Notes on Addiction

Aug 1

"You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending."

~ C.S. Lewis

“No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or by emotional appeal.”

~ Marilyn Ferguson

My last drink was on February 18, 2016 on a flight back to Austin from New York City and have zero desire to partake again. Quitting was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and I am proud of my success. Those that don’t have this condition can never ever understand.

Fuck the Zero!

👉 FTZ!

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’re otherwise made of, if you are wired for it, this shit will take from you until there’s nothing left.

It’s amazing how NOT DOING something has changed my life in such positive ways.

Health: stopped damaging my liver, pancreas, throat, stomach, brain, kidneys, heart

Money: no money spent on booze and less on stupid things I buy when I am drunk

Social: say less things I regret to people, treat others with more respect, real friendships and real emotions

Personal: love myself more, stopped engaging in self-destructive behavior

Career: more focused at work, more responsible

Thinking: clearer thoughts, more brain power

Sleep: real sleep, wake up refreshed

Diet: eat healthier foods that are more nutritious, lost weight, this makes me feel stronger and happier

Emotions: more emotionally stable, less ups and downs, more positive feelings

Legal: no concerns with DUI or PI

Here are some of my trigger relief tools:

1. Play the tape forward. What will happen when you drink? The same abysmal shit that happened last time.

2. Just one glass?...think of booze as gasoline…no thanks.

3. Substitute heroin or meth for alcohol in the thought process of "I wish I could moderate".

4. Think of booze as peanuts and I have a peanut allergy. Does the taste of peanuts and the feelings they provide compensate for the consequences of ingestion?

5. Think of booze as meat and I’m a vegetarian. Can I eat meat? Sure…I just choose not to.

6. Am I capable of moderating? Maybe….is the juice worth the squeeze? In perspective…I may or may not be capable of robbing a bank, hustling seniors or building up an immunity to antifreeze. All things that I have no need to find out if I'm capable of.

7. Think of booze as Kryptonite and I am Superman!

The frontal cortex is responsible for will power and it is no match for limbic system which contains the pleasure reward system.

I tried to shift my perspective from "not being able to have something I wanted" to "being free from poisoning myself".

For me the will power method never worked and I was miserable while attempting it. I could get past the physical withdrawals from the poison but the mental triggers would continue to appear until I finally pulled one and was quickly right back where I left off. I found that the key to quitting is not to simply abstain – it’s to not want to drink. I tried to shift my perspective from "not being able to have something I wanted" to "being free from poisoning myself".

Embrace the suck. Remember the suck. Your body and mind needs to purge the poison. This is a good thing. You never have to endure this again. Just don’t pick up that first drink. Is it easy? FUCK NO. It sucks, but it sucks less and less every day.

There are no shortcuts to places worth going. Prepare for the battle and, when the symptoms come, embrace the suck. There is no way to freedom except through the fire.

Subconsciously, without overtly realizing, I was scared of giving up, not only one of my crutches, but also of losing a source of blame. I could always blame to booze for my various problems in life, if I dropped the booze…who or what could I blame for my shortcoming and my grievances...I would have to look in the mirror for the source of my ills.

A drunk fell in a hole and couldn't get out. A businessman went by. The drunk called out for help. The businessman threw him some money and told him get yourself a ladder. But the drunk could not find a ladder in this hole he was in.

A doctor walked by. The drunk said, "Help, I can't get out." The doctor gave him drugs and said, "Take this, it will relieve the pain." The drunk said thanks, but when the pills ran out, he was still in the hole.

A renowned psychiatrist rode by and heard the drunks cries for help. He stopped and said, "How did you get there? Were you born there? Were you put there by your parents? Tell me about yourself, it will alleviate your sense of loneliness." So the drunk talked with him for an hour, then the psychiatrist had to leave, but he said he'd be back next week. The drunk thanked him, but he was still in his hole.

A priest came by and the drunk called for help. The priest gave him a Bible and said I'll say a prayer for you. He got down on his knees and prayed for the drunk, then left. The drunk was very grateful, he read the Bible, but he was still stuck in that hole.

A recovering alcoholic happened to be passing by. The drunk cried out, "Hey, help me, I'm stuck in this hole." Right away, the recovering alcoholic jumped in the hole with him. The drunk said, "What are you doing? Now we're both stuck here." But the recovering alcoholic said, "It's okay, I've been here before, I know how to get out."

"Stand on my shoulders to get out...and pull me up after that."

Carl Jung and Alcoholics Anonymous

To William G. Wilson

Dear Mr. Wilson, 30 January 1961

Your letter was very welcome indeed. I had no news from Roland H. any more and often wondered what has been his fate.

Our conversation which he has adequately reported to you had an aspect of which he did not know. The reason was that I could not tell him everything. In those days I had to be exceedingly careful of what I said.

I had found out that I was misunderstood in every possible way. Thus I was very careful when I talked to Roland H. But what I really thought about was the result of many experiences with men of his kind.

His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God. How could one formulate such an insight in a language that is not misunderstood in our days?

The only right and legitimate way to such an experience is that it happens to you in reality, and it can only happen to you when you walk on a path which leads you to higher understanding.

You might be led to that goal by an act of grace or through a personal and honest contact with friends or through a high education of the mind beyond the conﬁnes of mere rationalism.

I see from your letter that Roland H. has chosen the second way, which was, under the circumstances, obviously the best one.

I am strongly convinced that the evil principle prevailing in this world leads the unrecognized spiritual need into perdition, if it is not counteracted either by a real religious insight or by the protective wall of human community. An ordinary man, not protected by an action from above and isolated in society, cannot resist the power of evil, which is called very aptly the Devil.

But the use of such words arouses so many mistakes that one can only keep aloof from them as much as possible. These are the reasons why I could not give a full and suﬃcient explanation to Roland H.

But I am risking it with you because I conclude from your very decent and honest letter that you have acquired a point of view about the misleading platitudes one usually hears.

You see, alcohol in Latin is spiritus and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum. Thanking you again for your kind letter,

I remain,

Yours sincerely,

C.G. Jung

“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, 0 God” (Psalm 42:1). Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 623-624

dissonance

A harsh, disagreeable combination of sounds; discord.

Lack of agreement, consistency, or harmony; conflict: "In Vietnam, reality fell away and dissonance between claim and fact filled the void” ( Michael Janeway).

Music A combination of tones contextually considered to suggest unrelieved tension and require resolution.

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values.

Interestingly, in music, consonance and dissonance are categorizations of simultaneous or successive sounds. Consonance is associated with sweetness, pleasantness, and acceptability; dissonance is associated with harshness, unpleasantness, or unacceptability.

Annie Grace explains this extremely well in This Naked Mind. I would recommend reading it and absorbing every chapter. The knowledge imparted by this book and especially this sub-reddit really helped me regain my direction, my health and my freedom.

I would start by simply stopping for 30 days to notice the benefits. It is important to remember that it can take much longer to see the long-term benefits of sobriety and recovery. You can always start drinking again. If you can't make 30 days then that tells you something else.

There are many different paths to brokenness and there certainly is more than one to recovery. Never let anyone tell you your way is wrong if it is working.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

~ Dalai Lama

I slowly progressed from not knowing what to do with all my new free time to now it seems there is not enough time to enjoy all the cool stuff in my life (taking online courses, Tai Chi, paddleboarding, voracious reading, guitar, biking, hiking, meditation, yard work, dog walks and being productive at work).

Stay the course and expand your horizons!

You never have to feel this way again. I would highly recommend reading This Naked Mind (free download in the sidebar) and thoroughly absorbing each chapter. I also read a lot of past SD posts. For me the physical cravings go away at around ten days and my body starts feeling more back to normal in about 30 days. The mental cravings are a different story. I found a path that worked for me and stayed with it. Today I have no cravings whatsoever and I can deal with life head on with a helathy body, clear head and sharp mind. Go forth and conquer your demons!

I had to accept that I can't change the past. I did try to make amends for my behavior, if and when it was appropriate. I apologized, or tried to make-up for my fuck ups and then had to just let it go. We all make mistakes, that is just part of life. I found that most folks were empathetic to my drunken escapades and understood I was in a bad place. Keep your chin up my SD friend!

I didn’t have a chance…with my addictive personality/genes/sickness whatever plus the environment of booze everywhere, every event, I have old pics of my 1st grade birthday party where all the adults had a can of beer. I started taking ‘sips’ at a very young age. The sips turned into drinks turned into gulps turned into chugs turned into sneaking beers out of the fridge. Especially once the adults got toasted, I’d end up with a mix of brands, cans bottles, icing it down out back somewhere and really enjoying playing in the back yard. Later it was the hard booze. That was much easier to take. Eventually all my Dad’s booze was watered down. He never mentioned any booze missing over the many years this went on. I don’t know how they didn’t smell the whiskey in my coffee every Christmas morning from the time I was 14 on. They must have and just ignored it. Like they ignored everything else about me.

My first blackout was 11 years old, my grandparents giving me bourbon and cokes. (Special huh?) My Mom didn't speak to them for over a year and I was never left unsupervised with them again for several years anyway.

At 24, my second year in the military, I was reprimanded for repeatedly showing up for duty smelling like gin, still hungover. I was drunk pretty much every night of active duty.

At 28, I went to my first AA meeting at my own volition but their message was not heard and continued to put down a fifth of Wild Turkey every other night, not to mention constant beer drinking.

Age 29 to 51, 4 DUI's, multiple PI's, a heart attack with quintuple bypass and multiple short stints in jail didn't even slow me down...all while having a "successful career", founded and ran a multi-million dollar company in Silicon Valley with over 40 employees which I eventually sold to Hewlett Packard. How I accomplished this while drinking every day is beyond me. I can't even imagine what I may have done with my life if I had stopped ingesting the poison 30 years prior.

At 52, I found SD and after 3 relatively short relapses, I now have over 1000 days and have lost all desire to drink. I can't describe how happy I am and how good life is now. It is simply amazing.

Drink – the very idea of it – seems rather sickening. Quaffing sour or pungent liquids in order to make yourself dumber? Preposterous! I have the same feelings about alcohol that I had when I was 10. It’s dangerous; it’s disgusting; it causes cancer; it rots your liver and makes you look, and smell, like a much older and sicker person.

some of the reasons why alcohol is so attractive: “It makes you more relaxed, it makes you more gregarious, it makes you more confident in social situations, it relieves stress, it actually lifts you up sometimes when you’re feeling low, as an initial effect – so it’s got all these properties.” He thought about this for a while, and then said: “Chemically, it’s an all-rounder.”

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jan/05/william-leith-alcohol-how-did-i-let-drinking-take-over-my-life

It seems most of my friends that are heavy drinkers are a little jealous and envious of my new freedom though most won't admit it.

I would start by simply stopping for 30 days to notice the benefits. You can always start drinking again. If you can't make 30 days then that tells you something else.

Truly enjoying the "little moments" and stringing more and more of them together (and remembering them ;-)) is my definition of happiness.

It is SO worth the effort to stop poisoning yourself. Suicide sip by sip is no way to live and a terrible way to die. I am glad you are here.

I am always fascinated by the difference in the eyes in all of these before and after photos. They say the eyes are windows to the soul. If the eyes are dull maybe the soul is having problems seeing clearly.

I experienced this as well. For the first 30 days or so I had zero patience with anybody or anything, had a negative attitude and would bite peoples heads off for looking at me. My booze brain would tell me that just one drink will make me happy again. That booze brain is a lying bastard.

Stay the course my friend, this is one of the small prices we must pay to cleanse the poisons from our bodies, minds and souls.

For me, that 10-20 window of early sobriety is critical.

So many people are unwilling to go through those lows of qutting and get off this cycle of ‘stop…feel better….drink…rinse…repeat’.

But once the cycle is broken, pure freedom awaits.

Rock bottom is the foundation on which to rebuild and you sound like you are right on the very edge of beginning a new life.

May you also stay strong and go forth to conquer your demons.

♡ I sincerely wish you success in your journey. ♡

If you get up one more time than you fall, you will make it through.

-Chinese Proverb

There's nothing wrong with failure. What matters is what you do next, and the fact that you are here posting is a good sign.

For most people alcohol is a non-addictive self regulative relaxant. Sure everyone is capable of getting drunk, especially kids or young adults who try it for the first time. But most adult people can learn to control and moderate their drink quite quickly. That's why it's legal, but has a minimum age limit. For the vast majority of people alcohol isn't a problem, most people get drunk about 4 times a year, unlike me who used to get drunk every time I drank.

It can take weeks or even months to regain the balance in neurotransmitters after discontinued use.

General:

This is key to all drug addiction - the drug creates the low and then deceives it's victims into believing that, by ending the low, it is providing a high.

Most psycho-active drugs work through the receptor signaling system in the brain. A given fact about receptors is that when they are stimulated they down regulate through a couple of mechanisms. Cannabinoids work on the endo-cannabinoid receptor system. Activating those receptors makes you feel 'good', or you wouldn't use the drugs. Normally endo-cannabinoids are present in the brain in small quantitates and used for various things like pleasure, reward, creativity, etc. When you consume quantities, especially large quantities of cannabinoids from outside the body, your receptors downregulate, so the small quantities of endogenous cannabinoid neurotransmitters aren't sufficient to keep you feeling normal. So you need the external drugs to avoid feeling depressed, lethargic, unmotivated, anxious and worse. You've hammered your receptors so much there are very few left, and they can barely produce any signal anymore. So now you're a drug addict.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t5aG9XEQgs

Yes the receptors do grow back! When you quit, the endocannabinoid system returns to normal. It can take weeks or even months to regain the balance in neurotransmitters after discontinued use.

Alcohol (and weed?) excites the pleasure system of the brain, and your brain freaks out and releases dynorphin to try to balance things out. Your brain continues doing this even after you're done drinking so everything is going to feel shitty until your brain figures out the coast is clear and stops spazzing out (sometimes days, sometimes months). It all goes back to normal eventually.

It is hard to give up something that makes you alright with the shitty parts of life.

You must let your brain level itself out (re-wire it’s reward system). This can take weeks.

It's not easy to quit that's why most people don't. But anybody can if they want it bad enough.

Alcoholism is an elevator going down. You can decide what floor to get off at. Only way back up is trudging up the stairs, no easy way to do it.

The key to quitting is not to simply abstain – it’s to not want to drink.

The frontal cortex is responsible for will power and it is no match for limbic system which contains the pleasure reward system.

There are two sides to detoxing and maintaining sobriety; one physical and one mental. Both work on different timelines and require different types of care and maintenance.

For me (and every successfully sober person I know), sobriety is not about willpower. It is about finding a way to heal and recover ourselves so we can learn to live life on life's terms without ever needing a drink. When we don't need a drink, we don't need willpower.

Booze worked great for drowning my sorrows…until they learned to swim.

Sobriety is like a super power

I just feel happier and healthier without drinking.

Today I pledge to pass on the poisons, end the eye-openers, ditch the drink, veto the vino, toss the tipple, forgo the firewater, ban the booze, block the beer, refuse the red-eye, evict the ethanol, lose the liquor, cancel the cold ones, shun the shots and go negatory on the nightcaps.

👉 FTZ!

Is it easy? FUCK NO. It sucks, but it sucks less and less every day.

You got this.

👉 FTZ!

Fuck The Zero.

Fuck The Zero!

FTZ is in reference to this scene from the TV show 'House of Cards'.

I think this says it all https://i.imgur.com/fy5fBSm.jpg

Almost everyone alters their state of mind/self-medicates in some way, some methods more destructive than others. Whether its drugs, alcohol, food, cigarettes, weed, people, TV, spectator sports, etc. it doesn't matter. Believing your choice is somehow "better" than another's is nothing but narcissism.

Taking drugs and thinking you're happy is like taking a loan and thinking you have money

At .02 BAC, you are mellow and calm. As the alcohol moves to the brain, its first effects are to quickly distort your judgment, coordination and lower your inhibitions. At .05 BAC, you are relaxed and not as alert. At .08, you become talkative, louder, speech is slurred and your definitely more uninhibited. At .15 BAC, you’re more impaired than you think you are. You are sloppy, clumsy, have extreme mood swings. At .30 BAC, you are unconscious. At .50 BAC, you are probably dead.

- I cannot doubt the truth of that utterance which the greatest of poets delivered with all the seeming of an oracle: “The part of life we really live is small.” For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time. Vices beset us and surround us on every side, and they do not permit us to rise anew and lift up our eyes for the discernment of truth, but they keep us down when once they have overwhelmed us and we are chained to lust. Their victims are never allowed to return to their true selves; if ever they chance to find some release, like the waters of the deep sea which continue to heave even after the storm is past, they are tossed about and no rest from their lusts abides.

-Seneca

Law enforcement is trained to notice certain telltale signs that a motorist has been drinking:

• Speeding: An
intoxicated driver
often thinks high
speed driving is safe.

• Weaving: Even though
an intoxicated
driver may stay
in the correct lane,
driving straight
may be a problem.

• Slow driving: An
intoxicated driver
may be overly
cautious and drive
slower than the normal
traffic flow.

• Jerking motion: An
intoxicated driver
often may have
short mental lapses
and not keep a steady
speed on a clear road.

• Quick stops: An
intoxicated driver
may make sudden
stops at a traffic sign
or light, rather than
easing up to it.

One of the ways your mind works to defend and protect you is to blur your memory of the bad stuff and make the good stuff glitter in your review.

The only man I have to be better than is the one I am right now.

Doing your best is more important than being the best.

Measure yourself only against your previous self.

Okay, so when you start drinking at an alcoholic-esq level, you stop growing emotionally. When I entered my first AA meeting 1,000 days ago, I was the emotional equivalent of an infant. Feeling like a 15-year old in an adult body is extremely uncomfortable, but it does get better over time. You'll definitely get to know who you really are once you get sober, that's for sure.

Conversation example:

Without those stubborn "old timers" I wouldn't be here today. I was complaining about someone in the rooms to my sponsor when I was at about 4 months. I was complaining like a little kid. He stopped me mid-rant & said "Did you like everyone at the bar that you drank at?" , I responded, No I didn't & he said "well, you stayed at the bar, so you can stay at the meeting"

My sponsor once asked me when was the last time I had just ONE DRINK & I genuinely sat there for a few minutes to think of my answer ... I couldn't come up with one-fucking-time when I had only 1 drink. It upset me and I got angry at myself for the next few mins, but it was a great exercise of acceptance. We have a physical allergy and mental obsession to a drink. Our minds will do whatever it takes to justify just that one 12 oz, but deep down we all know it's not going to be just 1 drink.

My favorite drink is my next drink!

“At some point, the pain of not doing it becomes greater than the pain of doing it.”

You have to be willing to suffer today in order to not suffer tomorrow.

Having all this free time really screwed me up in the beginning

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” ― Ernest Hemingway

Comparison is the thief of joy.

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change

― Wayne Dyer

If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it's not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.

~ Dalai Lama

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it's not fixable, then there is no help in

worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.

~ Dalai Lama

(another version of the serenity prayer!)

“You’re an addict. So be addicted. Just be addicted to something else. Choose the ones you love. Choose your future. Choose life.”

-Trainspotters

things I cannot change:

You cannot change the past, arrange the future to suit yourself, or make other people say and do the things you want them to say and do.

“The secrets to living are these: First, the past cannot be improved upon. Acknowledge what was and move on. Next, the future cannot be molded. Then, why bother? Last, nothing can ultimately be controlled; Not the past, nor the future, nor the present. Accept this moment as it is. Honoring these three, One lives without shackles.”
— Wu Hsin

(another version of the serenity prayer!)

There is nothing so bad that drinking won't make it worse.

“You didn’t come this far to only come this far.”

"If I quit now I will soon be back where I started.

And when I started, I was desperately wishing to be where I am now".

Sure. Now some of this comes with 4 years of thinking about this stuff and doing a lot of personal Introspection so it might not make sense right now.

So, like almost every alcoholic I knew I had a problem and tried almost every possible way to keep drinking without it negatively. Counting drinks, only drinking on weekends, only at "celebrations" etc. they always ended up at the same place and it wasn't pretty. I also had a few attempts at abstaining, like when I quit with my wife when she got pregnant. But, I was never really quitting just doing the the things you are supposed to do when you have trouble with drinking.

Not only that, I had built my life around alcohol. People, activities, even my spouse where all chosen as a way to normalize my drinking.

So... how the F do you get out of this self-destructive hole.

There are 4 states of being. One is suffering. I was suffering. I was abusing alcohol, hurting myself and and my family.

The second is acceptance. For me I had to accept that I had a problem and that the solution was to never drink again. I knew this was true because I saw proof of other people like me who had overcome this suffering by abstaining completely. I was lucky to have a dad who had over 30 years in recovery. Acceptance to me was "I can't drink"

Once you accept something you immediately unburden yourself of it. It like, ok, that's not an option, oh well, now what.

The problem with acceptance is that it is sometimes hard and many times you might accept in your brain, but, not in your heart.

So then moving to the next state of being enjoyment. This is where you don't just accept a situation, but, you enjoy/embrace it. You can see it daily on this sub the enjoyment people have found from new found sobriety. Enjoyment is great as you start to realize the benefits of ending suffering. However, enjoyment is fleeting so it is important to recognize those moments but not try to hang onto them, chase them, or think that you deserve to be in this state at all times.

The final state is enthusiasm. That is where you are actively and passionately embracing reality. This manifests when we share our stories, actively look for new ways to make our world better, embrace a new life and the things you can do now that you are free. This is when you no longer count the days/moments. When you disidentify with the identity of the alcoholic and start moving past the daily struggle.

In the beginning I think the most important thing is to not drink. Sometimes it is moment to moment or day to day and that is ok. Most people will say only worry about today. For me, thinking long term and accepting that this is my new reality really helped me build a new world around that reality.

Here's another story that really helped me kill that voice. I always had it on the back of my mind that I could drink if it was a really big celebration or really big tragedy or something. Just this little tiny voice. Then I hear the story of Eric Clapton. He was a huge rock star who was a complete addict in the 70s and 80s. He got sober in the mid 80s and in the early 90s he lost son tragically died. If anyone had a reason to drink that was it. Not only did he not give into his voice who wrote one of the most beautiful songs ever written: Tears in Heaven.

If he could overcome that I could overcome any little "reason" my evil little voice can come Up with.

There's a moment where the drinkers all seem really happy, witty, and connected. That's usually where I might have a craving. Shortly after that moment, though, they are loud, talking over each other, misunderstanding each other.. That's when the craving dissipates haha.

Trigger Relief Tools

Play the tape forward. What will happen when you drink? The same abysmal shit that happened last time.

Just one glass?...think of booze as gasoline…no thanks

Substitute heroin or meth for alcohol in the thought process of "I wish I could moderate".

Think of booze as peanuts and I have a peanut allergy. Does the taste of peanuts and the feelings they provide compensate for the consequences of ingestion?

Think of booze as Kryptonite and I am Superman!

Think of booze as meat and I’m a vegetarian. Can I eat meat? Sure…I just choose not to.

Am I capable of moderating? Maybe….is the juice worth the squeeze? In perspective…I may or may not be capable of robbing a bank, hustling seniors or building up an immunity to antifreeze. All things that I have no need to find out if I'm capable of.

I completely lost the desire to drink when my “cognitive dissonance” relating to alcohol use was finally resolved. This is just a fancy term for the conflict I had between my conscious and subconscious mind that was nurtured by many years of conditioning. Annie Grace explains this extremely well in This Naked Mind. I would recommend reading it and absorbing every chapter. The knowledge imparted by this book and especially this sub-reddit really helped me regain my direction, my health and my freedom.

*The end to suffering is when the mind experiences freedom from attachment. It’s letting go of any craving or desiring.

At some point my mind set changed from not being able to drink to not wanting to drink.

Keep busy, keep occupied, try new things, not only do this strengthen the mind by forming new neural connections you will find things you really enjoy which turn into lasting hobbies and interests.

So prepare for the next 2-4 weeks to have waves of paws.

http://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/06/12/post-acute-withdrawal-syndrome-causes-symptoms-treatment/

Mood swings both up and down. Lack of motivation, depression, anxiety, etc. Realise that it's all normal and will pass. Implement a clean diet, exercise and meditation. You will return to your old self 100% eventually.

The epitome of substance addiction.... For us, when moderation works it isn’t worth doing. If we enjoyed moderation we wouldn’t be here.

Ethanol is commonly consumed as a recreational drug, especially while socializing, due to its psychoactive effects.

Small doses of ethanol, in general, produce euphoria and relaxation; people experiencing these symptoms tend to become talkative and less inhibited, and may exhibit poor judgment.

In combination with cannabis, ethanol increases plasma THC levels, which suggests that ethanol may increase the absorption of THC.

When alcohol reaches the brain, it has the ability to delay signals that are sent between nerve cells that control balance, thinking and movement.

At higher dosages (BAC > 1 g/L), ethanol acts as a central nervous system depressant, producing at progressively higher dosages, impaired sensory and motor function, slowed cognition, stupefaction, unconsciousness, and possible death.

Alcohol stimulates gastric juice production, even when food is not present. In other words, when a person drinks alcohol, the alcohol will stimulate stomach's acidic secretions that are intended to digest protein molecules. Consequently, the acidity has potential to harm the inner lining of the stomach.

In fact, alcohol is one of the rare substances that can be absorbed in the stomach. Most food substances are absorbed in the small intestine. However, even though alcohol can be absorbed in the stomach, it is mostly absorbed in the small intestine because the small intestine has a large surface area that promotes absorption. Once alcohol is absorbed in the small intestine, it delays the release of stomach contents from emptying into the small intestine. Thus, alcohol can delay the rate of absorption of nutrients.[80] After absorption, alcohol reaches the liver where it is metabolized.

Alcohol that is not processed by the liver goes to the heart. The liver can process only a certain amount of alcohol per unit time. Thus, when a person drinks too much alcohol, more alcohol can reach the heart. In the heart, alcohol reduces the force of heart contractions. Consequently, the heart will pump less blood, lowering overall body blood pressure.

Also, alcohol dilates blood vessels. Consequently, a person will feel warmer, and his/her skin flush and appear pink.

Frequent drinking of alcoholic beverages has been shown to be a major contributing factor in cases of elevated blood levels of triglycerides.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer lists ethanol in alcoholic beverages as Group 1 carcinogens.

Prolonged heavy consumption of alcohol can cause significant permanent damage to the brain and other organs.

Death from ethanol consumption is possible when blood alcohol levels reach 0.4%. A blood level of 0.5% or more is commonly fatal. Levels of even less than 0.1% can cause intoxication, with unconsciousness often occurring at 0.3–0.4%.

Discontinuing consumption of alcohol after several years of heavy drinking can also be fatal. Alcohol withdrawal can cause anxiety, autonomic dysfunction, seizures, and hallucinations. Delirium tremens is a condition that requires people with a long history of heavy drinking to undertake an alcohol detoxification regimen.

Prolonged heavy consumption of alcohol can cause significant permanent damage to the brain and other organs.

Ethanol is a clear, colorless liquid rapidly absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract and distributed throughout the body. It has bactericidal activity and is used often as a topical disinfectant.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer lists ethanol in alcoholic beverages as Group 1 carcinogens.

The largest single use of ethanol is as an engine fuel and fuel additive.

Ethanol was commonly used as fuel in early bipropellant rocket (liquid propelled) vehicles.

Ethanol fuels flue-less, real flame fireplaces.

Ethanol is a good general purpose solvent and disinfectant. It is found in paints, varnishes, tinctures, markers, and personal care products such as mouthwashes, perfumes and deodorants.

Do you really want to be ingesting this poison everyday?

I have noticed few negative effects to cutting it out of my life, but endless positive effects.

Pros and Cons

personal inventory of the pros and cons of drinking for you

I did a cost-benefit analysis, and I saw that alcohol was costing me across every aspect of my life (though I tended to make excuses for it) all for a transient altered state.

Pros:

Waking up full of energy with no headache and a clear conscience, clear head and sharp mind

Not having to worry about smelling of booze from the last night

Alcohol adds no value to my life. At all. I'm extremely happy and have a very fun life since I quit. There's no reason for me to go back to drinking.

Alcohol provides no benefit whatsoever to the drinker. From relieving stress, removing inhibitions, numbing emotional or physical pain, increasing confidence and curing boredom – these benefits are all imagined and exacerbated by the inebriation of the drink, and leave the drinker worse off.

The cost benefit analysis of alcohol makes it clear; it’s too expensive. From a risk management standpoint, risks associated with drinking make it not worth it

It’s amazing how NOT DOING something can change your life in such positive ways:

-Health: so much better, less damage to liver, pancreas, throat, stomach, brain, kidneys, heart, less cancer

-Money: so much better, less money spent on booze and stupid things you buy when you are drunk

-Social: so much better, people respect you more because you don't drink. You don't say things you regret to people. You treat people with more respect. You have real friendships and real emotions.

-Personal: you love yourself more. You stop engaging in self destructive behavior

-Career: more focused at work, more responsible

-Thinking: clearer thoughts, more brain power

‘Clarity of mind is a fantastic motivator, and I'm now getting that back.’

-Sleep: real sleep. Wake up refreshed

-Diet: eat healthier foods that are more nutritious, this makes you feel stronger and happier

-Emotions: more emotionally stable, less ups and downs. more positive feelings

It has dawned on me what a staggering amount of money and calories were going into maintaining a perpetual buzz

Legal Ramifications:

No concerns with DUI or PI

Financial:

Estimate cost savings

-just wine (conservatively): 2 bottles cheap wine (14) X days in month (30) = $420 per month (12) = $5040 per year …doesn’t include the hard stuff

Stress and Lack of Freedom:

The key to quitting is not to simply abstain – it’s to not want to drink

Not drinking is freedom for me. Freedom from worrying about when I would drink, how much I could drink, if I could drink, if people knew I was drinking, hiding how much I drank... It was exhausting.

It’s pretty amazing not having to worry where your next drink or drug is coming from.

being able to go get/do things at night because I'm not too drunk to drive anywhere

not hiding the quantities of booze being consumed

Health:

Facial redness, bloatiness and spider veins have dissipated.

inflammation of the face

Mental

numb and cloudy

mental clarity

Much more articulate and quick witted. The words I need in technical conversations come without effort and I don’t need to refer to my daily notes as much as I use to as I can now remember details from past conversations.

Exercise

Have been walking most every day.

Weight

Lost 16 pounds in first 8 weeks of not drinking and walking most days.

Health

A 2002 study found 41% of people fatally injured in traffic accidents were in alcohol related crashes.

not pooing water

Heart

Liver

Pancreas

Career:

Relationships:

It made me unable to give my family the love, time and attention they deserved.

Alcohol disinhibits impulsive and high risk behaviors. Someone who has been drinking becomes less selective and less worried about the problems that a casual sexual encounter may cause.

CONs:

Booze works great for drowning my sorrows…until they learned to swim.

Less patience with idiots

Irritated with people repeating themselves

Not interested in ‘chit chat’…conversation just for the sake of conversation

Miss the numb carefree feeling it gave me, that put my mind on pause and at ease

Miss the temporary feeling of happiness, the fake, bottle driven joy that can be obtained from a store, where I was allowed for a moment to let my guard down. I do not miss the old me, but I did enyoy the instant cheerfulness.

I’d rather earn small doses of accumulative real happiness than buying 15 minutes of "happiness lite" on credit.

It's pretty rare for booze to entirely destroy someone's life all at once, barring an arrest or a horrible accident. It's much more common for it to steal a chunk of your life here, some of your health there, and a relationship every once in a while. Next thing you know, you're 50 and alcohol is the number one thing in your life.

And what do you get in return? Nothing. It stopped being "fun" long, long ago. All it gives you is temporary relief from the anxiety of not having it. It couldn't be more useless.

-----

Alcohol is addictive and I (and maybe you?) are addicted to it. I went through many, many days of promising myself "this is the day I quit," and then by 4 or 5 o clock, seeing myself like a robot driving to the liquor store for another bottle.

What changed? Thing one, I understand addiction much better now, and understand why there's no such thing as "just one sip" or "just one bottle" of an addictive substance. I also read the book by Alan Carr linked in the SD sidebar, which truly changed my attitude about alcohol. It is not a magic potion. I'd been conned by my own addiction, and by a lifetime of advertising and social conditioning, into believing I needed this magic alcohol medicine to get me through my own life. Wrong. Alcohol provides exactly zero benefits to me.

Thing two. Even knowing the truth about alcohol and addiction, I kept going back to it until I completely faced up to the reasons I drank, and actually changed the way I lived to resolve those reasons. Some people get help doing that in AA, by working "steps." Some people get help in counseling. But you can do both of those things, or rehab, or Himalayan self-discovery journeys, etc, and still keep going back to drinking if the shit inside isn't cleaned up.

Actually, I think Thing One and Thing Two are the same thing. Honesty.

----

Problem: I was drinking too much, too often.

Solution: I stopped drinking entirely.

Clarification: This isn't a smart-ass answer.

I'm completely serious.

When I start drinking, I don't stop. If I run out, I go and get more.

I can't even tell you how many times I thought, OK, I have 8 beers here, I'll drink those then I won't drink anymore. Easy! Guess how many times I stuck to that? Yeah, not so easy after all. No matter how determined I was to stop after X drinks before I started, I always went to buy more. Always.

I don't stop the next day, either. If I drink today, I will drink tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. And probably all next week, too. On those rare days that I managed to not drink, oh boy did I want to. It's all I thought about. It consumed my being.

Just drink once in a while, what's the problem?

The problem is that I can't do that. I've tried. I can't.

I can't slam dunk a basketball either. I'm pretty sure I could train myself to slam dunk a basketball if I put in the effort. What do you think it would take, a year? Maybe less? Maybe more? I dunno. I'm over 6 feet tall, I'm sure I could do it.

I was sure I could drink like a normal person too, if I just kept trying. I was dead-sure for 15 years. I tried every day and I failed every day. But I was still so sure I could do it. Nah, I'm gonna get it this time!

It's that never-give-up can-do attitude, right? Sure! ... but I would have given up on trying to slam dunk that basketball if I'd tried for 2 years and wasn't making any progress. Yet it took me 15 years to accept my reality with alcohol. That wasn't a never-give-up attitude. That was something else entirely.

I was drinking too much, too often, so I stopped drinking entirely. That solved the problem. It's the only thing that's ever worked for me.

The evil of my subconscious is too strong to resist. The only way to win is to deny it battle.

Ultimately, I have to learn to live without altering my consciousness with external substances.

You make them uncomfortable because you are a reflection of what they wish they could be.. Just keep doing your thing!

"people without alcohol problems don't spend any time worrying about their drinking"

If we compare the sum of our days to an hourglass, is life more akin to the passing of sand from the top or the accumulation of sand in the bottom?

When I am drinking it is the former, when I am sober it is the latter.

Rock bottom is the foundation on which I’m rebuilding my life.

Sobriety sometimes seems like an unfair advantage!

Before and After’s:

Look at the eyes

They say the eyes are windows to the soul. If the eyes are dull maybe the soul is having problems seeing

http://imgur.com/sNt2jHM

If people need fairy tales to calm their insecurity and existential angst, who am I to deny them?

Well, the good news is that you really do not ever again have to feel like this. Not do you have to do anything to prolong the agony.

Matter of fact, you sound like you are right on the very edge of beginning a new life, where the damage can be repaired.

Good Luck to you!

On Advice:

These are some of the tools I use for immediate trigger relief:

1. Play the tape forward. What will happen when you drink? The same abysmal shit that happened last time.

2. Just one glass?...think of booze as gasoline…no thanks.

3. Substitute heroin or meth for alcohol in the thought process of "I wish I could moderate".

4. Think of booze as peanuts and I have a peanut allergy. Does the taste of peanuts and the feelings they provide compensate for the consequences of ingestion?

5. Think of booze as meat and I’m a vegetarian. Can I eat meat? Sure…I just choose not to.

6. Am I capable of moderating? Maybe….is the juice worth the squeeze? Sounds a lot work and stress without reaching the oblivion stage that I drink for.

For me the key to quitting is not to simply abstain though – it’s to not want to drink.

Since you asked for advice, I'll offer what worked for me:

Make a list of all the reasons you want to stop. Keep that list handy. For me, it included hangovers ruining half of my days, being a shitty husband, being a zombie after a few drinks, the guilt and shame I felt about not being able to stop, etc.

Hang out on this sub a lot. Read, lurk, and post when you can. Commit to the daily check in. Save posts that really speak to you.

Read This Naked Mind. Take your time with it. Let every chapter sink in. It changed everything for me.

Find something that is an adequate distraction for those times you want to drink. For me, I took up a new hobby, play guitar, study, exercise and tackled a queue of books. Have a plan for what to do on those nights you'd usually drink.

I'm no longer "young-ish" and wished I had stopped much sooner. You can save yourself years of wasted time and anguish if you walk this path now. I salute you for posting and hope you will give stopping a try. You might want to look for an AA meeting for RL support. Is not easy but it does get easier and it's certainly worth it.

May you go forth and conquer your demons!

Set goals. For me it was a day, then 3 days, then why not a week….shit let’s go for 30 days. OK let’s try for 90. Done. I feel great. Wow. Go for 180? Then a year?

Well, the good news is that you really do not ever have to feel like this again. Nor do you have to do anything to prolong the agony. Matter of fact, you sound like you are right on the very edge of beginning a new life, where the damage can be repaired.

I am glad you are here.

Analyzing past and current posts here on SD and and absorbing This Naked Mind really helped me not desire to drink any more.

Good Luck to you!

👍👍 I always have to give This Naked Mind a strong recommendation and double thumbs up when I see it mentioned. This was by far the most helpful book I have read on the subject of our disorder. Once my subconscious mind was exposed repeatedly to the truth about alcohol, the cognitive dissonance was resolved and my desire to drink disappeared.

On AA:

I find it an interesting experience. It reinforces that I am not alone or unique in this struggle and I hear some fascinating and sometimes disturbing stories.

I don't have to necessarily agree with anything in the AA doctrine to be in those rooms.

For example, I don't care about the steps, as the confession/repentance/atonement/salvation thing wasn't designed for me.

As far as god talk, if people need fairy tales to calm their insecurity and existential angst, who am I to deny them just because I feel don't need it?

Being in a room full of alcoholics talking about the insanity that is alcoholism itself is a form of group therapy/CBT and it’s free.

The camaraderie can also help keep some folks accountable. People certainly do beat this unfortunate disorder by themselves, but having a support group can't hurt as long as you keep any unwarranted advice in context.

I find that relating the 'One Day at a Time' concept to mindfulness (focusing on awareness of the present, not the past or the future) really resonates with my new found philosophy of life. ☺

Other recovery options:

SMART

Lifering

Agnostic/Atheist AA

Addiction Counselling

Therapy (CBT/RBT/DBT)

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Group therapy through an addiction agency

Psychoeducation through an addiction agency

Reading recovery literature/self-help books

Online support forums

Nutrition/Exercise

Meditation/Mindfulness

Refuge Recovery

Picking up a drink just isn't worth it. And for what? To feel a buzz?

So I could give moderation a shot, maybe even be successful at it. But it won't be any better under moderation than it is under abstinence. So I figure, what's the point?

I realized that alcohol had actually prevented me from doing the stuff I was dreaming about while drinking. Quite ironical.

“If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” ― Jim Rohn

I have realized that there are no positives to drinking, whether it's a single glass of wine or a few glasses or a bunch of glasses.

Life is not always going to be awesome after you get sober, but let us not lose sight of the importance of simply avoiding the ghastly endgame of alcoholic drinking.

Also, just know, from my experience, it got easier and easier as time went on to the point where I don't think about drinking much at all anymore. Days go by, whereas six months ago it was a constant in my mind throughout the day.

While there are storms all across the ocean and boats weren't made to stay in harbor....if your boat ain't sea worthy, you should stay close to shore and do the work that needs to be done.

The truth is that the average drinker without the disease of alcoholism doesn’t aim become intoxicated when they drink. The average drinker doesn’t like to feel that loss of control; the feeling of oblivion. Alcoholics on the other hand, love it. When I was drinking, oblivion was the feeling I sought most. I continued to drink because it felt good to me. When I was hammered drunk, I felt normal.

Getting sober is not the fun part. Being sober is.

“Will articulating the thought I have improve upon the silence?”

-Ghandi

If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs thee, but thy own judgment about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgment now.

-Marcus Aurelius

Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.

-Seneca

Is it easy? FUCK NO. It sucks, but it sucks less and less every day.

You got this.

Fuck the zero.

A million drinks is not enough and one drink is too many.

If you’re having trouble coming to grips with your own issues related to alcohol, I want you to understand that you’re not alone. This isn’t anything to be embarrassed about or ashamed of. It’s a disease. And there’s a support system out there to help you control it.

Once you do go through the process, you’ll be you again — the real you. And you’ll realize that that’s good enough.

http://www.theplayerstribune.com/cc-sabathia-yankees-alcohol-addiction-recovery/

The world is slowly but surely changing from black and white to living color like the Robin Williams 'heaven' movie or 'the giver'.

Practice choosing discomfort.

Our choice is between doing an uncomfortable thing now or having greater discomfort thrust upon us later. Because we procrastinators suck at choosing the lesser discomfort now, we effectively are choosing greater discomfort at times that are out of our control.

Making that choice is a skill. It has to be practiced to be developed. You can't just start doing it easily today just like you can't just start doing anything that requires skill.

A month of cold showers is an excellent way to get practice at choosing discomfort, btw. It's easy to do. You're (presumably) going to be taking showers anyway, so it's just a miniscule modification to your daily activities.

All it takes is a single moment of strength to put yourself into the water. It's one big rep for your discipline muscle every day.

To get the most out of it, focus on the negative feelings you experience while making the choice to get into the cold shower. Those feelings that are crying for you to avoid the discomfort are the same feelings that keep you from doing your work when you should. Those feelings are your enemy, and to defeat them you must be conscious of them. Feel them, observe them, hold them in place, and eventually you can control them.

Timmy, have you ever played Chutes and Ladders? Because Alcoholism is a lot like Chutes and Ladders! Let's name the first row of spaces, just for fun.

[Depression] [Fear] [Self-Consciousness] [Awkwardness] [Anxiety] the list can go on, but just a few examples will do.

Now, Timmy, you know all about how the ladders work right? If you land on a ladder it skips you from the row of spaces you're on to a (potentially much) higher row of spaces. Let's name a few of those spaces, again just for fun.

[Euphoria] [Life of The Party] [Confidence] [Silliness] [Happiness]

Now imagine that alcohol is the ladder. If you're (un)fortunate enough to land on this ladder, it skips all those ugly, bad spaces and lifts you up to all those cool spaces. You forget the anxiety, you're confident! No more fear, you're afraid of nothing! You laugh, you're a hit! All the friends you could ever want and whenever a hint of sadness comes over you it's gone in a flash.

Now here's the rub... The higher you get, the shorter the ladders and far more common the chutes. But instead of the chutes dropping you back to that first row of spaces like they should, they bring you even lower.

[Deep Depression] [Guilt] [Remorse] [Loss of Job] [Break up/Divorce] and oh buddy does it get worse from there.

So you roll the dice again. And again. You're trying to get back to that first set of ladders and you know what? It works. Because there's only so low you can get. Grown-ups call it "bottoming out" and once you're there you can only climb back up. So you keep playing, you get back to those ladders and shoot right up them until you're back to where you want to be. And you keep playing, because you want to feel this way forever. But alcohol makes you forget the fall, like it makes you forget anxiety and fear and depression. Never mind that the last time you almost won, you came crashing down and lost almost everything. Never mind how hard the climb back up was. You keep playing. And you hit another chute. And you keep playing.

Alcohol is addictive because it is the ladder in this game, and leads to all those awesome and fun things. You become convinced that it's the ONLY ladder, and so time after time no matter how hard you fall you come back and play again.

TLDR; Alcoholism is a lot like Chutes and Ladders, but the only way to win is to stop playing.

Personal Note: Even when you stop playing, you never put the game away. It's always there, bright and shining, waiting for the next cast of the die.

Drinking alcohol to me would be like having unprotected sex with a person that had HIV and a bunch of other venereal diseases.

“Feelings are something you have; not something you are.” ― Shannon L. Alder

I do not have to be my feelings!

On Helping Others:

Why me?

-Why? I don't really know why. From what I can tell, some people just end up unable to drink sanely. Ultimately, it isn't going to matter why. The real question is, what are you going to do about it?

Don’t have that first drink.

And for a while, let that be enough. It's tough early in, and it's a good time to keep your focus on staying sober. You're doing great right now. You'll have time to learn more as you get further away from the last drink. Congratulations, by the way. Doing is much more tangible than understanding.

On BOREDOM

Only boring people get bored

People often mistake withdrawal for sobriety.

This feeling of boredom is a classic withdrawal symptom.

Then people say "oh, when I don't smoke I feel bored". Yeah, that's withdrawal, not being sober.

You will only know your sober self again after quite a while without smoking. For me, it took between 3 and 6 months.

So, yes, it will come back, but it takes time. You gotta really stick to it. Don't draw conclusions too soon like "sobriety sucks". It's a classic mistake. Withdrawal sucks, not sobriety. Sober life is wonderful.

--I'll take boredom over killing myself any day.

nobody has ever died of boredom

There was complete boredom. I started taking one class a semester in subjects that interest me. I began a meditation practice. I learned Tai Chi. I have 49 books on my Kindle. Now instead of boredom I don’t have enough time in the day.

Boredom is not a problem to be solved. It's the last privilege of a free mind

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/28/boredom-cures-privilege-free-mind

When you want to quit of your own will, you will always have somebody with you who supports your decision.

It's freeing once you surrender completely to the knowledge of your condition.

People need love when they are sick not condemnation, especially when their mind is sick.

A way to know, if you aren't sure, you have a problem with alcohol is when you stop bragging about it and you start lying about it (to yourself as well as others).

the lure of a temporary pleasure with consequences that outweigh any benefit.

The slight pleasure of a drink is nothing compared to waking up feeling awesome every morning. It isn't even the fact that I can't control my drinking, I just feel happier and healthier without drinking.

It's not he destination but the journey...(complete the quote)

Enjoy the trip as it may be more important and certainly more enjoyable than the goal.

The grass is always greener....(complete)

Enjoy what you have do not covet, water and fertilize your own and watch it flourish

Reference the stonecutter story

No guts no glory....(complete)

More shots attempted, more goals scored...(complete)

Love is the absence of judgment.

~ Dalai Lama

"You might be the sweetest peach in the world, but some people just don't like peaches."

Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything - anger, anxiety, or possessions (or addiction!) - we cannot be free.

~ Thích Nhất Hạnh

On Patience:

A martial arts student went to his teacher and said earnestly, "I am devoted to studying your martial system. How long will it take me to master it."

The teacher's reply was casual, "Ten years."

Impatiently, the student answered, "But I want to master it faster than that. I will work very hard. I will practice everyday, ten or more hours a day if I have to. How long will it take then?"

The teacher thought for a moment, "20 years."

Remarkably, I almost feel a deep sense of relief that I DONT HAVE TO DRINK ANYMORE.

I think what I’m feeling is FREEDOM.

This has been a fundamental shift in my thinking, it feels like a huge weight off my shoulders and I have finally LET IT GO.

22 Things You Should Never Say to Someone Who Doesn't Drink

http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/drinks/a26338/things-not-to-say-to-a-sober-person/

Lately, I've been annoyed/angered by everyone too. Part of it is stress, but I am starting to wonder if drunk me was just better at putting up with people's bullshit than sober me?

I realize drunk me, didn't have a whole lot of checkmarks in the good column, but that might have been one of them.

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!

-Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Everyone you meet in life is a blessin' or a lesson."

I’m too blessed to be stressed.

I act my way into better thinking, not think my way into better acting.

This involved change, and change is scary...but not as scary as the death I was headed towards with my abuse of substances.

Motivation starts the race. Discipline finishes it.

"The world record for sobriety is 24 hours"

Not drinking is freedom for me. Freedom from worrying about when I would drink, how much I could drink, if I could drink, if people knew I was drinking, hiding how much I drank... It was exhausting.

And I'd get drunk, and have to try and act like I wasn't, all while trying to get more drunk, which would make it harder to act like I wasn't drunk.

And there would be this nagging feeling inside that all this acting and sneaking really made the experience of being drunk not worth it.

I must have woken up hundreds of times wishing I hadn't drank the night before. I haven't once woken up wishing I had.

Alcohol never solved anything. It was a convenient way to waste my life and not care about wasting it.

For me getting sober was like getting to quit a second full time job that was killing me while I paid a fortune to do it. I have no idea how I had enough energy to do it for so many years.

I believe people in recovery must work toward the great shift from staying sober out of fear and necessity to staying sober out of love for the life they get to live as the result of staying sober.

Self-pity won't help here. Poor me quickly turns into pour me another drink.

To insist on a spiritual practice that served you in the past is to carry the raft on your back after you have crossed the river.

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

~ Dalai Lama

On Anger:

If you can cultivate the right attitude, your enemies are your best spiritual teachers because their presence provides you with the opportunity to enhance and develop tolerance, patience and understanding.

~ Dalai Lama

I came to discover a sober life was a happier healthier way for me to live. I used to think of alcohol as my safety blanket or refuge, once my veil of denial lifted I came to see it as my prison. My crutch stopped me from living my life to its potential.

I have a different view on never drinking again. After many failed attempts at moderation, I've come to realize I have no control over the alcohol. The previous time I quit drinking, I had quit with the idea that I'd return to it somehow.

This time I know that I need to never drink again. I am an alcoholic and I know the booze takes away my ability to think right. Knowing this makes want to never drink again. And for some reason it makes things easier.

Hang in there, man.

It wasn't about how often I drank, it was about what would happen after I picked up the first drink.

You don't need to know why you drink the way you do to stop. Just stop :)

Being hungover is not the worst about drinking, the destruction of your body and mind is.

Lots of people don't drink. Some for religious reasons, some for personal or family reasons, some just don't like the taste of alcohol. It doesn't matter what your reasons are. If you've made the internal decision to be a person who doesn't drink, it's a whole lot easier to not drink, because drinking just isn't a part of that person's life.

So many people are unwilling to go through those lows of qutting and get off this cycle of ‘stop…feel better….drink…rinse…repeat’. But once it's done, pure freedom awaits. This is also why for me, that 10-20 window of early sobriety is so critical.

People of the world: "Why don't you drink?"

Him: shrugs shoulders and goes, "It's just a personal decision."

And the conversation about his sobriety ALWAYS STOPS THERE. I've NEVER seen anyone push him for more, or make it weird. The shoulder shrug adds this lightness to it, like no biggie, I just don't do it. And his choice of words, "it's just a PERSONAL decision," lets people know, hey - I've answered your Q, but as previously mentioned, this is personal. People's reactions are like, damn, good for him, and on to the next topic.

Would you like a drink?

No thanks.

Why?

I’m not drinking/I don’t drink. <smile>

You quit/You don’t drink?

Correct.

Why?

<shrug> It’s just a personal decision. <smile>

Hey LadyinRecovery,

Are you getting that craving again? Is it the weekend? Do you have something you're trying to celebrate? Something you're trying to run away from and drown out? Funny how you reach to alcohol for both of these seemingly diametrically-opposed situations.

Remember that sobriety delivers what alcohol promises.

Just in case you forget, here is a list of reasons to keep you from reaching for that first drink:

Remember, you never stop at one drink, Ever. You drink to get inebriated. Other people have a better handle on this than you do. It is okay to acknowledge this weakness, you don't have to be perfect!

Remember, alcoholism runs in your family. Remember how it destroyed the lives of people close to you.

Remember how bloated and fat you get when you drink. Remember how much guilt and shame you feel in the morning after having spent the previous day watching what you eat closely and then consuming hundreds of extra calories in booze. Repeat cycle day after day.

Remember not fitting into any of your clothes. Remember looking into the mirror and seeing a face you barely recognize.

Remember how drinking makes you snack and eat more food.

Remember how beautiful you are when your face isn't round and puffy.

Remember how much it sucks waking up at 4 in the morning, with totally depleted GABA levels, completely awake and finding it impossible to fall back asleep. How many thousands of times have you woken up like this?

Remember it is normal to feel stress occasionally and that coping with stress will make me stronger in the long run. Alcohol just makes it get worse.

Remember drinking handles of booze, wasting thousands of dollars, and STILL feeling anxious all day, waiting until it was "okay" to start drinking.

Remember trying to find reasons to start drinking sooner each day?

Remember all the times you do not remember going to bed, or what happened in the evening whatsoever? You're too young/smart/lucky/blessed to have so much "missing time" in your life.

Remember waking up feeling like shit, not wanting to work, and then feeling guilty about not working all day? And then drinking to run from the guilt? Repeat cycle day after day.

Remember all the hurt you have caused because you can be a viciously mean drunk. You have hurt your SO so much. Remember how awful it feels to hear what you had said the night before but have zero memory of it.

Remember puking for hours the next day, that distinct flavor of caustic bile, once your body has gotten past all the acidic stuff and the dry heaving/ice-cube sucking that came with alcohol poisoning. You know you're an alcoholic if you know from experience how to combat a trip to Urgent Care.

Remember that you can use the money in so many greater ways! You your greatest priorities in life are to travel and share in new experiences. How can you afford them and/or remember them if you are drinking constantly?

Remember how easy it is to get into stupid, ridiculous fights when you are both inebriated. Sometimes this happened 3-5 times a week. Life is too short for that bullshit.

Call a friend, go on a walk, take a deep breath. Re-read this list. You can face your troubles more effectively with a calm, sober mind and actually conquer them. Why poison yourself instead? Instead of wiping your memory, you can go to bed feeling accomplished and fulfilled.

You can do this! Please don't reach for that drink. Take it one day at a time, one moment at a time.

Love,

Yourself

I don't miss the morning-after regrets. I don't miss destroying my organs and increasing my chances for developing all kinds of cancers. I don't miss the rude things I said, my selfishness, my self-pity.

I only miss the years of my youth, nearly all of which were spent enslaved to drinking and taking any substance I could.

It sounds like this has been something of a wake-up call but remember, if you don't make a serious commitment to stopping (however you can, whatever works), your brain will find all kinds of exceptions to make and next time you have this realization it might come along with some really dire legal, health, professional, and/or relationship consequences.

Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.

~ Thích Nhất Hạnh

Don’t take other people’s inventory. It is not up to me to judge the drinking of others.

Getting sober is HARD. I'm far too lazy to want to do that again.

"Function alcoholism isn't a type, it's a stage"

“It’s been almost twelve years since I took a drink, and I’m still struck by disbelief when I see someone in a restaurant with a half-finished glass of wine near at hand. I want to get up, go over, and yell, “Finish that! Why don’t you finish that?” into his or her face. I found the idea of social drinking ludicrous—if you didn’t want to get drunk, why not just have a Coke?” (Stephen King, On Writing)

We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.

~ Hermann Hesse

Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.

~ Thích Nhất Hạnh

Yup, and then there's you; the success story. The one that drank, way too much, and that stopped. Anyone can not drink when they never drink; not drinking when you drank, that is a feat. Proud of you!

Please don't hate yourself because you have an addictive brain! Curse your luck, get mad at your god if you believe in one, or your parents for the genes they gave you, or society for having alcohol gleaming under a halo at every corner.

But don't hate yourself because you can't control your drinking, silly! None of us can!

But actually, that's not totally true. You can't control drink two, or three, or twelve, but you can control drink one. That's the only one you have to avoid.

Have you come up with a plan? You'll need a plan.

But don't hate yourself. Please, please, don't hate yourself.

I've finally admitted to myself I'm an alcoholic. I haven't ruined my life yet and I guess it's sad but that's the happiest thing I can think of about the situation. "I haven't ruined my life yet." For a while I used that as an excuse to keep drinking but now I just can't. It's gotten too bad and life with alcohol finally scares me more than life without it.

I'm drunk all the time. I have to write notes to myself all the time since I know I won't remember anything that happens to me and it's embarrassing to have forgotten entire important conversations with people I love.

I'm still scared though. This is only day two without drinking. I've abstained for up to a month at a time but it always goes south. A few days ago I spent the day vomiting and drinking more alcohol between each time vomiting. I've made drinks out of things no person should ever drink. I feel a huge sense of shame. People think I'm smart and have it together.

I keep thinking that, if I'm lucky, there will be a lot more days in my life. It's impossible for me to imagine right now that out of all those days I will never again mess up and have another drink.

I feel like my heart is breaking. I feel like someone I love has died and I'll miss them every day for the rest of my life. I can't imagine how I'm going to handle this.

Four months sober. It has flown by, and boy does it get better. It's not easy, but finally after the 1000th attempt at quitting, this sober attempt has succeeded for now. The difference? I posted here regularly in the first few weeks, I read other's posts everyday, and I embraced the suck.

For the lurkers/newly sober people - the first 1-2 months were the roughest for me. I heard/read everyone say that it gets better, but I was in such a haze the words didn't stick. I was more concerned about how crappy I felt then. How could I even look ahead a few days, if I was struggling just to stay sober for the next hour?

The military has a saying, "Embrace the suck". Accept that life has come to this point. Put in the work, succeed, and move on. I know the first hours/days/weeks of sobriety suck. Its mentally exhausting trying to survive one hour to the next without running to the store and drowning yourself in a bottle that will make the anxiety and withdrawals shut up for a few hours. Put the insomnia on top of this and I am a cranky SOB ready to relapse. It's going to suck. Embrace the discomfort. It's the brain/body healing. It's not easy. But, after awhile, the sleep comes back, the body stops hurting, the anxiety subsides, shit gets done, and what is that? A smile on my face??

Keep at it. Around 2 months, I realized that I had stopped mentally counting the days I've been sober in my head. It's because I wasn't obsessed with tacking on another hour or day onto my sober resume. I had stopped obsessively thinking about alcohol so much. Sure, I still wake up every morning and tell myself I won't drink today. And sure, I still get the desire to get hammered every now and then. How do I deal with the temptation? I embrace the suck. My life has come to the point where I want to irrationally get hammered at odd hours of the day. That comes with the territory of addiction. It's ok. I might feel shame or guilt over this, and that's normal. But there is the option of embracing it. Owning it. Accepting life for what it is now. Fighting and WINNING the battle with addiction.

What I've learned so far: the longer I stay sober, the easier it is to win this battle. Embrace the suck, it's worth it.

Things get better.

I've found that no material loss could bring me to my bottom. It's simply a matter of how drinking makes me feel.

It used to make me feel happy, then it would just make me numb, and finally it made me feel empty and miserable. That was my bottom, not losing a job or a relationship.

Drinking doesn't even interest me these days...I don't have anything to gain from it, and everything to lose because of it.

Avoid that first drink my friends...that first drink is a killer!

There are a million tools for working on yourself; healing the inner hurt or whatever, AA is, simply put, a set of them. There are others from Smart recovery to therapy to yoga to ....

Satchel Paige ...

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?

Having a good day is a choice you have upon waking up, it is truly up to you regardless of any events that happen during the day.

You do not have to label yourself as an "Alcoholic". If that applies or not is up to you. It’s a self-imposed diagnosis in any case.

That's why it's much more effective once you realize that- as an alcoholic- it's actually drinking that is your punishment and sobriety that is your reward.

Alcoholics don't run in my family but they do stumble.

I had to see a deep, dark place before I could appreciate the light.

Nobody ever got sober because they were having a great time. You get sober because alcohol kicks your ass.

No one ever wakes up sober regretting not drinking themselves into a stupor the night before

Embrace the suck. Remember the suck. You never have to endure this again. Just don’t pick up that first drink. It gets better. It's easier to stay sober than to get sober. You got this.

There are many different paths to brokenness and there certainly is more than one to recovery. Never let anyone tell your way is wrong if it is working.

It's kind of like starting a campfire: you have to treat that early precious ember with all the attention and protection you can muster. But once it starts to catch and grows into a big roaring fire, it's much easier to maintain. You DO deserve sobriety, but you gotta work for it. How are you going to protect that ember today?

There's only one drink I have to avoid: the first one.

Further...I don't even know that I want to become a "casual drinker." It seems pointless to me; when I drink alcohol, I want the effect, which is inebriation. Flavor I don't give a rat's ass about, it's the effect that I am after.

Broken capillaries in their cheeks making them appear red

Their skin tends to be dull and dehydrated even if it doesn't have the classic "gin-blossomed" redness

Physically they tend to be puffy and bloated, even if they're on the thinner side, and thicker around the middle

there is a tiredness behind baggy eyes that no amount of makeup can hide as they are never fully open all the way.

Their skin tends to be dull and dehydrated even if it doesn't have the classic "gin-blossomed" redness

There's this idea of alcoholics being visibly drunk or sloppy all the time, and the truth is most of them are good people who just have an addiction.

I have often compared recovery to walking up a Down escalator: It is relatively easy to do if you are focused and committed and continue to move forward. However, the minute you stop moving forward the powers of our disease pull us back down to where we started.

Everyone’s perspective is different.

No, it is not a grass is greener thing or about your particular perspective. Ask yourself what what is one of the greatest truths you can discover or recover through meditation? Is it not simply that that great thing you had been searching for to make sense of your life was always within you? That the journey you thought you had to undertake had already been completed? That's the trick. You are already home and only need to relax into the present. You are already on the other side. You only need to realize it.

Yes, I don't envy drinkers either but they can do what they want.

It's just so much easier to not drink when you retrain your brain to stop thinking of it as something good.

Many of us also had to keep checking the water. For me, each time it has always been even deeper and colder than it was before and my stamina for treading water even shorter. It is much easier for me to just stay dry or I may drown one of these times.

I have never, ever met a sober person that regrets giving up drinking.

Not one.

Kia Kaha.

Sometimes there's a "pink cloud" period where we feel invincible because we've gotten off alcohol, and want to just be absolutely perfect. So I understand why people feel driven to "quit everything." But perfectionism is a risky business.

There are no mistakes in life, only lessons, and these lessons will repeat painfully over and over until they are learned.

When the student is ready the teacher will appear.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

-Lao Tzu

Posts like this always make me think of all of us (myself included) who thought we were hiding our drunkenness (the so-called "high functioning alcoholics"). When I see now how quickly people start to slur their speech or can't quite walk in a straight line or with a normal gait, I realize I wasn't hiding anything. It's funny how we think we hid it because no one called us on it and we didn't see it in ourselves. What were they gonna do - point out that we seemed drunk at noon? Too awkward - but when I look back, I'm guessing people knew a lot more than I thought they did.

It can take up to ten days to recover from the lows of drinking. A heavy drinker starts to regard these lows as normal. The lows are created when your brain releases a chemical called dynorphin, which counteracts the "pleasure" from alcohol in an attempt to maintain homeostasis. Again, you know this phenomenon as tolerance. Dynorphin not only dampens the effect of alcohol, it also turns down the natural pleasure you get from everyday activities.

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”

Alcohol is not a magic feather by StupidWasteOfMoney

IT WAS YOU. The guy who is fun and comfortable at parties once he has a few beers in him? That's you. That's the same you that you are WITHOUT the few beers in you. The only reason that you can have fun after the beers, and can't have fun before the beers, is that you are so addicted to the beers that you believe they have magic powers. Read the story of Dumbo. Corny, but it fits.

A drinking problem is not a magic feather. It's a rock you're dragging around with you because you're convinced you can't live without it. "Oh, no, I can't go talk to that lady - because I don't have my heavy magic rock." But then "Oh, wait, I can't talk to that lady now, because my rocks too heavy and I can't put it down." Or "I finally went and talked to her, but she laughed at me because I can barely walk and talk (because I’m dragging a huge rock.)"

I kept drinking for a long time because I felt I'd lost everything in life I cared about, and alcohol was my only happiness. It was a lie. Addiction lies to you, and keeps you miserable. I kept becoming weaker and weaker, and more and more miserable, the more I depended on it. And then, of course, the more I needed to depend on it. That's how addiction works.

Each time you drink, you are essentially saying that you hate the person you REALLY are.

There is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs. - Zig Ziglar

And I have never, ever met a sober person that regrets giving up drinking. Not one.

I can't control my thoughts but I can control my actions.

but remember you'll never lose those days you stayed sober. This relapse is probably nothing compared to what you used to be doing to your body (making assumptions here) and maybe it needed to happen so you learn the right way. Counting the days sober can be great but also harmful because of the spiral of depression it sends you into when you lose the game at a high score. You're doing great, keep it up. Don't be angry at yourself, I'm not!

"A monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men." -Charles Darwin

Don't know if that quote is accurate, but like it nonetheless.

I quit drinking but I didn't quit life.

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." - Plato

http://reporter-archive.mcgill.ca/Rep/r3205/palmour.html

The small, omnivorous vervets, also known as African green monkeys or Cercopithecus aethiops, are one of the few animal species that will voluntarily imbibe alcohol if it is offered to them

Unlike the vervets, most primate species will not naturally drink alcohol unless they are specifically taught or manipulated by researchers.

"Boring," "chipper," and "you sure like to exercise" suit me just fine compared to what I used to get. And you know what? I got there not by talking, not by saying I was going to do better, not by swearing solemn oaths. I got there by action and showing those around me that I could do better every day. And I repeated it over and over until the evidence was overwhelming.

American culture (or any culture really) makes it seem that alcohol is a necessity for special events but, in truth, it only detracts from the special moments with your family/friends/SO. You lose your health, memories, and self for what? To "have fun" and be social which you can do regardless.

When you want to drink ask yourself would whatever I'm doing now be more fun if I was drunk? I found that since I stopped not one thing I've done would have been more fun if I was drunk. Depending on your drinking habits - it was more of a chore to drink and hide it than it is to not drink.

But I already know what it tasted like without you naming a brand: gasoline and wood. Alcohol is fucking gross no matter expensively it's packaged. Scotch, wine, and craft beer snobbery are nothing more than self-delusions that help people feel better about themselves. It's the same by-product of putrefying vegetable matter no matter how finely crafted and how long it sits in a barrel.

However, if you never get caught up in drinking, you'll never suffer the detriments it can cause. You'll never suffer the health problems, you'll never gain weight from the extra calories, never do something stupid while drunk and regret it the next morning, and you'll never get a DUI or hurt or kill someone while driving drunk.

Yes, 37 days ago I wanted a night off of sobriety (had 451 days at that time). About 6 beers in, I quit and dumped it. The following 6 days were fine, but the 31 days since that have been an early-sobriety nightmare of temptations and white-knuckling. I wish I could go back and not take that first drink, but instead I'm faced with the struggles of early sobriety... something I never wanted to do again.

The cravings are worse, the mind-fuck alcoholic voice is louder, and my resolve is weaker after compromising my decision to stop drinking. After 14 months of sobriety, it was smooth-sailing, but now it's a day to day struggle.

I find acceptance to be a better tool. I accept that I can't drink at all if I want to keep the benefits of sobriety. I accept that there's no pleasure left in drinking for me. I accept that my experiments with moderation confirmed that it's not possible for me. I accept that some people can drink in moderation without a second thought, but that I am not, and can never be, one of those people. Once I accept those things, I can start living life to its fullest instead of wishing I could live the fantasy beer commercial lifestyle.

I can have a few drinks and stop. I proved that to myself a month ago. The problem is, I can't have a few drinks without all of the mental bullshit that comes with addiction. One night of drinking places me right back to the start, fighting for sobriety, obsessed with thoughts about drinking, alcoholic voice screaming rationalizations in my ear...

I find it much easier to just not drink at all. There are no "benefits" to drinking that outweigh the trouble I have staying sober after a relapse.

I once described drinking like hitting myself in the forehead with a hammer. It feels really good when you stop. And I know that if I pick up the hammer and smack myself in the noggin, my next statement will be, "Yep. Still hurts."

I'd strongly encourage anyone tempted to have even a single drink or night off of sobriety after a long period of sobriety to take any measures necessary to avoid it. The past few weeks have been brutal as all of my old thought processes, habits, and cravings came flooding back to me. I was sober 451 days, drank for a couple hours, and found that I couldn't just pick up where I left off, I was back to day 1. My alcoholic voice hasn't been this loud in over a year and is ready to pounce whenever I'm even remotely vulnerable. I have been in constant jeopardy of relapsing again since the 6th day after my last one. If it weren't for the support around me, I'm certain I would be back to drinking daily by now.

The key to quitting is not to simply abstain – it’s to not want to drink

The emphasis has to be on well-being. My recovery mantra is: "Don't just survive addiction. Thrive in recovery." I believe people in recovery must work toward the great shift from staying sober out of fear and necessity to staying sober out of love for the life they get to live as the result of staying sober. Once a person has made this shift, it is very likely they will excel in life.

I didn't really think I had a problem with alcohol. I'd just sip a beer or two with every meal and 10 gin tonics every now and then. Or a few bottles of wine with the barbecue. Or the wine and some mojitos after. Beer like water if it's hot outside, and it always is. Import IPAs at hipster bars, single malts "to collect experiences." You know. Pushing the envelope of functional, social drinking to the limits. Then one of my best friends opened up about his problems with alcohol, and it was a bit of a cautionary tale for me. I realized I was quite close to playing with fire myself. Family with a predisposition towards alcoholism, blood pressure, overweight. Setting a bad example for my kids. Perhaps making a bad impression of myself socially. Stabbing pain in my chest every time I sipped whisky neat, coming up with excuses that didn't include alcohol to account for it. But the thing that really made me want to drop it was that I was constantly in a bad mood. Or drunk. Always irritable (towards my wife and kids), always tired and unwilling to do any activity, always on the brink of some kind of meltdown. Touch my car, spill your milk and accuse me (rightly) of not doing chores... I would have a small crisis. And I couldn't really control it. Other than having a glass of wine or a beer - which would calm me the fuck down instantly, and make me almost giddy again.

Pathetic? Of course it is. But the fun thing is that barely two weeks after dropping alcohol, maybe even after a week, my mood stabilized. My baseline for being interested in life and my overall contentedness / happiness returned to levels it hadn't touched since adolescence. I am now a functional adult. I no longer dread mondays. I no longer dread work. I no longer lose my temper over meaningless shit. Just yesterday I broke the screen of my iPhone. I'll get it fixed. Yes it'll cost some extra. It's good to have some extra for these situations, instead of having pissed it away. Not even mad.

Downsides? Well, I don't want to hang out with my old party friends after they've had their fifth drink and start to get muddled. So I'm home at 12 or 1 even when "partying." Not necessarily bad, but something to get used to. I no longer approve of social, functional drinking, because I've realized how it affects people. I don't say anything, but I don't really enjoy being with people on the slosh.

Those are the downsides. Upsides? I've regained the control over my time and my money. The week is no longer a rollercoaster ride with a high point on friday 9 pm and a very low point on monday 9 am. Now it's all good. I'd say I have that 1-2 beer buzz going on constantly, now that I'm sober. Not only that, but my integrity hasn't gone unnoticed and the feedback is mostly just positive. Some of my party friends who should consider the same are the ones reluctant to speak up. But even they note I've lost weight. If only they could see the brightness in my eyes as well. I respect myself more. I have more patience. I look forward to doing stuff with my family / kids. And I've finally learned to leave early and to say no to stuff. I hope this doesn't come off as arrogant. I just wanted to be perfectly honest and clear for those on the brink and as a reminder to myself.

A final note: some drink more, some drink less, but drinking probably isn't improving anyone's quality of life. Your brain will balance itself, once you stop feeding it poison. I don't regret a single second of sobriety.

But the dread that comes with going to sleep Sunday night, still hungover, sweating, dreaming with the lizards, and just knowing you'll have a horrible time at least until Wednesday... I still have nightmares about that feeling.

Functional drunkenness, man. The ones who don't drink at all don't understand the problem. And the ones who still do, don't understand it either. The ones who've quit are the only ones to realize it. The responsibility, it burns...

It’s pretty amazing not having to worry where your next drink or drug is coming from

Most non-alcoholics wouldn't consider not drinking to be so life impacting. The very fact that you value drinking so highly should tell you something. If you told me today that I could never eat cottage cheese again, I'd probably say, "No? Oh, that's too bad," and move on with my life. I wouldn't spend my days hoping & praying to find a loophole. If I did, I'd have to seriously consider that I just might be a cottage cheeseaholic.

NO HALF MEASURES. I don't want to drink like a normal person, wtf is the point? I want to drink like a drunk. Normal drinking never made any sense to me. Have 1 glass of wine? Leave a half beer at the table??! No, even if someone said it was OK, I don't even want that. And I already know I don't want the nightly binging-me either. So here I am, recalling drunk-driving, regret-making, dangerous, unhealthy, family-scaring me and saying. Fuck that. Fuck moderation and fuck full-blown binger, and I'm gonna stay sober. Today, anyway.

"I've been drunk, I've been sober, Sober's better"

Let's be honest, alcohol is a poison. Hence why your liver has to filter it out. You remove that poison from your body and you're inevitably going to feel better.

I'd rather be socially awkward for the rest of my life than miserably dependent on alcohol, feeling at ease at parties isn't worth killing myself over

But it's not like that for everyone. Some people just love socializing. They are wired different. They are talkers and get energy from engaging with other people. We enjoy it but need to recharge by being alone. Thinking... Writing... Gaming... Whatever, to ourselves.

Never having a drink again seems insane to me.

Do you feel the same way about the idea of never eating a blueberry muffin again?

I dunno, I know a lot of people play mind games like "just for today" or "i'll drink tomorrow," but I've never understood those for anything more than short term emergency use. When I first came here I saw plenty of people who were sober for a decade and posting about how much they missed alcohol. And they'd tell each other "just tell yourself you'll drink tomorrow!" It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. It seems like a miserable lifestyle. It's not like you hear people saying "I won't sleep with anyone who isn't my spouse... just for today!" I just don't understand why anyone would want to live that way.

Need some motivation? Go see someone dying of cirrhosis of the liver or the person who got 10+ years for manslaughter with a dui. Maybe talk to the battered spouse who gets it daily from their alcoholic partner. Alcohol is the worst drug of all. Think of it that way because it’s the truth.

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared…. (in fact it increases!)

The more days I get the more convinced my brain is that I am cured and can now moderate.

This, to me, is the hardest part. You're past the initial stage when you knew every day why it was you quit. You're past the "pink cloud" stage when being sober just feels amazing. You're just going about your day, you want a drink and you have no immediate reason not to. What I do is "play the tape forward" and imagine what might happen if I went back.

Sometimes it feels like we are mourning the loss of an old friend, or lost love. But it's important to remember that old friend was a psycho who tried to kill us and burn our house down, and stalked us and tormented us and kicked our dog, and pissed in our bed, and made us sick and took vertical photos like a crazy person. What a psycho bitch, we had some good times, but shit, that chick was crazy, fuck that chick

I think moderation is a myth.

People who do not have a drinking problem do not moderate. At least not consciously. My wife does not count her drinks. Her body tells her when it's time to stop. She doesn't crave more or pace out her drinks to ensure maximum drunk. She has a glass of wine (maybe). And that's it.

Sure, people with drinking problems can probably set limits and make rules and probably successfully moderate for a finite period of time. And maybe, for some, that finite period of time is 1 more day than their alive (meaning that the moderate successfully for the rest of their lives), but it'd be a constant struggle. They'd be counting drinks. They'd be making rules.

I know for me, if I allowed myself to drink a little here and a little there, there'd be one day that, if my oirritat was out of town or something, I'd go nuts. If it was OK for me to have 2 beers last Tuesday, surely 5 beers is OK tonight. And, well, I had a bad day, so 12 beers is OK now.

- It would be like jumping into the river in an inner tube and saying "I'm only going to go downstream THIS fast", but to control that speed I'd have to desperately paddle with my hands, and grab onto rocks and branches to stop myself from time to time. If I get tired, or can't grab ahold of that next rock in the river, whoosh, downstream I go, and who knows when the next opportunity to slow myself down will be.

Simply put, at no time in the last decade+ have I shown an adequate ability to control my own drinking. I don't have any reason to think that's changed.

Alcohol adds no value to my life. At all. I'm extremely happy and have a very fun life since I quit. There's no reason for me to go back to drinking.

The cost benefit analysis of alcohol makes it clear; it’s too expensive. From a risk management standpoint, risks associated with drinking make it not worth it, IMHO.

“'I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.'” - Louis C.K.

https://www.reddit.com/r/stopdrinking/wiki/index#wiki_i.27m_bored.

Others can stop you temporarily. You are the only one who can do it permanently."

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A buddy of mine a while back suggested I need to find something I like better than alcohol. I looked at all the things I love doing. I'm a geek and love gaming, comics, rpgs, etc. I'm a father and I love my family. But seriously, I am not sure I love any of those more than I loved being drunk.

Now that I'm a few weeks sober, I realize that was I love more than alcohol is being sober. And being sober lets me enjoy all those things in the first paragraph a lot more.

How many times have I watched a show, played a game, etc and not remember what happened because I had blacked out? How many times have I let the booze in my system and the fog in my head limit me? Being sober makes everything better, sharper, clearer and actually more fun.

I know I'm at the start of my path, but I feel good and I feel right. I know I've got lots of work to do and the path is long, but I'll take it a day at a time and enjoy the sobriety and the gifts it brings me.

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That scheming bastard inside my head tried so many things to keep me drinking. One of them was trying to convince me that I couldn't enjoy things without chemical enhancement. I was sure that movies and games and music and sex would be less fun, less enjoyable, less meaningful without alcohol or other drugs.

The exact opposite was true - I wasn't enhancing my experiences, I was dulling my perceptions. All the things I love, I love much better being conscious and aware and present for them. A movie is a whole hell of a lot better when you can follow it and remember all the details.

Before drinking, I was sure that a sober life would be joyless drudgery. After getting sober, I realized my drinking life was the joyless drudgery.

I'm glad you realized this! It's a new lease on life. Remember it. Enjoy it.

Q: What’s the difference between a reaction and a response? A: About 7 seconds.

I will offer some nice advice I always remember when I get uncomfortable or shy in social situations... Which is all the time! When in doubt, just ask someone about themselves. You're suddenly off the hook to try to be interesting or confident. Also, everyone loves to talk about themselves and the more you let them do so, the sooner they will want to be your friend! It's a good way to relax while someone else breaks the ice for a bit. Take that time to take deep breaths and get comfortable.

"Sitting around sober and wishing for a drink is a hell of a lot better than sitting around drunk and wishing for sobriety."

Then I remind myself not to price the space in my head so cheap.

the pink cloud never has to stop. I have had bad days, even rough stretches. But I have been on my cloud for almost 1000 days now.

I don't do that daily decision thing either. I quit forever. Go big or go home. Boom, done.

I let that little guy try to convince me to drink all he wanted to. That guy wanted to tell me that drinking would be OK because my decision to quit was based on X & Y, and that since X & Y were no longer a factor, it's all good.

That's why I didn't base my decision to quit on reasons X & Y. This entire thing is built on the idea that the decision has already been made. I don't drink because I said I wasn't going to drink anymore. That is my only reason.

So, to that little guy, I'd always say, It doesn't matter what reasons you have, I don't drink because I said I wasn't going to drink anymore. He can't argue with that. There's no way he can go back in time & undo the past. After a while of getting nowhere, he just gave up. I haven't heard from that guy in years

Life is filled with good examples and bad examples; and, if you understand this fact, even the bad examples are good examples.

It’s amazing how NOT DOING something can change your life in such positive ways:

-Health: so much better, less damage to liver, pancreas, throat, stomach, brain, kidneys, heart, less cancer

-Money: so much better, less money spent on booze and stupid things you buy when you are drunk

-Social: so much better, people respect you more because you don't drink. You don't say things you regret to people. You treat people with more respect. You have real friendships and real emotions.

-Personal: you love yourself more. You stop engaging in self destructive

-Career: more focused at work, more responsible

-Thinking: clearer thoughts, more brain power

-Sleep: real sleep. Wake up refreshed

-Diet: eat healthier foods that are more nutritious, this makes you feel stronger and happier

-Emotions: more emotionally stable, less ups and downs. more positive feelings

Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything - anger, anxiety, or possessions - we cannot be free.

~ Thích Nhất Hạnh

The human mind continues to amaze me. We understand at very young age that if we put our hand on a hot burner we quickly learn to never do that again. If drinking leads to destruction, misery, regret and a failed life why do I continue doing it and most importantly why do I want too?

I believe I learned to quit when I knew I had no other option. It's perfectly okay that you’re still learning that (if you are.)

I tend to be an all-or-nothing person when it comes to most things.

That kind of mentality doesn't mix well with drinking.

-You’re feeling great and smiling for nothing a couple days ago and now feeling like crap today is just your brain and trying to claw its way back to normal responses to normal situations. I just tried to keep a solid look to a better future that I had already begun to taste, and not forget that the awful lows of drinking by far outweighed the positives. That any of the fun part of drinking was used up at least twenty years before I quit. Hang in there, and take care of yourself.

YOU have to be willing to give it up. No one can help you unless you are ready to quit. I relapsed a dozen times before this and it was strictly because I was fooling myself. Fooling myself into thinking that I can eventually go back to being a normal drinker. We all are or have in the past suffered with this notion.

The thought of not drinking ever again might scare the shit out of you, but just imagine the thought itself. You are scared that you won’t be able to drink poison. We should be thrilled to have the alcoholic disease! That means we have one less toxin to worry about killing us and clouding our beautiful minds on a daily basis.

In my experience, the only way to start your road to recovery is to accept the fact that you and alcohol have to have an abrupt breakup for good. Tough pill to swallow now, but it will be so much easier later. Be honest with yourself and commit to that and you'll be on your way to living a complete life.

While I hold few, if any regrets, I neither celebrate nor condemn nor do I long for or disavow these periods of my life. I embrace them as a part of me. But, make no mistake, my alcoholism and drug use led me down some very shady paths doing very stupid things. I’m not the type to wish I could do anything over again but given the chance to be an observer of an alternate sober history, I think I might.

That's the problem--people WANT to be drunk. No one knows how to stop someone from WANTING to be drunk.

You can't go back to moderate drinking once you have consumed so much alcohol that your life has become "a mess." You might as well ask a Formula One driver to keep his Ferrari under 20mph on the track. How long is that going to last? We all know the answer.

I also don't find enjoyment out of just drinking a couple drinks. It gives me zero pleasure or satisfaction. I like to drink to get loaded. So I don't have a desire to moderate at all. If I could or couldn't doesn't even matter. It’s just I don’t want to.

I used to feel like I was missing out on life by not drinking. But the only thing I was missing was actually living, and you don't need alcohol to do that. In my eyes alcohol is a distraction from living, it's a way to put life on hold, and not actually be you.

Nobody cares if I’m drinking or not- unless they have a problem themselves. Seriously, no one gives a shit. People whose lives don’t revolve around alcohol just don’t pay that much attention to it.

One useful tip I've learned that applies beyond drinking is that if I just say no without giving a reason, then I don't have to defend my reasoning. I may have to say no a few more times, but I've given them nothing to debate with me.

There is a rich & vibrant world lurking beneath the surface of reality. I didn't even know it existed until a few years ago. Living a happily sober life isn't about climbing higher & higher. It's about delving deeper into the world that's all around each of us, and discovering that it's possible to feel content & fulfilled while standing in one place.

He’s not lying, he’s just wrong.

Yet, if pressed, most alcoholics will admit that their life stopped being happy right around the time they started drinking regularly (it is a depressant, after all. This shouldn't be surprising). They will have what Ms. Knapp describes as that "a-ha" moment when alcoholics consider the possibility - obvious to everyone else but new and original to them - that they do not drink because they are unhappy. They are unhappy because they drink.

http://www.independent.ie/life/health-wellbeing/health-features/15-reasons-to-give-up-alcohol-35326325.html

Many an alcoholic can identify with this - no matter how many times alcohol has kicked you, it is the hardest thing you'll ever do in your life to quit. Trust me on this and respect the next recovered alcoholic you meet. Had they had a choice, they would rather have walked across the Sahara. But they took a deep breath and tried to do the right thing for themselves and others.

I have my life, my health, and my brain back.

There is nothing so bad,

That drinking won't make worse.

Breaking this cycle sucks for 3-5 days while your body works to get things back under control and re-regulate all the systems alcohol was compromising but if you can get through it, I promise it's worth it. You'll feel better than you have in years.

Pretty much all my energy was going into keeping up the illusion of control while still staying drunk.

I will always own my mistakes. But I will no longer let my mistakes own me.

Locked up, covered up, or sobered up – the 3 options for an alcoholic

Just because I'm not drinking I don't magically become a moral superior. I still have the same defects of character that led me to abuse alcohol.

If the weed gets you through the first while, I would say that is much better than booze for the short term. I used to smoke a lot of weed, but after stopping the drinking I never felt the need to as I used to. It seems I was mainly using pot to medicate my daily withdrawal and hangovers. Alcohol always made me want to smoke pot, but pot never made me crave alcohol. Now after being sober for a long time I crave neither.

I wonder why anyone would want to consume something they makes them mentally slow and intellectually uninteresting.

I just focus on the fact that things have gotten better. I haven't had much in the way of cravings this time around, but the time before it "stuck" I made it to 47 days and started drinking again, with a vengeance. I think that actually needed to happen, because it showed me that this was not something where I reached a point where I was "cured" or something and could go back to drinking with a new-found respect for boundaries. Nah, I just can't drink normally, and for me it has to be complete abstinence. If drinking has resulted in improvements, why would starting booze again make anything better?

I've done a lot of thinking about this, and I've come to the conclusion that many non-drinkers just don't get the gravity of the situation. For them, it's like choosing to have dessert or not. Ok, so for whatever reason they saw us as having too much dessert and it was somehow detrimental to us. So we finally chose to stop having dessert. Good for us, right? They figure they weren't having problems with dessert, so they can still have theirs even though we've chosen not to have ours.

I was pretty angry over this for a while. But really, it's not their fault. They just don't understand that it's not like putting down a sweet that we like for us. It's like tearing a big part of ourselves out and having to learn how to rebuild our lives.

“I don’t pretend it didn’t happen. More than anything I have this sense that I’m a veteran of a war that is difficult to discuss with people who haven’t been there.”

-Robert Downey Jr

Normies don’t have these cravings. They can never understand nor would I want them to because the only way to truly understand is to live it and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. So I don’t expect praise for my sobriety nor crave attaboys because from their perspective I'm expected to keep my life under control.

You don’t have to join every argument that you are invited to.

Have more than you show, speak less than you know.

Whenever you can't make a decision flip a coin. If the coin makes your decision for you then do it. If you don't want to do what the coin decides then you know what decision you want to make.

I use to run away from things, now I run toward them.

My life is worth a little discomfort.

The pain won't kill me. Drinking will.

“Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone's hand is the beginning of a journey.

At other times, it is allowing another to take yours.”

― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb

Why does booze seem to make your problems disappear? Alcohol or ETOH is an anesthetic which operates on the central nervous system. If you ingest anesthesia do you care about anything?

Let us take a standard situation. You’re stressed and unhappy, so you have a drink, and you feel better. Alcohol has given you a boost. An actual, definable, and very real benefit. You feel better than you did before the drink. But do you gain or lose, overall? The effect of the drink will wear off. Then you will be in exactly the same position you were in to begin with. The drink won’t have taken your problem away, that will still be there, so you will start to worry about it again when the effect of the drink wears off. However, in addition, you have then disrupted your night’s sleep, so you will have the additional physical and mental stress the following day of not having had a good night’s sleep. It is also most likely to be the case, and let’s be brutally honest about this, that you are not just going to have one drink. Chances are you’ll have a few, so the next day you will not only have the original problem and the additional stress of a bad night’s sleep, but also, to a greater or lesser degree, an actual hangover, or at the very least the additional anxiety caused by the remaining stimulants your body has released to counteract the alcohol. So all in all, you are far worse off for having had the drink. You may have got an immediate boost, but you’ve paid back not only the boost but a considerable amount on top.

Think of alcohol like a loan shark: someone that lends money at an exorbitant rate of interest. You will never, ever pay back less than you get. All you can ever hope for is a very short-term reprieve, after which you will be worse off than ever. You borrow $10 and you get that immediate boost of $10, but the very next day you have to pay back $20. You either just suffer having to pay back that $20 the following day or you borrow an additional $20 to pay back the $20 you owe. But then the next day you have to pay back $40. Again, you either suffer the pain of paying back that $40 or borrow again and pay back even more the following day. And so it goes on...

On Methods:

Quit because you want to, not because you have to or someone else wants you to

You will realize that it’s not that you can’t drink, it’s that you have no desire to drink

You won’t envy people who drink, you will feel sorry for them while also empathizing with them

How the physical and mental dependence works (Body release less endorphins to compensate for the substance, soon you need the substance just to feel ‘normal’. You can’t reach the original high (chasing the dragon).

Why I failed on previous attempts (cognitive dissonance).

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

~ Dalai Lama

it’s easier to stay sober than to get sober

The first month I found is just starting to feel like yourself again. No doubt, it's a great feeling already, but then I find with all the extra time, and feeling generally upbeat, that it's easy to start making other positive changes to my life. Eating healthier doesn't feel like a pain in the ass. Getting to the gym doesn't feel like a miserable chore. I spend my evenings working on fulfilling hobbies and side projects, or keeping my house clean and organized, instead of getting wasted and watching netflix till I pass out.

Not drinking on it's own brings tons of benefits. But I find it also enables me to improve my life in so many other ways. Things that seemed like chores when I was drinking, have become extremely fulfilling.

Congrats, and enjoy your sobriety! It's the best gift you could give yourself :)

Putting in the hard work and suffering through the difficulties of sobriety for about 8 months really paid off. Around month 8 things really turned around. I started to feel a lot more comfortable being out and about with other drinkers. I was able to easily turn down drinks as offered. I became proud of my sobriety and was no longer embarrassed to tell people I don't drink anymore.

You managed thirty days. You now have incontrovertible proof that you can manage another thirty. No progress has been lost; it's not about some unbroken length of time without a drink, it's about gaining self-control, which will come through knowing what you are capable of and pushing that limit.

Focusing too much on an unbroken length of time just means that, if and when you do give in, you will be less likely to stop again because it seems really hard to get back up to that level. Imagine if it had been five years and you gave in; there would be some irrational temptation to think that you could never do another whole five year stint, and so why try?

If instead you think about it using individual days, or short periods of time like weeks, you can get into the mindset of always being able to stop yourself, and so the occasional relapse won't stop your overall goal.

- The key element, across all methods, is wanting to quit for good. If someone doesn't have that, they're not going to be successful.

On relapse:

"Success isn't the absence of failure. Success is persistence through failure"

We should consider failure as a stepping stone to progress and not as something that someone should be ashamed of.

If you get up one more time than you fall, you will make it through.

-Chinese Proverb

We learn to walk by falling, to talk by babbling, to shoot a basket by missing, and to color the inside of a square by scribbling outside the box. We either learn to fail or we fail to learn.”

I'm convinced that those failures for me were necessary. I learned that moderation/setting "rules" about when it's ok to drink doesn't work for me. I learned what sort of situations and patterns of thought to watch out for.

There's nothing wrong with failure. What matters is what you do next, and the fact that you are here posting is a good sign.

If mistakes are learned from, and not repeated, it is personal growth.

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. --Margaret Thatcher

Look at this incident as part of your recovery journey. It's an opportunity to figure out what to do differently so you have a better support system. Relapse starts before we pick up the drink. It doesn't really come "out of the blue".

Ultimately a slip up, if corrected immediately, can only be a lesson, and in fact a useful one, albeit an unwelcome one.

Someone once told me, when you fall halfway down the stairs no one ever says, "Well fuck, might as well just throw myself down the rest of the stairs."

It's okay to fall while learning to walk, as long as you get right back up.

Always remember, those previous days are never lost; you gained valuable experience and insight into your own personal condition and what was working for you.

Failing is when you stop trying.

Someone once told me, when you fall halfway down the stairs no one ever says, "Well fuck, might as well just throw myself down the rest of the stairs." Remember this when you blow your New Year's resolutions and then just give up on them or some similar circumstances.

On AVERAGE, people in recovery relapse 7 times. Now, this isn't license to go and replace 6 more times, but I'm trying to normalize it for you.

Our brains are wired in such a way that we are almost set up to have a relapse. Years of drinking have rewired our pleasure pathways in our brain. We can rewire it, but it takes time. It could take months, it could take years.

All that being said, a relapse is not failure. If anything, it's a learning experience. It's a learning experience in yourself, what triggers you, and what works and doesn't when it comes to avoiding that trigger and where it leads you.

Sobriety does not mean abstinent, it means to not be drunk.

You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.

-Johnny Cash

think of it as a journey from New York to California. You get a flat tire. You don't go back to New York and start all over.

In my experience "normal" drinkers can't understand the physiology of what an Alcoholic's brain goes through when we have one drink.

In a way they are very lucky that they don't understand, because the only way to truly understand is to be one of us and I would never wish that upon anyone.

I found some of my personal relationships had to change. I had to put myself first no matter what. Only by first taking care of myself could I adequately take care of the ones I love.

-On Moderation

"If I could do it in moderation, I'd do it all the time!"

"When I control it, I can't enjoy it. When I enjoy it, I can't control it."

I don't even know that I want to become a "casual drinker." It seems pointless to me; when I drink alcohol, I want the effect, which is inebriation. Flavor I don't give a rat's ass about, it's the buzz that I am after.

Normal drinking never made any sense to me. Have 1 glass of wine? Leave a half beer at the table? I just accepted that's not me and after awhile came to the conclusion that's not only OK, it's awesome.

I've been drunk and I've been sober...sober's better...but that's just me.

it's easier to keep a tiger in a cage than to try to walk it on a leash.

It's easier to keep a lion in a cage than keep a lion on a leash

we are one rationalization away from a reset

Also, for me, drinking in moderation has no appeal. I only like to get drunk.

It is a lot easier for me to drink nothing than to drink a little, or more than a little.

Moderation feels like deprivation and abstinence feels like an accomplishment.

"Regular" drinkers that don't understand the physiology of what an Alcoholic's brain goes through when we have one drink.

I agree with this...and the '"regular" drinkers are very lucky that they don't understand, because the only way to truly understand is to be one of us and I would never wish that upon anyone.

Hard times build determination and inner strength. Through them we can also come to appreciate the uselessness of anger. Instead of getting angry nurture a deep caring and respect for troublemakers because by creating such trying circumstances they provide us with invaluable opportunities to practice tolerance and patience.

~ Dalai Lama

Pain is certain, suffering is optional.

All in all, alcoholism is a damn good disease to have--when you arrest it. Recovery can mean all sorts of insights into the human character, growth and achievement. Use it and live.

I'm still fairly new to this awesome sober world, and maybe that is why I'm surprised by how many people say this. I mean no disrespect, but I really don't wish I could drink like a normal person. I feel like I got all my drinking out of the way, and now I can finally start living a really happy life. Even the non-alcoholics I know have dealt with hangovers, stupid things they've done while drunk, expensive nights out, depression from drinking, etc. Why would that be appealing to go back to? Obviously most of us wouldn't go back to those things being rare occasions, but even if that's all they were that's still kind of shitty.

I honestly don't think sobriety means missing out on anything worthwhile. I've gone to a party with my newly sober mind, and I thought the party was really boring. People become pretty uninteresting when drunk if you're sober. Nothing against them it was just kind of less fun once people got a few in them.

On Explanations for not drinking:

I think the slippery slope to be avoided is any explanation that isn't natural and honest. For me, it's "no thanks, not right now," works perfectly.

I found that no one was thinking about my drinking as much as I was. "No thanks" is a complete sentence and 99.9% of the time it's all that's necessary.

If they are my friends and I used to drink with them, I tell them that I quit drinking. If they are strangers, I tell them that I do not drink. If they keep asking questions I say it is for personal health reasons, which is the truth.

It's hard to get those words out, but you only have to do it once. I don't drink, I've stopped drinking, whatever. Most people don't ask why. If they do ask, it's not like you have to lay out your whole life story.

I do not want to come off as holier than thou! I remember where I came from.

One thing I learned NOT to say is "no man, I don't do that shit anymore". It sounds negative like they're doing something wrong.

One of the first things I learned when I quit is that nobody gives a shit what anyone else is drinking (unless, of course, they have issues with alcohol themselves).

"Sobriety is the life that alcohol promised you."

congratulating an alcoholic for not drinking is like congratulating a cowboy with hemorrhoids for not riding his horse

"I stopped drinking alcohol. I'm still the same asshole; I just have less dents in my car." - Robin Williams

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

~ Dalai Lama

This is a poem referenced in the book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk, I fall in. I am lost...I am hopeless. It isn't my fault. It takes forever to find a way out.

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in the same place. But it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in...it's a habit. My eyes are open, I know where I am, It is my fault, I get out immediately.

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk I walk around it.

I walk down another street.

Damone:

The attitude dictates that you don't care whether she comes, stays, lays, or prays. I mean whatever happens, your toes are still tappin'. Now when you got that, then you have the attitude.

Act like wherever you are, that's the place to be. "Isn't this great?

What is the most important advice most often rejected by newcomers?

The best day to stop is today, right now.

To drink or not to drink is always your choice.

Don't drink....NO MATTER WHAT! Do not take that 1st drink.

Be very protective of your sobriety, especially early on. Don’t “test” your sobriety.

Frame becoming alcohol-free as a choice not as a punishment or a temporarily “getting on the wagon”. Sobriety is about freedom.

Tell someone and make yourself accountable.

Do not underestimate the changes that you will need to make in your life. It's not just about the alcohol; it's about so much more.

Find support. Most people find it very difficult to do alone. Reach out BEFORE you drink.

Action is required. Make a plan and then take action on it. Recovery requires consistent work. Don’t expect to simply get sober and then move on in a few months. Be ready to do whatever it takes.

Don’t forget how bad things were, or lose sight of how good things are

Embrace, accept, and commit to 'forever' as early as you are comfortable doing so, the sooner the better.

Listen when someone with more experience tries to point out patterns in your thinking or efforts that are not supportive of sobriety or could be potentially dangerous.

Be patient - go easy on yourself. It takes time, but it will get better.

Look for the similarities and not the differences between you and other alcoholics.

Remember addiction is addiction is addiction; you are not a special case.

See a doctor if you are concerned about withdrawal. Be honest with your doctor

Moderation and tapering are almost never successful. Don’t try them.

Keep coming back. Never let a setback stop you from trying again.

Don't think you can stop for a little while and then resume drinking normally.

Avoid NA beer

If what you are doing isn't working, try something else. Nothing changes if nothing changes

Relapse is part of the addiction, not part of recovery

My brother-in-law:

Ready for some whiskey it’s time to get drunk!

Me:

No thanks, I’m taking a break for a while.

Him:

“What happened… you used to be our lead drinker”

“Tell me the truth…did you get in trouble with the law or something”

“Come on you have to at least do a shot with me”

“Are you sure you’re having fun?? (after not laughing at the same joke he’s now told three times after drinking couple bourbon shots and a six pack of Dos Equis)

My sister several times (after 4 glasses of wine):

“There’s something different about you, did you lose weight?”

“You look younger for some reason”

Me…4 sparkling waters later…brother-in-law (after another couple shots and a couple more beers and repeating the same stories for the third time).

Time to go!

It is really cool driving without worrying about the police or possibly hurting an innocent person.

Remember this when you are tempted to quit quitting...

Top of Form

http://imgur.com/bAsGY51

I saw this elsewhere on reddit.

Don't forget the desperate, dark place you were in when you decided to quit.

You were hungover. Headaches. Exhaustion. Shame. Hyper-Anxiety. So many days were spent just surviving the after effects of your latest binge.

You were embarrassed. You didn't remember what you had said or done the night before. You've alienated so many friends and family members while drunk...No telling what you'd done or who you'd hurt or offended to add to that list.

You were scared. Of losing friends. Or your job. Or your license. Or your freedom. You were out of control and it was getting worse. You were spiraling downward and not sure how to correct your course.

Your health was suffering. Your skin, your liver, your heart. You stopped exercising and eating well and gained weight. You held your breath before every doctor's appointment, petrified of the damage you may have caused to your own body.

You were withdrawing. Shaking—you couldn't hold your hand still without the aid of alcohol. Sweating—you sweat like a hog and it smelled like a distillery. You were hearing and seeing things. You weren't sleeping. You had a deep feeling of dread that was unshakable.

No one said this would be easy. But when you decided to quit, you were desperate to be in the place you are at right now.

If you go back, you'll instantly regret it and wish you were back in the place you are at right now.

Don't forget that. Keep moving forward.

We can do this.

Step 1: I'm fucked

Step 2: There might be a way out of this fucking mess

Step 3: Decide to level the fuck up

Step 4: Take a good hard look at how fucked up I am

Step 5: Tell someone else about all the fucked up stuff I've been through

Step 6: Prepare to stop being such a fuck up

Step 7: Try to stop acting so fucked up

Step 8: Make a list of everyone I fucked over

Step 9: Swallow my fucking pride and tell them I really fucked up, except when doing so would fuck them harder.

Step 10: Keep an eye on my fucked up thinking and behavior

Step 11: Chill the fuck out sometimes

Step 12: Help the next poor fucker that walks through the door

Things to do when you're bored

Recovery mind and body

Help another Alcoholic

Get involved in a real life or on-line recovery meeting

Volunteer somewhere

Try Yoga

Meditate

Get a massage

Go to the gym

Go for a bike ride

Lift weights

Learn a martial art

Volunteer at a homeless shelter

Volunteer at a school

Volunteer at an animal shelter

Take a walk and pick up litter you see on the way

Join a sober social group (eg soberslice on meetup)

Dance in your bedroom, no one can see you \o/

Tango

Take A Walk

Visit some in an old folks’ home

Exercise

Take a hike

Go for a jog

Take up tennis

Ask others around you if there is anything you can do for them

Fun stuff

Play a musical instrument

Knit

Read a book

Research your genealogy

Cook a gourmet dinner

Write an article for your local newspaper

Go take some pictures

Plan a garden

Plant a garden

Play with a pet

Read to a child

Make a web site

Take up archery

Surf the internet

Call your mom

Learn a foreign language

Write a poem

Play golf

Take a bubble bath

Draw

Teach a parakeet to whistle

Take a nap

Listen to music

Paint

Go window shopping

Browse in a book store

Go to an art gallery

Go for a drive

Paint a room

Watch the clouds go by

Play darts

Do target shooting

Do home repairs

Clean your garage

Sort your photographs

Make a scrapbook

Climb a tree

Plant a tree

Make marmalade

Make a list of things to do

Write a letter to the editor

Make fruit smoothies

Bake cookies

Do a crossword puzzle

Plant a colour bowl

Sharpen your pruning tools

Ride roller coasters if the one you are already on is not enough

Sew

Groom your dog

Go see a play

Write a sonnet

Sort your recipes

Play solitaire

Go bird watching

Write a letter to a friend

Read a poetry book

Re pot your house-plants

Go to a movie

Put up (or take down) your Christmas lights

Make pickles

Plan a trip

Watch sitcoms

Plan menus for a diet

Do a jigsaw puzzle

Play chess

Write a song

Watch a video

Plant an herb garden

Start an on-line journal

Dye your hair

Go to a restaurant

Bake some bread

Make a flower arrangement

Read the newspaper

Start some seeds

Sort your magazines

Take a nature walk

Play with your kids

Tickle your kids

Read to a child or pet

Spend time at the library

Sort all your digital photos and make an album to print for holiday gifts to family

Help your kid organize his closet

Figure out the melody and chords to your current favourite tune on the piano

Practice your holiday cookie recipes

Make crackers from scratch (that one didn't go so well)

Make tortillas from scratch (better)

Reread a book you haven't read for years

Key out a wild flower

Do your nails

Do word puzzles

Play a board game

Burn CD’s of some of your favourite music for a friend

Plant a bonsai

Play Mad Libs

Speak only in heroic couplets for an hour

Read poetry on-line

Ride a stationary bicycle

Set up a domino topple

Play backgammon

Build a house of cards

Make an entry in Wikipedia

Read a world almanac

Publish a family newsletter

Throw cards at a hat

Go to bed

Clean your closet

Bored! What are you avoiding?

Play video games

Set random things in public places (Surreal Art Terrorism)

Listen to a podcast and clean your apartment

Organise all your on-line media!

Make a list and do it ('Microsoft One Note' does this on-line)

Watch movie trailers

Learn how to write your own android app

Start a little eBay biz to sell stuff you don't need any more

Learn to cook

Not so fun stuff

Clean the mildew in your bathroom

Start writing that book you've been planning

Watch a news special on TV

Clean your desk

Start a stamp collection

Set up a family budget

Take a college class

Mow your lawn

Polish the furniture

Do some laundry

Reread one of your college textbooks

Change your engine oil

Anything but drink alcohol!

When things get bad enough, you will quit. They don't serve alcohol in prison, or the psych ward or the cemetery.

Read

Guitar

Meditate

Walk

Bike

Work Out

The following is my attempt which is cobbled together from various studies and websites.

Hour 22.5: Alcohol from consuming 5 pints of lager is no longer present in the blood.

Day 1: Cell proliferation increases across multiple brain regions.

Day 2: Visual, auditory, or tactile hallucinations (if present and not DT related) usually end. First burst of cell proliferation, which is widespread, particularly in the hippocampus and cortex. These cells will largely differentiate into microglia in non-neurogenic brain regions.

Day 5: Alcohol no longer detectable in saliva or urine tests. Symptoms of delirium tremens peak.

Day 7: Second burst of cell proliferation, which is regionally specific to the dentate gyrus subgranular zone. In the dentate gyrus, proliferating cells will differentiate over several weeks mostly into neurons.

Day 14: Neural progenitors begin to differentiate into mature neurons. Cognitive deficits regarding distractibility, mild confusion, and irritability are generally back to normal levels.

Week 4: Cortical gray matter volume increases. Fatty liver disease is typically reversed.

Week 5: One month after the Day 7 burst in neurogenesis, there is a two-fold increase in new neurons formed. This increase in neurogenesis during abstinence from chronic alcohol exposure may be related to the recovery of brain volume deficits and cognitive deficits in abstinent alcoholics.

Month 2: Cognitive deficits regarding attention and concentration, reaction time, verbal learning ability, verbal abstract reasoning, and verbal short-term reasoning are generally back to normal levels.

Month 3: Increase of white and gray matter as well as a decrease of cerebrospinal fluid. Alcohol no longer detectable in hair follicle tests.

Month 6: Alcoholics who drank late into life, but with at least 6 months of abstinence can exhibit normal cognitive functioning. Alcoholics who were abstinent for less than 6 months performed worse in cognitive functioning than the control group.

Year 5: Cognitive deficits regarding verbal abstract reasoning, verbal short-term reasoning, nonverbal abstract reasoning, visuospatial abilities, mental flexibility, and nonverbal short term memory are back to normal. The recovery rate of cognitive function varies greatly and is influenced by age, length of sobriety, and presence of interim drinking. Recovery from cognitive deficits can occur as early as a few months.

Year 6.7: There is no statistical difference in cognitive test results with a control group, except in the area of spatial processing.

EDIT: This post might be disturbing to some people. I'm sorry if it is. This is a very honest post, and maybe not everybody should choose to read it, I dunno. As a medical student, I thought I was prepared to see patients die. I have to be careful of anything I say or even allude to due to HIPAA regulations, but let me just say I had an emotional week with a patient in End Stage Liver Disease, and I found out that I wasn't ready. I hope the message taken from this is that you don't have to experience anything you're about to read about. Also, no two people have the same medical course or experience the same complications, and I have seen very little of the horrors (or triumphs) of medicine in my very short experience. Thanks.

Hi. I've displayed a lot of troubled drinking over the last few years. It got a little out of control. But I'm not here today to talk about my own drinking per se, but rather to share what I've seen as a medical student rounding on the inpatients of a county hospital over the last couple of months.

Of the many many people that have to stay in our hospital, almost all of them are there for self-administered problems. Some are meth and heroine. And some are attributable to cigarettes. Many are due to long-standing bad dietary habits. But I cannot believe the amount of alcoholic-induced disease on my floor of the hospital. Acute pancreatitis with alcohol withdrawal presents every day to our emergency room. This is not smalltime...necrotizing pancreatitis from alcohol toxicity will kill you rather quickly but also very painfully as your pancreas, which creates the enzymes that break down the food proteins in your gut, dissolves and eats your body from the inside out. In the meantime you won't be able to eat or drink anything...even a tiny sip of water will irritate your pancreas enough to cause you unbearable nausea and pain.

But then there are also the people there with liver cirrhosis from extended alcohol abuse. And it is so ugly to watch as liver function continues to decline. While the body is incredible at self-healing, there is no bringing a liver back from the cirrhotic stage. It's all useless rope and fiber. And the liver is really damn important. Once the liver goes, everything else follows. Your body loses the ability to create proteins. You can't make the basic proteins your blood needs to maintain osmotic pressure and fluid just leaks out of all of your blood vessels into your tissues, and then you have to come in and we stick a HUGE ASS needle in your giant waterbed of an abdomen or into your lungs and suck all of it out for you so you don't drown in your own fluids. And then all the ammonia your liver can't process anymore gets in your brain, and you get brought in by ambulance because you've gone crazy and don't even know how to form words or move your body. And then you start backing up fluid behind your hard as a rock liver and the pressure makes the blood vessels in your esophagus burst, and you bleed into your stomach until you're shitting black bloody slime and you pass out from blood loss. Or you start wasting away like a cancer patient because of malnourishment, because your gut can no longer properly absorb nutrients from your food, and also because remember all that ammonia you had in your brain? You are taking a medicine that makes you SHIT out all that ammonia to keep you alive, but you also have to shit about every ten minutes, and god help you if you're not within 2 minutes of a toilet. Hard quality of life at that point. Also, you have a gallstone formed of all the dead/destroyed blood cells in your body due to your liver dysfunction. It hurts like a mofo, but your doctors are hesitant to take it out because the gallbladder is right next to your liver and your liver is fragile as can be. Your kidneys are going to start failing next because of hepatorenal syndrome. Your kidneys will be maxed out in their efforts to regulate your electrolytes and fluid levels that have become totally fucked by your liver being an asshole and not doing its job. Your sodium level is dropping, your potassium level is peaking, and the only thing your kidneys know what to do in response to your blood vessels leaking into your tissues is to just keep pumping more and more fluids back into you. You'll be treated with diuretics which will help prolong the time until we have to shove that giant needle and tube inside of you to pull out more fluid that's pooling there. But besides pooping every ten minutes, now you'll also have to piss every five. All of this is putting a lot of strain on your heart too, of course, which is trying to keep blood moving to your tissues but your blood is so thin and you're so anemic that it's having a hard time keeping up and starts getting dilated and weaker and the blood moving through your lungs gets congested and just stays there. And then one of these days all that fluid, that's just pooling inside of you, not moving, gets infected. Because your immune system is about as good as an advanced AIDS patient's. Instead of the HIV destroying your immune system cells, though, you just weren't able to make them in the first place. So now you have a septic bacterial infection in your hugely swollen abdomen for no apparent reason...it just happens cause your system is shit now. And you'll be living in this crappy hospital bed and the doctors will be pumping you full of the strongest antibiotics they've got and you have a tube draining fluid out of your chest wall and every few days the ammonia gets too high and you forget who you are again or your sodium plummets again and you fall into a coma or your potassium spikes and now you're probably gonna have a heart attack and you can't even get out of bed to avoid shitting your diaper and you're on oxygen because your lungs are so congested and meanwhile your medical team is calling the kidney doctor to consult about your failing kidneys and the medical student has been tasked with calling your next of kin to ask them if they know if you are DNR status (Do Not Resuscitate) or not and they had better call a family meeting because even if you make it through this hospital visit your statistical 3 month survival rate at this point is approximately 40%.

And it didn't have to happen. Up until the cirrhosis occurs, liver injury is reversible. Fatty liver disease caused by alcohol abuse happens first. And your liver turns to shit. But the liver can completely heal...if you don't drink anymore. But at this point and beyond, one drink is enough to cause exponentially more damage to the remaining healthy liver. It's a really crappy and avoidable way to die. Don't do it. Get the help you need. Counseling, a friend, a program, a sponsor, medical therapy, whatever it is. I promise you any intervention you undertake will cost far less than a single hospitalization will.

Links:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-sober-alcohol-drunk-booze-perspec-1231-20151230-story.html

Mindfulness Exercises

http://franticworld.com/free-meditations-from-mindfulness/

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/personal-development-workshops/mindfworkshop_resources/Mindfulness_in_plain_english

three things" exercise: when I feel the anxiety start to rise, stop for a moment and notice: three things I see, three things I hear, three things I physically feel.

Just for today I will try to live through this day only, and not tackle all my problems at once. I can do something for twelve hours that would appall me if I felt that I had to keep it up for a lifetime.

Just for today I will be happy. This assumes to be true what Abraham Lincoln said, that “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Just for today I will not pick up that first drink.

Words of Wisdom

As I get older, I am becoming more selective of who I consider a friend. I find that I would rather have 4 quarters than 100 pennies.

The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is right now.

If you want something you've never had before, you need to be willing to do something you've never done before.

If nothing changes, nothing changes.

Don't try to think your way to better acting, act your way to better thinking.

When lying in the bed that you made there is no softer pillow than a clear conscience.

This is your life and you’re writing your story. Don't ever let someone else hold the pen.

Inner peace can be reached only when we practice forgiveness.

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a different past.

I have conducted 40 years of thorough analysis, laboratory testing and field studies on alcohol and marijuana use.

Drugs (including alcohol) make us feel good by imitating or increasing the levels of chemicals in the brain that act on the brain’s reward center. Different drugs do it in varied ways, but the overall effect is to overstimulate that part of the brain that gives us pleasurable sensations.

When over-stimulation occurs, our bodies try to bring things back into balance by reducing the natural production of those chemicals (neurotransmitters). Often, when the drugs wear off, we feel uncomfortable until the natural production of the chemicals resumes. We call this period of withdrawal a “hangover.”

With continued presence of the drugs, the body takes further steps: it begins to increase the number of receptor sites for the specific neurotransmitters in order to use up the surplus. Because of this, continued drug use causes “tolerance.” We need more of the drugs to fill up those extra hungry receptors, and we begin to feel uncomfortable when we don’t have them present in our bodies, or if they are present at too low a level. The process of addiction has begun.

Further drug use doesn't only increase the receptor sites. In its attempts to bring things back to normal, the brain slows production of the natural neurotransmitters. That means that when we stop the drugs, there are insufficient natural neurotransmitters, and we feel cravings and other symptoms of acute withdrawal. These vary, depending on how the drugs affected us to begin with, but they are generally the opposite of however we felt when we were using.

These feelings are most acute during the time the drugs are leaving our bodies, and begin to subside within days. However, the fun isn’t over. As George Carlin said, “Just because the monkey’s off your back, it doesn’t mean the circus has left town.” We will continue to feel discomfort until the body has shut down the extra receptor sites so that they are no longer begging for drugs, and until the natural production of neurotransmitters has resumed. This can take several months, and is referred to as Post-Acute Withdrawal.

Many authorities believe that the extra receptor sites just shut down, and don’t go away. They believe that they can easily be re-activated if drugs are reintroduced into the body. That certainly seems to fit what we observe in real life. That’s why we recommend abstinence. In most addicts, any drug use seems to slow and soon reverse the recovery process.

Because of this continued potential for discomfort, if we don’t take care of ourselves physically and mentally during the post-acute period, our risk of relapse is high. However, the discomfort tends to come and go, with good days and bad. Eventually the good days become more common, and the bad ones tend to occur less often and with reduced discomfort, until things are more-or-less back to normal.

You can most certainly look forward to a time when you no longer have the cravings, and those that you have will begin to ease off within a few more days. If you stay clean, eventually the discomfort will disappear entirely. Naturally, as addicts we want to feel better immediately, but it doesn’t work that way. We spent months or years getting our bodies used to drugs, so it’s hardly surprising that it takes quite a while to get over the effects.

http://sunrisedetox.com/blog/2013/02/25/cravings-withdrawal-paws-detox/

Stage 1: 0.020-0.039% At this level, the person becomes less shy than normal. They also feel a mild euphoria and/or feelings of comfort and relaxation. There may also be a faint sensation of light headedness.

Stage 2: 0.040-0.059% Similar blood alcohol level effects to stage one, but more intense. Inhibitions are lowered and one’s judgement and caution are reduced. Memory and reasoning also begin to deteriorate.

Stage 3: 0.06-0.099% Physical effects begin to intensify. The drinker may feel a slight loss of balance and may start to experience motor function impairment. Speech and vision are impaired. The drink feels a strong sense of euphoria. Reasoning and memory are further impaired.

Stage 4: 0.100-0.129% The drinker’s speech is slurred, motor functions significantly impaired. All good judgement deteriorates. Their vision blurs, their peripheral vision is reduced, and their reaction time is lowered. Hearing is also impaired.

Stage 5: 0.130-0.159% Euphoria begins to dissipate and is replaced by its opposite, dysphoria, a general feeling of feeling unwell. The drinker has difficultly walking without losing balance and speaking properly.

Stage 6: 0.160-0.199% All feelings of euphoria are gone at this point, and the drinker may begin to feel nauseous and unwell.

Stage 7: 0.200-0.249% A complete state of mental unawareness and confusion. The drinker may need assistance moving. Dysphoria and nausea predominate, and the drinker may vomit and even blackout.

Stage 8: 0.250-0.399% When one’s BAC reaches this point, they have alcohol poisoning. They also may lose consciousness.

Stage 9: 0.40% and up The drinker may enter a coma in sleep, possibly dying later due to respiratory arrest from the depressant effects of alcohol.

Source: http://bloodalcoholcalculator.org/blood-alcohol-level-effects/

Rhymes

Satisfied with getting fried on each and every dime

Liquefied suicide one sip at a time

Mortified and terrified by my downward climb

Horrified, I recognized this slow death in my prime

Certified and classified this was indeed a crime

Clarified and defined a solution that was mine

Identified and testified with SD posts online

Suppressed my pride and defied temptations by design

Solidified and multiplied my productive pastimes

Time occupied, life simplified, now I’m feeling fine

Open eyed and realize it’s still an upward climb

Purified I do confide that each day is sublime

👉 FTZ!

Do not hesitate, do not wait

Today is the date to stop tempting fate

Be your own hero and scream Fuck The Zero

Start living your life before it’s too late.

👉FTZ!

It's not easy to quit that's why most people won't

Society makes it legit so hey what's the point

You really don’t need it, you know that you don’t

Today is Monday and I must confess

That 8 months ago my life was a mess

A new path was chosen when I stopped drinking poison

And now I'm too blessed to be stressed.

👉FTZ!

It's not easy to quit that's why most people won't

Society makes it legit so hey what's the point

If you think you need an excuse to forget the booze

Simply admit that's bullshit...you don't!

👉 FTZ!

It's not easy to quit that's why most people won't

Society makes it legit so hey what's the point

You think you need that drink, that pill, that joint

Simply admit that's bullshit...you really fucking don't!

👉 FTZ!

The life I was living was fake

It was ‘hair of the dog’ and ‘wake and bake’

So I stopped the shots and laid off the pot

And decided to give myself a break.

👉 FTZ!

The life I was living was fake

It was ‘hair of the dog’ and ‘wake and bake’

So I stopped the shots and laid off the pot

And started giving myself a break.

👉 FTZ!

It used to be tough to get out of bed

My head was hurting and my eyes were red

So I cut my loss and tossed the sauce

And now rise with a clear head.

👉 FTZ!

Woke up one day drinking my life away

Heard my mind say there’s got to be a better way

Analyzed the situation and ceased the inebriation

Now confidence and freedom are here to stay.

👉 FTZ!

My mind is up and down like a yoyo

Eyes all around looking for the popo

Paranoid, freaking, jumpy like a pogo

Red faced, dull eyes, alcoholic logo

The life I’m living is fake

It’s all ‘hair of the dog’ and ‘wake and bake’

Satisfied with getting fried on each and every dime

Liquefied suicide, one sip at a time

That’s no way to live, I got so much to give

It's not easy to quit so most folks don't

Society makes it legit so what's the fucking point

You think you need that drink, that pill, that joint

Simply admit that's bullshit...you really fucking don't!

So I started some thinking and ceased my drinking

My spirit quit sinking, ego started shrinking

I ran and hiked, SUP’d and biked

Found new hobbies that I really liked

Now it seems I’m living my dream

Thanks in part to the SD team.

👉 FTZ!

Whiskey eyes and ashtray breath

Feeling on the verge of death

If they ask why

I continue to choose to lose the booze

News poos

Today I will not drink and while that may seem onerous, earning sobriety is not fun but being sober is.

👉 FTZ!

It doesn’t take a degree to see

what a shot of whiskey will do to me

so today I foresee LaCroix or tea

and agree to choose to be free.

👉 FTZ!

My mind was up and down like a yoyo

Eyes all around looking for the popo

Paranoid, freaking, jumpy like a pogo

Red faced, dull eyes, alcoholic logo

The life I was living was fake

It was ‘hair of the dog’ and ‘wake and bake’

That’s no way to live, I got so much to give

So I started thinking and stopped my drinking

My spirit quit sinking, ego ceased shrinking

I ran and hiked, SUP’d and biked

Found new hobbies that I really liked

Now it seems I’m living my dream

Thanks in part to the SD team.

👉 FTZ!

Living in a prison

Built with my own hand

Sick and tired of being tired

Time to take a stand

Made a change and rearranged

Came up with a plan

Put the beer and whiskey down

Started acting like a man

I know why the caged bird sings

The reason’s not so strange

If you change the way you look at things

The things you look at change.

👉 FTZ!

The past is the past. I am alive today. That is all that matters. I must remember, because it is who I am, but as it is who I am, I must never, ever regret. To regret my past is to regret my soul.

👉 FTZ!

Today in forbearance to booze I give severance

to myself I’ll be generous and promise to give deference

to my preference for my new-found temperance.

👉 FTZ!

I do declare I’ll be aware and prepare to stop and think

to play that damn tape forward before I cop that drink.

👉 FTZ!

T’would be wise to recognize too much wine is misery

So for this day, I will relay, my imbibery is history.

👉 FTZ!

T’would be wise to recognize imbibery leads to misery

So for this day, I will relay, my duplicity is history.

👉 FTZ!

I alliterate, allude and admit that alcohol is absolutely not acceptable to abuse and will assuredly address this awareness by actually avoiding any amount because booze cannot bamboozle if not imbibed so I simply shan’t sample the sauce this sober day!

👉 FTZ!

This dude definitely decided to ditch the devil’s drool today. FTZ!

I alliterate, allude and admit that alcohol is absolutely not acceptable to abuse and will assuredly address this awareness by actually avoiding any amount!

👉 FTZ!

It is with relief not reluctance to report I’m ready to release my reliance and really remove rotgut from my reality and recognize it is rational to respect recovery!

Pain, plan

Productivity is predicated on preparedness and perseverance so I'm perfectly pleased, plenty proud and positively privileged to post that I publicly portray and purposely pledge and promise to pass on the pouring of any portions of potable poisons past my palate for the present period.

👉 FTZ!

Some folks just have to continue on their path until they are desperate enough to want and ask for help.

What changed on my last attempt?

I understand addiction much better now, and understand why there's no such thing as "just one sip" or "just one bottle" of an addictive substance. I also read the books by Alan Carr and Annie Grace linked in the SD sidebar, which truly changed my attitude about alcohol. It is not a magic potion. I'd been conned by my own addiction, and by a lifetime of advertising and social conditioning, into believing I needed this magic alcohol medicine to get me through my own life. Wrong. Alcohol provides exactly zero benefits to me.

Even knowing the truth about alcohol and addiction, I kept going back to it until I completely faced up to the reasons I drank, and actually changed the way I lived to resolve those reasons.

Some people get help doing that in AA, by working "steps." Some people use SD. Some get help in counseling. But you can all of these things, or rehab, or Himalayan self-discovery journeys, etc. and still keep going back to drinking if the shit inside isn't cleaned up.

It all comes down to honesty with yourself.

If you want something you've never had before, you need to be willing to do something you've never done before.

If nothing changes, nothing changes.

Kia Kaha!

There are many different paths to brokenness and there certainly is more than one to recovery. Never let anyone tell you your way is wrong if it is working.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

~ Dalai Lama

Am I capable of moderating? Maybe… but is the juice worth the squeeze? For me the answer is no.

If I was a vegetarian, I could eat meat but I would choose not to.

If I had a peanut allergy, I could still eat peanuts but the feelings they provide would not compensate for the consequences of ingestion.

But that's just me. I think that you raise an important question that ultimately can only be answered by yourself.

Santa Cruz Man

Notes on Addiction

Notes on Philosophical Paradoxes

Notes on Story Ideas