That sounds like a good start to the day. Do you go to meetings at all (either in person or on zoom?) or have sober podcasts or books that you are reading/ listening to?
For me, since I was an almost everyday drinker who was putting down a lot of booze each day…gearing part of my day (and in the beginning quite a significant part) towards actively engaging in my sobriety was really important. The more time I spent reading other peoples stories, hearing about triumphs and learning about pitfalls of sobriety, the more clearly I saw the reality of my own drinking.
Here are some of the recovery books that I either read or audibled (on long walks in the woods and in my car) throughout my first year of sobriety, some of them on repeat until the message got through!
I hope even one of them can help to fill that 3-6 o clock time for you
Alan Carr’s “Easy Way”
Russell Brands “Recovery”
Caleb Daniloff’s “Running Ransom Road”
Gabor Mate’s “ In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts”
Josh Levine’s “Refuge Recovery”
Khalil Rafati’s “I forgot to Die”
Judson Brewer’s “The Craving Mind”
Lisa Smith’s “Girl Walks out of a Bar” (which some may find triggering and feels particularly helpful for successful women dealing with drug and alcohol addiction but was truthfully VERY good)
Sharon Begley’s “Can’t just stop”
Erica Spiegelman’s “rewire”
You realise YOU ARE making a choice every time you give up on your sobriety day 3 or 4 or whatever, yes? The golf course didn’t get you. Your lack of commitment gets you every damn time. You get you.
And “too late”? You cant be fucked stopping after the golf course “got you”. But that’s just another excuse.
I would love you see you get your own back. You stand up for the Zach of the future and make some solid decisions.
You’ve got hundreds of suggestions above from literature to meetings and everything in between. I’ve not heard you follow up on a single one of them. maybe you’re just not posting that part, but my guess is you’re not actually doing any of them. Sorry if I’m wrong here obvs.
Zach, if nothing changes, nothing changes. Your thread here is the perfect example for this.
No one can help you but yourself. I don’t see that commitment from you one bit. This makes me sad and frustrated but I’m letting it go because it’s your life and as stranger on the internet there’s nothing I can do for you that I haven’t already done.
I sincerely wish you a change of heart. A change of action. And a change of head. Good luck. I’ll be checking this thread and I’m on your side. But not on the side that doesn’t stand by yourself.
Nope. That’s like saying “maybe some people just can’t do a push-up” after you try it once or twice after never trying it before - assuming your arm muscles were pretty weak obviously - and you can’t do it, then decide you obviously just can’t do it.
That’s false. Yes, you need to build some strength in your arms and shoulders to do a push up, so you need to put in the work and also eat right and take care of your body - but if you do that, you will be able to do a push-up, 100%.
You are scared and you are avoiding the effort, which is not the same as not being able to get sober. “Maybe some people just can’t do it” is code for “it’s easier for me just to say I can’t do it, because then I haven’t really failed, because I never really tried”.
You are choosing to not try, because it’s safer, emotionally, than the risk of trying and stumbling.
Who taught you that you weren’t allowed to be anything less than perfect? Because it’s sure keeping you stuck. You’re like “oh if I fail then my life is over, so I better not even try”.
Yes, you can get sober. Don’t tell me you can’t because I know that’s bullshit. If you wanna talk about why you’re scared of stumbles, scared of failures, then we have something to talk about. We’ve all failed in life. You pick yourself up and try again, try something different. I’ve got some stories, we all do. Let’s talk about that.
Please shoot me a message any time, any day. I work overnights right now so I have a lot of time to talk… I know personally I spend time stuck in my head when I have nobody to bounce things back and forth with… Which happens to be during the graveyard hours. So plesse give me a shout & I’ll even give you my phone number. Nobody should have to fight alone. I got you.
During my hours that I need to stay busy, I go for a 2 mile walk, work on a puzzle, call a friend & catch up (talk about how my sobriety is going & what my goals are to remind myself why I’m doing this), write lists of things I HAVE to accomplish, read 2 - 3 chapters in a new book. The KEY in my humble opinion, is to create realistic goals that won’t leave you feeling overwhelmed or disappointed. If the goals for the day aren’t met, remember, you always have tomorrow. You know why? Because you’re not waking up too hung over to function & saying “I’ll do that tomorrow”, and then never doing it. Set boundaries and rules for yourself. Do not break them. I didn’t clean my ceiling fan for a whole year because I “would do it tomorrow”… I have two cats & between the dander & dust… It was a horrific sight what I cleaned off. ( I also find cleaning sort of therapudic in my recovery… ) Sometimes you just have to find anything and everything to keep you busy. It’s really hard. When I was 11 days sober, I went through 2 weekends, MY birthday & a holiday without drinking. It was the most miserable time & I made everyone else have a horrible time because I have a problem. But I kept pushing, ( no matter how badly I wanted, how easily accessible it was ) because I don’t want to be a problem or have a problem around people who love and support me… even after they have chose to stay since I’ve royally ruined my life & reached rock bottom. We all want to see you succeed & beat this demon, friend. We know you can do it. You got this.
Need and want are two very different things. I needed to stop for probably over 10 years, but I definitely did not want to. I needed to drink every drop.
I’ve seen it many times on this forum, people just aren’t ready. But the attention they get from continually resetting is probably very comforting. It’s a Pavlovian response really. Ding the bell of relapse, get the praise of comfort of the forum.
I prefer your message and approach, but you and I are in the minority. It’s most likely your posts are being completely ignored as people are hesitant to accept that they aren’t doing the work it takes to get sober. It’s far easier to throw their hands up and say “I can’t do it”. It takes the responsibility of their recovery away from them. Classic alcoholic deflection behavior.
It makes me realize how helpless I am in situations like these. No-one can stop you from drinking, from climbing into your self-pity hole, except yourself. I lived there and it’s a fucking dark and lonely place.
I hope you can come back soon and make the best decision for you.
Yes!
There just isn’t enough tough love on here anymore.
I don’t come on to often these days but I love when I see people telling it how it is.
@Zach2 unfortunately until you put in the work and stop having pity parties you won’t get sober. I will be honest it doesn’t sound like you want to quit drinking.
I too used to make excuses. I would try to quit instead something would make me tho of drinking and I would never take blame myself.
It was always because of this or that.
It took me over 10 years of “trying” to finally get it to stick.
It took someone telling me about myself to even start thinking about it.
This thread has been up for what a month or 2 and you haven’t tried any of the things people have told you that have worked for them
But here’s my plan for sobriety
Wake up, don’t drink
Keep busy and don’t drink
Go to bed sober
Literally not drinking is fairly easy it’s the continuing to not drink that gets tough then even that will eventually get easy.
Work, draw, read, walk do things you enjoy doing.
When you start thinking about alcohol in that romantic way we alcoholics do. Remember all the bad that has happened while drinking or because of drinking. Think of all the things that could go wrong if you pick up that drink.
Play the tape all the way through not just to the point of having fun
For me it wasn’t even fun no more for at least a decade. Maybe two. I was just an addict with a habit. I knew it too for some years. When I finally took control of my life and took responsibility for my actions it clicked and it wasn’t even that hard to quit and stay quit too. Mindset is all.
In my opinion, the first step is acknowledging and admitting you have a problem, which it sounds like you have. The second part is to actually believe you have a problem and want to change it. You can admit that you have a problem all you want, but until you actually believe it and come to terms with it, you’ll never be ready to truly do the work to fix the problem. Nothing worth having in life comes easy. It takes willpower, sacrifice, and LOTS of work. But the end result to the finer things in life is always much more beautiful and worth every bit of the work you had to put into it to get there.
Pick yourself back up, brush your shoulders off, and keep working on yourself. Even if not for you at first, do it for your kids. They deserve the very best version of you that you can give them.
KEY