New here - kindly asking for help

Hi everyone,
I am new here I’m trying to sober up I’m an alcoholic and can’t stop the urge to want to drink.
I quit and then relapse - does anyone have advice on how I can stop acting on the “want/need” to drink? Today is day 1

10 Likes

Hi @Arw and welcome to Talking Sober :wave: :innocent:

Addiction is a set of habits we create to avoid life (we avoid pain, or boredom, or grief, or loneliness, etc etc). We’ve done it for years. Eventually we get to a point where we want to change. It sounds like you are at that point, or near it.

It isn’t possible to recover from addiction alone. You need contact with other people in recovery. For some people, that contact is here on Talking Sober. For others, it’s Talking Sober plus recovery groups (there is a good list of those groups here: Resources for our recovery). But everyone needs to learn from people who know more about addiction than they do.

In the early days it is important to reach out and make those contacts, and it’s important to accept that cravings will come, but you do not have to act on them. Instead, reach out to a recovery friend and share your feelings, your worries.

You are not alone.

4 Likes

Hey Arw,
Congratulations on day 1.
Being active on here was key to my sobriety. Now I go to AA meetings too. Have an open mind and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

There’s lots of great threads with tons of great ideas that help.

And quite a few daily check in threads.
Like the Checking in Daily thread
And the gratitude thread.
:pray:t2::heart:

5 Likes

Welcome @arw. I used Antabuse and enforced accountability in my early days. I found AA meetings to be a good safe place to be when I was trying to not drink.

One tip is that you’re going to feel the tug to drink, but you don’t have to succumb to it. Cravings, I found, are fairly transient, they last for a few minutes of peak intensity then they reduce.

Keep checking in here, that’s a great start!

3 Likes

I appreciate your tips everyone!
And I’m grateful there’s a safe space for me to talk it through

1 Like

Welcome to a great community :herb:
Day one is one of the most important day,
one day at a time…go on step by step

3 Likes

Hi and welcome here,
Being here every day the first year of my recovery helped me to stay focussed. Because at day one I felt misserable because of the hangover so not drinking was easy.
Day 2 I felt a bit better and was confident I could be sober forever.
At day 3 I felt great and thought well one drink couldn’t hurt can it?
And the next day I was at day 1 again :thinking:
I did that merry go round a couple of time before I decided to add some extra help like this forum here.
So I hope to see you here often, there is so much good info to find here and suportive nice people to meet.
See you around! :raising_hand_woman:

4 Likes