I’m back on day 1 and glad to be here.
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Glad that you made it back.
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Hi friend! I’m sorry to see this as we are sober twins (or at least close) and I still consider that to be the case. Are you done with finals? You are working a good program, Hazy. Back at it and lots of self care while you are between semesters. It isn’t easy going back to school at age 42. I admire you.
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Thanks @LeeHawk …it’s been a bit crap since the semester finished, I have to revise for Jan exams and I’ve lost my flow with worries of Christmas day etc. I finished some step 3 yesterday morning and looked at my other step work, I pottered around and did some painting, I couldn’t get into my work, I got presents for my 3 kids and bought a fridge freezer ( I haven’t had one for nearly a month and been leaving milk outside) so just been slowly drowning in money worries, ( car, cat to vets ) all come the last month.
Drinking didn’t make it better, I knew before hand it wouldn’t, it was more like a self harm action.
Sorry to hear about the struggles youve been facing, sometimes things kind of just unravel, things can be like a rubber band just winding up til it snaps. Glad that it was nothing too serious an you can pick yourself back up from your little set back, besides some money issues and the holidays. My wife was telling me about a co worker who is a fugitive now from a incident from this past week, facing felony charges, suspended from work, probably wont be able to be rehired, loose her certification an ability to work in health care, probably wont see her children for a while, face imprisonment, be stuck with the stigma of being a felon if shes convicted, an she just chose to try and go on the run. What alcohol does is just devastating, rips families and people apart, makes me sad when i read about it all the time in the news breaks my heart when so many people are affected and so little is done to get the help we need. I wish you well and pray for your strength to get back on track an into a better head space. 
its great that you come right back here, ODAAT.
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Relapses are opportunities for me to take a close look at my life and recovery path to determine what changes need to be made.
It seems, from the title of your thread, that you were already sensing that something was off.
Here’s my experience. I recall two recent experiences in which I relapsed after being sober for over 240 days and over 290 days. I was unknowingly using a willpower method.
Willpower can be defined as: The ability to delay gratification, resisting short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals. The capacity to override an unwanted thought, feeling, or impulse.
The problem with this method for me is that I subconsciously placed a huge amount of value on my DOC. So when the chips were down, or if I was reaching a milestone, my subconscious self would carefully scrutinize my life comparing sobriety to this overly glamorized life of addiction. I craved a lot. Thinking that if I achieved a certain amount of sobriety, then the cravings would just naturally fall away like others have experienced. But they didn’t.
What’s working for me now is following an EasyWay path. I’m challenging the other variable that doesn’t get discussed a lot in many traditional recovery programs; which is the high amount of value that I place on my DOC. The truth is my addiction has no value. It has no benefit. It offers me nothing. As you just experienced with this last drinking session. But let me assure you, alcohol leaves the user wanting more. And if one keeps on drinking, that person will start to see it as something that offers something even though it’s all an illusion.
I no longer use a willpower method because I no longer see my drug as gratification, period. Thus, I don’t want it and I don’t crave it. Why crave something or use something that has no value? Even when life is difficult, my drug still has nothing to offer. A lot of experienced members on TS no longer associate value to their DOC. That is a big secret to their success.
Before that, my sobriety was in a constant danger of relapse. It was like an unstable equilibrium where any wrong move or event could set me rolling down that slope to using. I was sober, but I was white knuckling it, a dry drunk still on the hamster wheel with my thoughts of glamorization of porn. In that sense, I was still eventually heading towards a relapse.
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Thankyou so much for that share. …day at a time… back to some regular online meetings I think. Find some similarities and think about my stuff. Really glad to be out of the run up to picking up. It was like a heavy cloud. Need to find some better coping tools. I’ve managed 9 months with a decision to change that started it. I’m gonna put more work in to recovering than I did the last few months.
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