Hi I’m new here and I’m currently 3 days sober, I wasn’t a get up in the morning drinker, but I was a bottle or 2 of wine a night drinker, I never thought this was a problem, just after work bottle to “relax” that’s what everyone does right? Hmmm no it’s not, it’s not when your hungover nearly every morning and it affects your work, it’s not when your going into work smelling of alcohol, and it certainly isn’t when your getting into your car to go to work knowing your still over the limit, and then theres the weekends where I wouldn’t even remember what I’d done, I have a problem with alcohol and I can’t moderate I have tried so it needs to be complete abstinence, and it’s hard…very hard, but here I am 3 days sober and I’m glad I’ve found this little community
This is pretty much the exact discussion I had with my friend after this weekends relapse.
I kept asking myself why, and he flipped it around asking if I would be able to have amphetamine at home without using (It’s years since I quitted)
I said “Absolutely not, not even a similar substance is getting in to my house ever again, because I know I can’t let it be”
Then he asked why I think I can keep alcohol here without touching it or keep hanging out with people who drinks.
Never thought of it that way. But he is absolutely right.
Checking in whats up good morning.
Feeling weirder than ever, which isn’t good or bad but neutral. Think I may have realized that its time to get on with the fact that im a human ape with a human ape body. Googled some things I was feeling yesterday and found several others on quora that felt this way. Reading their posts was eye opening and calmed me a little. Think I realized that the mind doesn’t have an end, it’s only a tool. Thats important to know for me bc I often feel like Im mad. Yesterday I killed two disgusting bugs, knowing full well that Im basically just a huge bug myself, so yeah… thats where its at right now. Sorry if Im weirding anyone out just skip this post.
Conclusion of all this: I know from introspection that my core problem is isolation bc I refuse to accept “things”. And we know the remedy for isolation is connection.
So I should try to build more real life community around myself again. Someone actually said this to me on here, as a response to my first post… cheers!
Have been learning chinese so Ill maybe try to go to a chinese student group on campus. To see if I can spend some time with them if it didnt bother them. If I tell them Im a bug, surely they’ll let me in.
Realized that even slight stress makes my intestines shrink up, face red, breathing hard. Im way to sensitive… at this point I’ll freaking die just from a Very stressful day lmao!
Have some days off now and want to keep doing things differently. Just in new ways. Im bored of doing everything the same. I feel like Im coming to life when I put a new spin on things.
Read an important thing on here: Anxiety (or whatever) makes you feel the immense urge to always figure it out right now. But that sucks to live like that. Learn to live and be comfortable with uncertainty.
I appreciate: Going alone to the cinema! I love it so much im having a blast each time! Reccommend.
Fun fact: The german translation for the term “anxiety disorder” is just “fear disorder”. Plain old.
Congrats on three day of sobriety and welcome to Talking Sober Michelle! That’s pretty much the same pattern my drinking had four years ago. I had a hard time realizing, admitting and accepting I was an addict. But once I decided enough was enough (or I would kill myself) it wasn’t even that extremely hard to quit.
I’ve been building a new life since. Living a good life takes work, and quite a lot of it too. The good thing about that is that working on it fills the gap left by not drinking. Actually it’s much more than that. It’s living a life that we don’t want to run from by drinking. It’s work but it’s bloody worth it!
Anyway, glad you found us. We’re in this together and the more the stronger we are. One day at a time for all of us. Wishing you all success on your sober journey!!!
@MrsOdh damn how I hate that kind of unclear situations, I always imagine the worse (and usually it’s end up being nothing serious). Hope you will get some answer from your daughter soon.
@Mira_D I totally understand you with the kids. Here we have only 2 years difference between Sacha and twins and he’s bossing them around obviously, it’s hilarious when they are not listening to him and he’s getting sooooo frustrated. Then in my head I’m like "you see how it feels?! You see?!"
I’m happy to the moon and back! I thought vacations over 28 Aug but it’s actually 21! Anthony and Dennis are at playgroup only 3.5h four days in a week but it’s huuuuge difference for me, that little bit of freedom. Sacha is already at school although he’s only 4 (in Poland for example kids start school when they are 6/7yo).
I love them so so much, but 24/7 last few weeks were pretty exhausting. Glad I was sober! 
Have a good day my so we friends, big hugs.
In Dutch “anxiety disorder” is called “angst- en paniekstoornis”. The word “paniek” is added because just “angst” doesn’t quite cover it. Indeed when talking about it in Dutch I usually use “anxiety”, after having looked in my head for a good translation. And not finding it.
Wow, powerful stuff right there. Im reading this right at the start of the day. Its like a nice strong push on the swing thats makes you giggle XD
So amazed at how far you’ve come!!! Just wow.
I actually think its good to hit (a kind of) rock bottom, because there isn’t a more solid foundation to build yourself up from, haha!
Cheers, love goes out to everyone here in the community.
Since Im obsessed with languages this is super cool info. Yeah that term is better bc it holds more information! Love it
Thank you for your concern @Mischa84
It wasn’t anything serious, they broken up and she wants us to come and get her and all her stuff.
So we’re going to pick her up during the day.
Hopefully they won’t be together again, and she’ll move back home.
It’s easier to help and support her over here. It’s a small village and they try to help all citizens over here. Instead of a big city where she lives now.
So all good this far.
Day 319
The coworker I had an argument with is pregnant and will leave us very soon bc this job is too stressful.
Another coworker tries to get pregnant since years but without any luck, she had several surgeries for artificial insemination, soon she’ll have her last one. Should she become pregnant too this office will die because we would miss 50% of staff on a regular basis.
Still no new job im sight for me.
I feel like I’m on the Titanic, the ship is sinking and I can’t leave it 
Fortunately I’m sober 
I’m sure there will be something for me in the future that I like doing as a job. There has to…
Have a beautiful sober day friends, stay strong 
Talked to my brother about my session with the therapist yesterday and diagnosis of persistent depression.
He didn’t give me a word of support that I went but instead went "well I’m therapizing msyself…"You know… that seems like he is giving in to the social construct that therapy means weakness and lack of ability. I told him that I can therapize myself too, I have been for years constantly, and that it actually takes more strength to go to therapy than to deal with it alone. Dealing with it alone can work, worked a lot for me and is amazing.
Just factually speaking its much harder to seek out another person and go to their office and tell a stranger about your intimate struggles. It takes strength.
I told him that bc I had to get it off my chest. Im not letting anyone passively, even if unaware, tell me that im less than bc I decided to go to a session.
I decently let him know that I have dowloaded this app again. He said he wasnt sure whether i was even still struggling with addiction. Which is 100% logical bc I dont really talk about it, out of some regular basic shame and fear. Ive brought it up a few times.
Anyways I said i thought at times i was over it for good but now its made a huge reappearance, so I decided to get in touch with that community. He didn’t say a word of support or even aknowledgement. He just huffed and said “well damn… you just started (using) too early” . (I started when I was 15). I felt really misunderstood.
Im not an addict bc I started to soon. I am because no one, with emphasis on parents, noticed it even though I was smoking 24/7 and drinking a bottle of vodka every night! If someone had noticed and intervened early on, I wouldnt have gotten addicted. At least not that early.
Maybe I would still have later in life, bc Im “special”, but you know. Putting the blame of my addiction on my teenage self felt gross. Like he doesn’t get it at all.
He’s generally enlightened and progressive, and hes very intelligent. But idk. I feel like he thinks he understands everything and knows everything better. Often this is true. He is a great mind.
But still that doesn’t mean he always has a good understanding of other people. I felt misunderstood by him today. I generally feel like he doesn’t really get my struggles. Which ofc, no one really gets each other, but still. He’ll say things that don’t make me feel seen, thats the point. He says sth that makes me go ‘Oh wow ok hes got it completely wrong’.
Well, thats very normal. All we can do is communicate better. Just irks me that he believes that he has this higher level of consciousness while he can’t even understand the (frankly easy to grasp) basic human struggle of addiction.
I wish he would a little more small words of encouragement / aknowledgement to me. I always try to be very supportive verbally, he sometimes falls flat. But we’re all growing and I think it’ll be fine.
Congrats!!! Thanks for beinf an inspiration. I always enjoy your shares and hearing your story. Keep it up you are crushing it! Xo.
Day 5*
Thinking about personal responsibility this morning. I woke up angry. We have a wedding to attend this weekend… taking place on our property. They unloaded about 12 cases of beer into the upstairs fridge. I am very particular about my home feeling like my safe space and I feel like I have no course of action here for escaping. I do have a choice to not drink. I can create a plan of accountability with a sober pal for the wedding. I will keep focusing on the things I can do.
- I can’t take sobriety for granted.
Checking in. Day 312
Hey all, checking in on day 1158. I hope everybody has a good one!
Let’s try to reframe the language here. I was a “junkie” for many years. I get that we are ALL in recovery here so there’s some flexibility in our language, but also there’s people here who are in very early recovery from opiates.
Not trying to be on your ass about it as I have done the same thing myself and one of our stronger and vocal members called me out and she was right
Days PMO free: Day 13
Days with PS5 in the closet to close the day: 21
Days went to bed the same time with my wife: 21
Been getting my swims in, trying to get more sleep, Keeping a good daily focus for the most part. Progress over perfection so i dont expect everything to be rosey everyday. But i’m hopeful. Took my kids to open house as they start school next week. I was so pleased to watch my kiddos playing with others freely. Had the most interesting conversation with a dad. He was in a coma last year after a staff infection and Pneumonia(double whammy). He’s just happy to be alive. We had a great talk about just being thankful. Really put things in perspective for me. Another daily reminder for me to just appreciate the journey. My goal today is just mindfulness. Dont hand over my brain to impulses, plan my day and stay on task.
Good morning/Good afternoon/Good evening all.
Idk man, feels like the word police here. I mean isnt living a life where your actions are dictated by substance use a bad thing? Many of us have friends in active addiction that we have to distance ourselves from because they live like junkies and we want better. I think its not only normal to label, but accurate and a marker by which we can measure improvement. Id imagine if he wasnt in active addiction possibly, negatively impacting her daughter she wouldnt accurately describe the person with the word used to describe people living way below their potential due to addiction.
Thpught Id check in this AM. Will be 30 days in a few hours. Feels very good, and this the longest I have had since last summer during renovations. Its hard for me think wow, Ive gotten maybe to 30 days or around but it wasnt like this. Truly I was tryinf to do it all alone, searching for answers and its really REALLY amazing to me how much this space is helping just by checking in and reading others stories, shares, etc. You are all an inspiration to me, and I cannot believe my sober perspective was so small (in that I seriously thougjt the big book was the only book not saying anything against it! Love me the 12 steps abd whatever works for you is an amazing thing).
Just feeling grateful today. Smushing my kids with kisses this AM, and yoy kniw maybe my patience is down but thats okay Im human too. We have a surprise for our daughter, her oldest friend is coming today (one of hubbys best friends had a son 2 yrs before our daughter was born and she has known him her whole life). When we go away wr always want a bit of time just the family, but sometimes that time together is more mental and less bonding (but mental is bonding when you think of it anyway, just sitting in a cozy chair as hubby is down witb kids on tbe dock.
Life IS persective. Sometimes I feel thats all it is. We often have thinga go “wrong” on trips, and for a long time hubby and I had a running joke that we never ended up in the master bedroom (on our honey moon in Sicily its a funny story of our first day there of all these things, and then the big master bedroom didnt have ac and was a thousand degrees but we couldnt open the windows bc the mosquitos at night. So we dragged a mini twin mattress up the winding stairs that i slept on in a narrow hall outside the bathroom…I remember being a bit disappointed at first - why is the AC not in the bedroom, but up more stairs in a hall where the bathroom is!!! But next day, we were snuggled with eachpther on the matrress laugjing so hard about our “romantic” sleeping arrangements. It was an amazing honey mpon, and we still get a good laugh telling the story about hpw I slept outside the bathroom on a mini jr mattress…it was the start of more rentals to come where our daughter would get the master, as it would fit her playpen or could be darker/away from living room noise, and we’d be sleeping in the kids room 
). It lets me know how im doing when i look back qnd remember the good moments, or we can have a chuckle at the things we were worked up about (of course not speaking about being in denial of actual hard stuff or pretending pain isnt real…not what im talking about).
Anyway, meabt for this to be a breif check in but as you can see when I feel confortable i am anytbing but breif. Appreciate you all giving me a space to feel comfy and putting up with my talkative ass
Xo. Happy days guys. I fogure you may hear from me later lol