drinking again

sh*t!!!!
i was doing so well, and here i am; one bottle gone, second already open...
i already told people, i'm no good...

why does he even bother staying with me? i keep screwing up!

i feel like i'm a med-junk.. i wanna get off my meds but i know i can't. after a day i already get detox symptoms... i can't afford to stay home from work now, so guess i'll be on meds for another so many years...

i knew i couldn't be alone tonight, but i couldn't tell him. he has his night with the boys tonight. i couldn't tell him he couldn't go because his unstable girlfriend has problems.. AGAIN!!!!

Firnlothwen, you said… “i already told people, i'm no good...”

May I suggest that in the future, you tell people that you are going to kill a couple of bottles before you start.

Just pick up the phone and tell on yourself. We do this drinking and drugging as secret agents. We don’t want other people knowing what’s up with us. That is the first pattern you might want to break.

Make a deal with yourself that you will call someone before you start. Not that they will talk you out of anything, they might, they might not, but what will happen is you will no longer be operating as this secret stoner.

Out in the open, that is the key. It is very hard for our secrets to have any power over us if we expose them for what they are right up front.

It is little tricks like that that can turn things around.

Richard

but how do you do that?
i am able to tell when i have been drinking, but not before.
in this case i didn't even intend to. i was drinking a glass, before i knew it the bottle was empty, and all of a sudden i was on my way back from the evening store!

it's great advise, but i just don't know how to do that!

I don’t buy it.

I have drunk a bunch of booze in my life, and I always knew what I was doing as that first glass went up to my lips. OK maybe I kidded myself about what was going to happen next, but when I drank that first drink, I was more or less sober. I knew I was starting.

Is there liquor in the house? If so, get rid of it. That way as you are off to the liquor store, that might be a good time to stop and make that call.

Honesty, that was what I was talking about before, now I am talking about becoming willing to interrupt that pattern with a phone call. Nobody can do it for you, you need to want to.

Usually it is the pain of our lives that do that trick of willingness. If you make no changes in your drinking and drugging patterns, things will get worse. The pain of an unmanageable life is sometimes the catalyst, but it isn’t necessary.

Richard

thnx richard.

and yes, it is pain that is triggering me right now.
but all went very well the last couple of months. so having one bottle in house wasn't a problem. till tonight that is..

i thought i broke through that pattern.. guess i didn't... guess i'm still weak..

No, weak is the wrong word. This thing is very powerful.

It is like walking into the boxing ring with a professional boxer, getting my bell rung, and as they carry me out of the ring, saying to myself, “I guess I am just weak.” No, I can never win that match.

The trick is to not walk into that ring in the first place. I can’t win at that game. I have accepted that bit of sad news.

Get the liquor out of the house, and keep it out. One bottle is the same thing as a truck load to an alcoholic like myself. It is the first drink that got me drunk, not the second 12 pack. Who Knew?

At any rate, dust yourself off and get back into action. Recovery is not a passive thing. We work at it daily.

Richard

but i like a little drink every now and then.. and it has gone very well the last months... do you mean it's a problem always? do you mean i'm an alcoholic? no offense, but i don't think i am... i think i'm a problem drinker... or is that just a sign of alcoholism??

I can only go from what you say…” i was doing so well, and here i am; one bottle gone, second already open...”

I guess that is the question, is alcohol just interfering in your life, or does it call the tune in your life. Only you can answer that one.

At any rate, it is always good to talk about it. Like I said before, secrets just kill people like me.

And the truth is I can’t drink safely. On any given day I can have a few and nothing happens. And then again, I never know. On the next time out, I go off the deep end and all kinds of bad things happen. The part that drove me crazy was I could never tell you which one was coming next.

Now I just don’t drink, and things wave been working out a lot better. But that’s just me.

I am off to the local Detox now to carry the same message we have been discussing. I will check back in the morning.

Have a good rest of your evening
Richard

thanks for the response.

in my opinion it's just interfering. on the other hand, it is a bit problem.. what is it? interfering or controling? i dn't know anymore..

i just feel like i can't do anything safe. everything just blows up in my face. whether it's meant as something positive or negative... so why bother anymore...

here's the deal, right now it's going really bad!!! (as if that wasn't obvious....)

I HATE MYSELF AND EVERYTHING AROUND ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lets ravel that thread a bit.
“interfering or controlling”

That may be the oldest question in the history of drinking. We ask that one and never seem to get a good answer.

Alcohol can’t do anything TO me, unless it does something FOR me first. What I mean by that is in the majority of the population, after a few drinks, people just stop. Ask them why and you hear things like I have had all I want. Or I feel like I am getting a little tipsy, losing control. And they don’t like the sensation. And they just stop.

But not with people like me. After a few drinks, I feel like I am just starting to get control. After a few drinks this world gets ever so much more friendly and non threatening. It goes from a somewhat colorless place to Disney land in the space of half an hour.

But I don’t stop there, it’s like I need to maintain that state of euphoria. But it is always slipping away. So another shot or another glass of beer just to get me back to that sweet spot.

And after a few hours of that chasing my own tail, I am as drunk as Davies’s sow.

Is it interfering or is it controlling?

Take the test that was suggested to me. Get a big bottle of your favorite stuff, and a small glass. Fill that glass up and drink it. Maybe have two glasses. Then stop. Don’t drink another drop of alcohol for the rest of the day. Do that experiment again the next day, and the next until that bottle is empty. Is it any fun? Can you even do it?

It seemed that when I was controlling it, it wasn’t much fun, and when it was fun, I wasn’t controlling it at all.

Richard