realize the 'YOU' in all that talking above can be seen as forceful or overbearing, imperative, accusatory, irrational demands. I apologize for letting it slip in and ask for your editorial brain to replace the word 'you' with the word 'I'. I said at the beginning I wasn't perfect, there is the proof...grin.
This a path of discovery not just recovery. Riding the roller coaster of emotions that come with the chemical changes in the body is allowed. Understanding the cause of the roller coaster ride is encouraged. Finding anything positive when we are at the bottom and can no longer see the top is exemplary. Finding that first step, and then the next first step, and then the next first step is encouraged. Because when enough of them first steps have been taken, we are no longer at the bottom, and when we are at the top, the view we can share is magnificent.
Also, ... It's the alcohol doing your 'thinking' right now ... and this is another reason we suggest doing 90 meetings in 90 days ... to start getting our 'thinkers' on the right path ...
__________________
'Those who leave everything in God's hand will eventually see God's hand in everything.'
Butterfinger,
I too felt like I failed in everything (except drinking) and quit programs I started. The "one day at a time" slogan in AA really has worked for me. It has proven to me that I can do anything (well almost anything) for one day. And tomorrow if I live to see tomorrow, because none of us really knows if we will be here then, I will deal with it then. I pray every a.m. and thank my HP for keeping me sober the day before and to please help keep me sober today. I have just started giving thanks to Him at night before bedtime as well for keeping me sober that day. It is more realistic to me and not so overwhelming as thinking that I have to do this "forever".
A couple things you mention Craig stand out to me. And if you don't mind I'll share a few things I learned in the Big Book that cleared things up for me. Maybe you'll like it...Maybe you won't.
I thought quitting drinking would be similar. But I'm discovering quitting alcohol is different, yet again, new recovery pattern, and still its the same idea... a baby step today...means I chose not to drink this morning...and I chose not to drink this afternoon...and I chose not to drink tonight.
The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choicein drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.
pg 24
Finding that first step, and then the next first step, and then the next first step is encouraged. Because when enough of them first steps have been taken, we are no longer at the bottom, and when we are at the top, the view we can share is magnificent.
Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery:
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Many of us exclaimed, "What an order! I can't go through with it." Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.
pg 60
None of us are perfect Craig...The nice thing is it's not asked of us...We just have to be willing to try.
Quit torturing yourself with your self and think about something else... like the fact that you just made like a gazillion friends here at MIP. You do have a choice in matters.
__________________
Thanks for everything. Peace and Love on your journey.
For me making a lasting change on my own power was impossible, no question about it.
Through AA and the steps I have tapped into a power much greater than myself, which has made it possible. The psychic change that Pappy referred to, that was absolutely essential for me to recover from alcoholism.
Stepchild made a great point too about lack of choice in drink. That is the central identifying characteristic of the real alcoholic. If I could choose not to drink I wouldn't be here, because I wouldn't be an alcoholic. Today I still have no power of choice in drink, and nowhere in the Big Book does it say that I will have. Instead I have been placed in a position of neutrality where I don't even have to think about making a choice. The problem has been removed. That's the thing about spiritual experience, you get taken to a different place, the war is over.
When I came into AA I thought drinking was my problem...Only to find out it was this...
Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously. But where and how were we to find this Power? Well, that's exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem. BB pg 45
I did what the book told me to do...And still do. I found a Power...Change happened...Problem solved.
"Quit torturing yourself with your self and think about something else... like the fact that you just made like a gazillion friends here at MIP. You do have a choice in matters."....
