I have been sober since 06-07-08. And am now a LCAC who counsels for a living. I have read several posts about people choosing not to drink today. I have an alcoholic mind and never felt like drinking was a choice, I had to. An obsession of the mind and an allergy of the body. It took 7 rehabs and countless meetings for me to genuinely surrender to alcohol. I don’t see surrender mentioned often here, for alcoholics like me it’s the only way. I am pleased to see people supporting each other with comments like " you can beat this". But I never could, I had to genuinely surrender. Keep in mind there is a huge difference between compliance and surrender. I complied to programs for years, doing stepwork, reading, sharing etc. But continued to get drunk. I needed guidance through this process, whether it be a sponsor in a 12 step program or a counselor who has been through the process, if you want to surrender as well seek help.
Surrender is not a popular word in our culture but necessary for drunks like me to enter a sober, joy filled life. I have never been able to " whip " alcohol and the phrase " you got this" never applied to me. Total surrender to alcohol, it’s sometimes a slow process but usually starts the spiritual reorganization of a person with an alcoholic mind. Which leads to the simple, priceless thought of…I do not feel it necessary to drink to live my life.
Recovery advice is a buffet, take what you like or need and leave the rest.
Me either.
So are you basically saying that forcing yourself to do rehab, programs etc didn’t work and it was about realising you didn’t need it? Because I think a lot if people on here feel like that. For years I didn’t know how to live without it, and it totally ruined my life. Then one day the thought occurred to me that I don’t really need this to survive, I just need to stop and that’s it. Something along those lines anyway, I can’t explain how strong I felt that day. That strength and that way of thinking seemed to come out of nowhere. And I do genuinely feel strong most of the time, but Alcohol is a big part of our society and its easy to get drawn back into drinking. This site for me is a reminder of the importance of sobriety, reading people’s stories and relating, as there are some days I seem to forget how important it is, by getting too wrapped up in other situations. As for cheering people on, it’s not going to make people quit, but it’s nice to know there are other people out there who have been through the same thing. Those people know for a fact that you can quit, that it is not impossible, and that is a comfort to some extent . It’s just nice to know people have faith in you.
For me coming to meetings in early soberiety i only knew that i wanted to stop id reached my gutter i was lucky i found a great sponsor and he guided me through the steps and he passed on his experience which today i pass on to my sponserees one thing it has taught me its ok to talk the talk its the walk the walk thats important thats why i suggest here that try a meeting it might help its much harder to do this alone ,when i got sober there wasnt any other place to go then but i knew i was home after my first meeting and havnt had any reason to go out and try it again ,i had to surennder to win and up to now its worked wish everyone well
I can see what you mean about choosing, I don’t wake up in the morning and say I’m going to choose not to drink today. It never really felt like a choice when I was a drinker. My whole mindset has changed and now, for some reason it’s not the first thing I think about when I wake up. Sorry for the edit, I just realised what you said about it taking several rehabs, meetings etc. to surrender to alcohol. Think I read your post too quick lol. But yeah, that’s great that worked for you but I don’t think all alcoholics need rehab and meetings to surrender to alcohol.
Thank you for your post! I always enjoy hearing different point of views in recovery.
I can only speak for me, but i do have a choice today… i guess it depends on how you look at things. When i was drinking and using, my choice was taken from me. Now that im sober, i do make the decision daily to not drink or use. I mean i dont wake up and am like i choose to do this, this, and this, not that, but that. Not like that at all. But i make the conscious decision to not take any mood or mind altering substances. Its life or death for this girl. I wonder if some realize the seriousness of the disease… but thats not for me to say either way.
But I do agree with you on the surrender part. It wasnt until i completely surrended, that i actually stayed sober. I too, many rehabs, detox’s, IOP’s, meetings, but i just wasnt ready to let it go completely! The rehabs, detox’s, IOP’s, and meetings helped tremendously though… It set my foundation for my recovery today. I always use the saying, you cant build a houae with just 1 tool, you need multiple. For me personally, Thats like my recovery, i need multiple tools to stay sober, not just 1. If it were that easy, i would have stayed sober 5 years ago when i started this process. And everybody would be doing it.
Also, the talk like “you can do this”… I do say this to people, i try to encourage people when they are down and out. I also say, its going to be okay. Because those are the things i needed to hear… i needed to hear that shit because i was so hopeless and helpless when i got here. No faith what so ever. Feelings of uselessness and self pity.
I try to remember where i came from… not just where im going.
Thanks for listening.
Sometimes I wonder if we get caught up in the baggage that words come with, particularly in English… Like much of the language in the AA literature, surrender does not necessarily mean what first glance takes them as now. We take surrender to mean giving up ,allowing X to control our future actions from a place of weakness.
In this context, surrender, to me, is a much different word. Surrendering as it pertains to alcohol/drugs, to me, means acknowledging that I cannot control what happens once a drink or drug enters my system and that once a drink or drug enters my system, all bets are off as to my control. Confronted with this reality, I can understand why people ask if there really is a choice. This choice is really nothing more than a Hobbson’s choice at this juncture for me.
Surrender requires that I understand that a better life is possible and that I want to have this better life. Understanding that a better life was possible was not easy in the fog of alcohol. I thought that this was just how life was and I was coping the best I could. Only when I had that moment of clarity and desperation, did I understand that life without alcohol for me was possible (and was at least no worse than where I found myself) and that I truly did not want to die. That moment of choice is quite possibly one of the scariest moments I have ever encountered, as I did not know if i could and if i couldn’t whether i would have another chance. At that moment i chose, what i know understand to mean surrender. I, me, by myself, could not do this any longer.
And so the journey began. So surrender in this context, to me, is a place of strength and a decision that alcohol was no longer going to control my future actions.
Very well summarized, thanks. The four paradoxes of recovery sums it up well also.
I love reading people’s comments on this site. They are so often well considered, intelligent, insightful and provide strength and support to me.
This is a valid perspective, although one that doesn’t apply to me. I am just wired differently. Drinking that first drink has always been a choice. I have always had control over that first drink.
But my choice always ended with that first drink. Sometimes I could stop after one. Most times I couldn’t. But whether or not to take that first drink was, is, and ever shall be my choice.
In defending my sobriety, no retreat. No surrender.
Much of the time, choice applied to me. And mich of the time, it did not. I really can’t say why quitting stuck with me thus time around, except that I did one thing differently. For me, I had to admit defeat and then turn to fellowship with those who knew what it took to stay sober.
Me too. The first drink was a more casual choice. The fifth drink was pure compulsion. It always just sounded like a great idea. Let’s go get drunk and play video games! Suddenly I’m blacked out walking around the neighborhood or taking Ubers I don’t remember.
It’s sad and I wish it weren’t that way. I like drinking. Didn’t like me.
One of the biggest reoccurring thought patterns for those in the throes of illness, or general unwellness, tends to follow the pattern of: “Why can’t I be better again?” A longing for recovery is the logical antithesis of illness. Wellness, pictured through the lens of unwellness, is the idyllic goal. But rarely do we consider the realities of life after recovery. We never take the time to fully prepare ourselves for the reality and paradox of wellness: recovery relies solely on the realisation that recovery cannot fully exist.
Great point. What if we thought about it like the disease that so many says it is. What if we thought about it like cancer. Cancer survivors I know never speak in terms of being “cured”. The say “my cancer is in remission” and they are always guarding against it’s return.
My alcohol problem is in “remission”. As long as I refuse to take that first drink, it will remain in remission. If I choose to take a drink, I run the very real risk of my alcohol problem returning, with a malignancy greater than my ability to fight it.
I am not willing to take that chance, not when it is 100% preventable, by my choosing to simply never drink again.
I still think alcohol problems are manifestations of other problems too. It’s a common feature of other psychiatric illness. I probably have something like borderline personality disorder. Definitely obsessive about anything.
Could be. It could also be purely physiological for others. Take hives for example. Some break out as a reaction to anxiety, others to some physical stimulus like an allergen.
We know it runs in families. Could be nature. Could be nurture.
Regarding me, and I can only apply this to me, I am not going to waste time digging for some underlying cause. Even if I were successful, what purpose could it serve? Some repressed trauma or undiagnosed psychological disorder that only manifested in a drinking problem? If I treat that, I can drink “normally”? Nah. I’ll just stay away from it, as if I were allergic to it. If I were allergic to shellfish, I wouldn’t eat them. No need to search for a reason “why”…just accept that I am, and move on living my “shellfish-free” lifestyle.
And thankfully, I’m not allergic to shellfish. Feel bad for those who are. Love me some blue claws, clams and mussels.
Hmmm I usually love reading your posts and agree with you most of the time. But on the one I see it differently. Treating my addiction only as an allergy would never be enough for me. I truly believe that there’s reasons why we want to numb the world away. And I had to address these “why’s “. Now I get where you are going in general here. But I think as addicts about everyone I’ve seen has crap that they have tried to run from and not feel, so if I address those things it allows me to put them to rest. I may not have fixed a darn one but I had to accept them. I know I’m getting pretty nit picky about this but I’m the type that had to come to terms with these why’s Inn order to become this person I am now. I am not trying to argue I just had to share my thoughts of fixing our why’s.
I appreciate your views. Like I wrote, I can only apply this thinking to me. I’m not carrying your rucksack. I have no idea what you’ve got in yours. But I think you and @Nullcorp are focusing on the color of the juice, and are missing the flavor of what I am saying. Scroll up to where I was commenting on this as a disease from which we are in perpetual recovery. Don’t we often read it described as such?
So what kind of disease is it? Physiological? Psychological? Does it matter?
I treat it like something from which I am currently in remission, and I have complete control over whether or not it returns. I have total power over prevention. I can’t risk one single drink, because it always begins with one sigle drink.
I am not going to go digging through my psyche searching for some root cause that may or may not be there that only manifests itself in a willingness to drink. This for me, would be a search for an excuse. I recognize there are some very broken people who are using and drinking to numb some pain. Heck, the two times I can say I drank with a purpose were times I was grieving. But in the in between times, I really had no “reason” to drink. I just did “because 'merica”.
Your mileage may vary. Different road. Different origin. Different destination. Different pack. Just calling out what I see on my journey.
@Chad_R and @Yoda-Stevie. The classic debate of whether nature or nuture determines human behavior. In my case, I believe I was genetically predeposed (nature) to be an alcoholic - the disease of alcoholism runs on my father side of the family. However, I have come to believe it was the enviroment I was raised in (nuture) that caused my character defects and the alcohol gene to be ecpressed. I used alcohol to ease the pain caused by my character defects.
For the first three months of my sobriety (which were pretty easy) I was in the @Yoda-Stevie camp. However, I started struggling and decided to go to AA in my fourth month. I soon came to believe I needed to put my alcoholic gene in my “Ruck Sack” and go camp with @Chad_R if I desired lifelong sobriety. I truly believe the AA program and fellowship are what has kept me sober for 430 days. I will be interested to see if @Yoda-Stevie thoughts change as he gets closer to six months of sobriety.
I’ll be sure to let you know.