Thats good. Youll feel much less resentment tomorrow I bet. Beautiful weather here in NY/NJ. Hope you are enjoying.
Are you trying to moderate or stop completely? Just curious. I appreciate the post man I really do.
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Not sure. Maybe moderate. Was drinking every night for quite awhile. Day by day I am taking it. Putting the drink down today was BIG for me. Didn’t even bother me. Had no desire to continue drinking. Seems the desire to drink no longer a constant thing on my mind and I owe a lot to the people in this group.
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I feel better as you said. But I realize how cravings started tonight , I must distract myself.
Enchiladas are good man!!!
Thats great man…
Movie? Any recommendations?
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Hows it going duder?
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Oh well, I moved my brother Sunday and I drank. Felt ok. But the right next day instead of lunch I went to buy some beer to get through the day of meeting I had to do from home. Had a pretty good evening but finished my day sad and crying for no reason. Slept like shit, anxiety all over the place in the middle of the night.
Something good thought is that I talked to my girlfriend about my thoughts and questions about me being alcoholic or not, and my questioning about sobriety and what I should do. It’s good to have open the conversation about this I think. …But like everyone around me except my mother, she doesn’t think I am alcoholic. Everybody think I might sometimes have trouble coping with emotions, boredom and loneliness, and because I have been drinking often in those situation I tend to do it again. So when I give a go at sobriety it never last long because I believe this thinking too. Even the two therapist I had and the two dependency counselors I saw told me that the strictness of sobriety wasnt maybe the best for my personality. Nevertheless I’ve accomplished a lot of things when I got sober for 198 days almost two years ago now. And yet I felt so alone and frigid; I went full-on obsessive on everything. I have obsessive-compulsive tendency, so when I go rigid on something I tend to do it in all area of my life. So when I try to get sober, I start to be obsessed with my body, my calories intake, my hours of sleep, my schedule, my training, I count everything (I wear 2 different watch to get the most precise data about my sleep, activity and recovery)… and it’s not tenable.
Is that the result of sobriety? Is alcohol changing anything in this? No. Totally not. But it’s hard for me to commit to sobriety because I believe that the best for me would be to work on listing to my emotions, coping with less rigidity, be flexible, control myself without overcontroling everything, take responsibility, etc.
I therefore question my place in this forum. I feel like a fraud, being here, having the idea of sobriety in my head and reading about it, but never really commit to it. And I saw a lot of people on here diminish the idea of moderate-drinker trying to get more sobriety in their weeks of months. I get it, it’s a sobriety forum. So I don’t know. Should I continu to be on here and stay in the 7 to 14 days sober range and look like the guy trying when I am actually not? Or should I just leave this and put my focus on something else?
Oh well that was a long answer haha!
Short answer is I’m feeling good, but I’m tired of shaming every other day. I have to make a choice because I can’t be in this constant false-battle I have with myself. Either I commit to sobriety or I commit myself to work on my emotion focus-therapy, I have to commit to myself in some kind of way and stop lying to myself.
Lol, if you still here, how are you holding up on your side?
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You sound alot like me man. I hated everything alcohol did to me, I always Q’s am I a alcoholic to friends and family and they would all say the same thing, no you’re not you just need to learn how to handle your feelings better and blah blah well unfortunately If your drinking youre not going to handle your feelings better. And if you didn’t think you had a problem then you wouldn’t even be having the discussion or feeling you do. You wouldn’t be having the anxiety, or crying and sad for no reason. And buying beer for lunch isn’t helping. I use to do the same go 7 to 14 days then drink and hate myself. It’s gonna be the same game for you over and over until you can be honest with youre self and give it up. I know that was the case for me. And ppl are going to tell you what you want to hear, one because they don’t want to hurt you and two because they want someone to drink with. Don’t forget who you’re doing this for, also I don’t think getting obsessed about bettering yourself and training is a bad thing. It sure is alot better then killing yourself slowly with alcohol.im not trying to put you down or anything, I just went through the same phase as you. And for real if you didn’t have a problem you wouldn’t be here or of ever questioned it. But at the end of the day yeah it’s totally up to you on what you decide to do. 198 days was awesome man, idk my mind still tricks me alot and gets jelous of the ppl who have drinks, still manage to go hiking have a house, have a car and manage life. Idk for me I wasn’t doing that, but my mind tries to tell me I can
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this is exactly how I recently felt, OK I’ll drink every month and just leave but it’s not quantity its quality, of life,will you be happy or end up crying everytime, will it stay moderate? maybe for a while if your lucky, maybe for years but rarely does it stay manageable. I read somewhere yesterday that it gets harder to quit the older you get and I’ve never met anyone getting any younger. This tells me the rules apply to everyone of us, we’re not the special one, we’re not the exception to the addict rule. we either are addicts and can’t have one or we’re normal.
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I think only you can answer if you want to stay on here. You have every right to do so! And I’m glad if you stay and work on your sobriety every day. I remember when I’ve downloaded this app. It is a long time ago and I wasn’t quite sure that I would like to quit for good. I wanted to give it a try. And I grew so much since this time. I never say I want to be sober forever. I just want to be sober for today. And the next day I tell this to myself again. I’ve tried countless times to moderate and it always ended up in a disaster. Always. This just shows me that I am an addict and I can’t handle drinking normally and that’s why I just stay away from it completely. It took me a while to understand it but I never left this group because it helped me to find this sober path. I’m sure everyone needs to find their own way but I’m sure you will find yours and I just hope that this app and these wonderful people can help you in it and you stay! 
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Maybe just try the 30 day experiment. I get where you’re coming from though. 
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@anon60334405 I know you’re right. If I’m here talking about this is because I know I have a problem. But when I try it gets so hard in my head, it’s like my head is trying to just move the obsession for something else than alcohol and just never find it. So it spread and I restrain myself for seeing people, going outside, I train alone, I check my phone non-stop but I never answer phone: the alcohol become more an obsession when I tell myself I stop to drink then when I drink… Everything starts to relate to it in the way that everything I do is to counter-balance the envy I can’t “satiate”. And at the same time, I know I could just choosing this to be a new way of life, sobriety is cool and sane. I could just choose it for myself. But damn man it’s so hard to make the move. In either case I have to work on myself. Thanks for your comment!!
@Dolse71 And yet “every month” is a lie because it’s mostly every weekends. And yes I feel it’s harder to put the bottle down when the week starts more than when I was younger. It’s like I’m doing the circle of numb: getting through the work and stuff I have to do (responsibilities) to enjoy numbing myself on the couch with booze, before going back to work. Sadly for me, with COVID I had a lot of free times and that’s why I started to think back again about sobriety. But now that everything restarts slowly, I’m back to that doubt place. I’m always doubting and I hate it. I have to make a choice for my mental health. Can’t keep feeling this guilt all the time. Thank you for your time.
@anon35096624 Just for today helped me a lot in the past. There’s that quote from Bradley Cooper that I think of often: “I realized that I wasnt going to live up to my potential and that scared the hell out of me. The one thing I learned in life is that the best thing I can do is embrace who I am and then do that to the fullest extent, and then what happen happens.” I am sometime scared. Actually I am scared all the time these days that I will fail. I have to commit to something and stick to it. I just can’t make my mind on what. I know the power of sobriety. How far can this get me thought? That I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure it would be a better place than on a couch crying for no reason at night. But the crying is related to the guilt of drinking because I didn’t choose to be sober or not, I’m just in the battle that re-start every other week. I think I have hard time with, what you said, not thinking about “forever”. When I think of sobriety, I imagine myself in all the situation I won’t drink and the many I will avoid, and I think of the last time I got sober and how alone I felt. Maybe it’s not a good day to think about this because I just feel like giving up. I guess it’s part of a process. Thank you for your time!!
@anon79808082 What is the 30 day experiment? You mean setting a goal of sobriety for 30 days and see the results?
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Yes, basically. It’ll give you a better understanding maybe, just a thought.
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I think the fact that I read this and I’m confused to know if I could do it speaks for itself… I have to make my mind to it. Thanks for your thought
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The 30 day experiment from Annie Grace. I’m doing it again after I have done it in October last year. It helps you push through the first 30 days. Just Google it. You can log in then for free and you get to read every day on a new topic regarding alcohol. And also watching the days videos. It really really helped me. I learned a lot and it gives you a task every day instead of drinking! Maybe this and the app and AA meetings.
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My friends and family tend to minimalize my drinking. Whenever i listen to them i begin to minimalize it too.
They dont know what it really does to me because they dont experience the whole picture.
They dont see the struggle within myself. They dont experience the detox when I quit. They dont feel the remorse, the self loathing or anything else negative that i feel as a result of my drinking.
Drinking is so socially acceptable that they try and justify it for me.
Even ones who get the wrath of Mr Hyde when it happens dont get it. They still offer me alcohol.
Its because they drink and they may not have a problem with alcohol. Maybe we have drank many times together in the past without problems. They seem to miss that about me
None of them ever really knew how often or much i drank. Even now that ive got some sobriety, people frequently tell me I wasnt that bad. My inner alcoholic loves to hear that.
But i know how bad it was/is.
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Im still here. In doing good man. Out here making a buck on a tugboat. Clicking off sober days.
I used to di the same thing. Beer for lunch instead of…lunch lol. I guess Im getting more euphoric experiences sober lately. I was a lot like that too with the controlling everything and food. I also could never see myself not drinking. Beer was me and I was beer.
For me taking stock of what I have instead of where I want to be made a huge difference. Finding dudes who are sober that I could relate with and getting a sponsor was a game changer. Hearing others did stuff like me and laughing about it was what I needed personally.
I always thought I had to hang out with guys I didnt really get along with/mesh with because they were sober and I was succeeding. Once I learned I could get in with guys like me…surfers/watermen/younger guys/etc. I made a lot of progress.
I think most/all of us liked numbing our feelings on a couch with a bottle, byt we got sick and tired of being sick and tired. We decided we wanted control over our selves and our emotions. Booze never helped me. I was able to do things despite booze. Sure I had fun times and wish I could moderate, but I cant. I stand the risk of loosing everything. Im 101% not here to say you should stop, but its done wonders for me. Every time I tried to go a short amount of set time without drinking, I failed. That showed me that I had a problem, and I wasn’t in control.
Anyhow things are good like I said. About to maybe go for a run but feeling a bit beat from work, we shall see haha.
Lots of really good stuff in here!!! Thank you all!
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@Bubonicphoniks At some point we all relapse. Don’t start your days over, that makes it seem harder. It’s like getting a flat tire on your car and buying a new car instead of changing the tire. Instead, keep going because the decision to quit is still there. Your moment of weakness should be turned into a tool you can use for positive, not to set you back.
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Thanks. I did start over, but I am now at day 36!
Not sure why the ither withdrawls didnt stick as hard but thinking about how I felt that last time really puts me in the place I need to be.
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