just got back from AA, and it still feels like a punishment, same as having to stop drinking. It´s hard to think differently about it. Okay, I had a big crisis, made a mistake, but that doesn´t mean I have to be punished for months. And the difficult thing is the feeling of injustice. Like I am being more punished than my uncle who abused me. And that makes me angry.
Right after the crisis I could see the severity (with help from AA and this forum) but now, especially since my dissociative dissorder it feels like months ago. And like I have been “good” for so long now. This makes it even more difficult. I keep thinking about wos severe it was and that I do have a problem. Logically I get it, but emotionaly I feel so bad.
This is how addiction works, remember that. Get drunk, feel awful after, resolve to change and stick to it, start to feel better as time goes on, start to think it wasn’t “that bad”, then drink and go back to the start. I was on that hamster wheel for years. Search around here and you will see the same story, same pattern for plenty of people here.
I would urge you to try and shift your perspective, which can be difficult to do. Rather than viewing not drinking as punitive, you could look at it as an opportunity to grow into your best self - and the next chance to do so is never guaranteed.
Part of me sees it that way. Is glad that I´m not allowed to drink anymore. Hopeful, excited even, to find new ways of dealing with stuff and feeling more and be more alive. Another part if terrified. Like I have been using alcohol not just as a way to escape my emotions and stuff, but to make my life barely tolerable. And now believing or seeing a way to improve myself and my life. I feel like a pingpong going from one extreme to the other.
I would also urge you to try and look at it as an opportunity to learn new healthy ways to deal with life .
it’s hard work though and you really have to want it. It’s by no means a punishment though if grateful to have another day where I have the opportunity.
I’ve just returned from a relapse so I know what you mean about feeling like it wasn’t that bad once the initial guilt ect moves away .
because of this I have written a detailed and emotionally charged a reflection of what happened during my relapse , how I felt then and afterwards so I can remind myself how it felt at the time and remember I never want to feel like that again . I am also attending online meetings and reading more quitting literature and coming here twice a day .
there’s a life out there that doesn’t require drinking and I really want to find it . Don’t you ?
The perspective shift can be a pragmatic too: You don’t drink alcohol, end of story. Just a fact. No discussion about it, no emotional upheavals can change that.
I use(d) this approach for several things (not only for addiction) and for me it was freeing to tell my running with scissors brain that it can shut the fuck up, there is no discussion about it. It’s NO and NO is a complete sentence, no matter which tantrum brain, heart, soul or gut throw. Coping by healthy behaviour is on the menu today.
I´m going through my journals (where I often wrote while drunk) and I guess I will come across some pages where I write about how awful I feel and how much I want to quit.
I´m both curious and terrified to see how my life would look without alcohol
I can’t speak for anyone else, but once I had a few months of sobriety and the cravings had settled down…life was so much more peaceful. I mean aside from the chaos of drinking and the consequences. I hated myself less. There was so much less noise in my brain –should I drink, can I drink, where can I hide it, can anyone tell, why am i doing this, I better switch where I shop for booze so the clerk doesn’t think I’m an alcoholic –and that is fucking priceless.
I finally got to a point when I realized that I wasn’t being deprived of alcohol but alcohol was depriving me of life.
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That´s a nice thought. I can see how you live more fully when not being brainfogged by alcohol. At the moment I feel like I need this fog to cope with life though. It´s easier to numb myself than to change my life in a way I don´t need to escape it
I think it´s difficult because I am externally motivated to not drink. It´s not by choice that I quit so it´s hard to firmly stand by a NO. I keep thinking about all the reasons why, trying to picture a happy life without alcohol, thinking about all the consequences and how worse it could get. Still it´s so hard to find that internal motivation
What will happen if you do drink? I don’t mean like we talk about on here but you say forced and that makes me think your significant other will leave you oryou’ll fail a urine test or something. What makes you feel forced? What consequenses apply other than shame and guilt and the usual trouble drunks get into?
I got sober on probation (not the beginning, lol, obviously) and while desperately trying to get my man back. My sober date is the day after valentine’s day because I made a full blown ass of myself as I displayed my love for him.
All the time I felt forced and like I didn’t get what I’d stopped for. I glamorized “the last drink” as some future thing I’d still do because I knew getting sober had to happen… but now?!? When my man hated me and I still had the law all over me and when my last drink was in the early morning and was the bottom 2 fingers of a fifth of bottom shelf vodka I’d been drinking from the bottle out of, so it was full of the previous night’s back wash and warm? Gross. I could do better, right? I kept thinking my last drink should he like my first kiss or something. It would be top shelf scotch at the sunset when I felt like a million bucks.
In the end, that was ok though because that kept my body sober until I could get my mind caught up. I didn’t really want to be sober until I was about 4 months in and the probation violation hearing was behind me and my man was still visiting sometimes while showing me things about him and our relationship that were actually unsavory. Like, did I really want him all that bad now? Really, the uncertainty factor was reduced a lot and I used to drink over uncertainty and anxiety when I wasn’t drinking out of habit. It’s ok to be salty about it and feel like it’s not fair because feelings mature over time when you don’t stifle their development.
I´ve had a terrible panick attack after being triggered and got totaly hysterical so police had to come to the pub and had to handcuff me because they couldn´t calm me down. Because of this it´s possible that I get a fine and even have to go to a judge. It´s been 2 months now. So I have to behave in case I have to go, show the judge I am working on myself. This didn´t go so well because about a month ago I went to a party and fained while dancing so the ambulance had to come. These events don´t happen often, but smaller things do. I didn´t drink often but when I drink it´s a lot. And my husband is sick of having to worry what will happen this time when I start to drink, having to care for me when I have a flashback or when something triggers extreme bad feelings and suicidal thoughts,… So he is done with it. Like when one more time it would get out of hand, he will leave.
But because we have relationship problems (not due to drinking) I sometimes don´t care. It´s often I drank because he was agressive (never physical) or when we would go out or on a weekend and he had expectations like connection and intimicy. Or when I wanted to have fun with him without my mind or problems getting in the way.
And I think this makes going sober even more difficult. What if when I start to connect more to my feelings, I will learn that I don´t have feelings for him anymore? I´ld rather stay together drunk than leaving him sober.
Well, that sounds a lot more real and contemplated than just being forced. It also sounds like the things you feel forced by are somewhat more of “what if” kinds of situations. You have more power than you think. What could happen if you call your power back to you? You would rather keep a hostage than be sober with yourself and the facts you have to work with? What if you allowed yourself to love and prioritize yourself to yourself as much as you do with him. You’re worth that. So was I but I was disgusted with myself. To say I hated myself was an understatement. The relationship with self is the only one that is with you forever and can’t be taken away. It’s worth having a good one and seeing yourself as worth having one.
You also say some promising things. If you don’t drink all the time and just get carried away then you are likely not physically addicted. No wonder you feel chastised with sobriety when substance abuse is not likely your core issue. It is my opinion that sobriety is a good start but mental health support would be good too. You might learn some helpful things about yourself and even if you don’t, if you do end up infront of a judge they love that kind of stuff and proving what you are doing is much easier than proving what you’re not doing. Saying “it seems like ai have some kind of panic disorder and I am trying to define and manage it with these professional appointments” sounds somewhat better than saying you have not been drinking and showing a list of possibly forged AA meeting attendance list, assuming you even have that.
Motivation comes from doing, not before doing. Do it long enough and you might like the result. If you like addicted misery more, go back to it after the ordered sobriety streak is over. That’s a choice.
A sober life is not based on motivation, it’s based on the work you put into recovery to create a life that you don’t want to escape.
Ever since I was a child I suppressed my own needs because it was too painful to see them not being met. So much that I didn´t feel I had them. I developed an eating dissorder to keep pushing them away. I´ve been in therapy for half my life but got the wrong diagnosed and not the right help. Only last few years with IFS things really started to shift internally, and more trauma came to surface. Also trauma from within my relationship which I couldn´t see so clearly before. I began to take myself and my struggles more seriously, and started to feel compassion instead of self blame and hate. And now it´s so difficult to see that I want my life to be so different and not feeling strong or capable enough to change it. Also I have distinct parts (that feel like not me) who have different opinions and needs. This makes it even more difficult to know what I want. But I guess getting to know myself (in total) and loving myself should be a priority.
So yeah, alcohol isn´t my main issue and is more like a last resort at times, than really an alcohol problem. But because those moments are life threatening I really have to stop drinking, at least as long as my traumatherapy is so heavy. I´m glad I´m not physically addicted, don´t have withdrawal symptoms, but on the other hand this makes it also difficult because I don´t have the benefits from quiting alcohol.
Thank you for your post. It made me realy think about this.
I started it with this in mind. That I really had to give this a chance, and fully commit myself to the recovery and improving myself and my life. And indeed with the idea that I can always go back afterwards. Thank you for the reminder.
Alcohol is just not your only problem. It’s a lot to juggle and figure what the dominant issue is. I hope things go well with the judge if you have to see one. Lots of people here do AA but I do that and find ACA is also helpful for me in dealing with the dysfunctional trauma stuff. Maybe google The Laundry List and The Other Laundry List, which is the other side of the spectrum of The Laundry List behavior. That might be a lot though with what you’re already doing. It did just help me to see it listed out and know I am not the only one fucking my life up in such specific ways.
