Some people tend to want to fix the world once the blinders of booze have been lifted. This is something that the more rational in the groups can avoid, but it does happen.
Don’t let that squash your happiness for feeling better though.
And don’t forget to be really proud of yourself for taking this step. Congratulations!
I have been sober for almost 18 years. Went to a rehab program for a month, was introduced to AA, still go to two meetings a week, have a sponsor, sponsor other women and worked the 12 steps. I am an active member of AA.
Works very very well for me.
I’ve been sober a little more than 3 years. I didn’t start out with AA, because I didn’t really believe I was an alcoholic. I should note that I’m probably the ONLY person who didn’t believe that. I decided my life was so miserable that I was going to take some time off in order to get my shit together. Getting my shit together was HARD once I was sober and realized that things were even worse than I’d let myself believe when I decided to take a break.
At first, things went pretty well (I’m not familiar with the ‘pink cloud’ phrase, but that sounds about right) until about 6 months in - at which point I started having daily panic attacks and fits of unfocused rage. At that point I went into therapy, which helped tremendously.
Another 6 months or so went by and I had to have some dental work done where I was going to be prescribed painkillers for a week afterwards. I got scared that it was going to make me remember how much I enjoyed being not-in-my-right-mind, and my therapist took the opportunity to get me to go to an AA meeting (she’d been trying to convince me to go to AA in addition to therapy for months. I resisted.)
So I went to my first AA meeting after being sober for a year. While listening to everyone else talk, my inner monologue consisted of the word “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!” Every story had something - even if it was just a throwaway detail - that made me realize I wasn’t, in fact, more complicated and unusual a case. I hadn’t just ‘let things go too far.’ I was a fucking alcoholic.
Anyway, I went to more meetings and didn’t love the God stuff. I’m not a hardcore atheist, but - and this isn’t something I’ve been particularly successful at explaining to people, but I’ll try again - I felt like my relationship with God (or the possibility of a God) was too shaky a thing to base my sobriety on. I felt like I had to deal with my drinking as a separate thing from my lack of faith & my resentments towards religion. To link the two seemed like a guaranteed way for me to get fed up with the whole mess.
Here in Chicago, we AA meetings for atheists and agnostics. They’re called Quad-A meetings, but that might only be the local shorthand. I assume other large cities have something similar. Anyway, they were a God-send for me, if you’ll pardon the terrible choice of words. I’m a semi-regular at 2 of them, depending on my school schedule, and they’re so valuable to me. While I don’t go as often as I used to, it’s important to me that I know they’re there, and that I have people I can speak to if need be.
I’ve gone to a few regular AA meetings since, and every one is different. I think some are great, and some are so Jesus-y it’s like being around my born-again relatives. They praise Jesus for fucking everything. The truth is, the way my head works, there are times I need to acknowledge that I made the right choice because it was the right choice - not that Jesus did it for me.
And after 3 years, I wouldn’t say I have it all figured out. I’m still working on what to do during a crisis, for example. I have a family thing going on right now that’s really making me an emotional wreck, and for years and years, my way of dealing with that kind of thing was drinking. Obviously that’s not an option now, so I’m having some sleepless nights and some general behavior weirdness. It’s just that I’ve been sober long enough to know that if that’s what I have to deal with, I’ll at least come through the other side of this without having made everything worse by drinking.
I don’t know what specific advice to give you. Things are going to be different, and change is scary. It’s always been hard for me to admit that I needed any kind of help, but as you can tell, I really DID. If you have a similar problem, learn to let people help you. People in AA, shrinks, counselors - they all WANT to help you, and they almost definitely know more than you do about sobriety. So let them help.
Oh, and for me, I had to re-learn how to be honest. All my years of lying to cover up my drinking and how awful my life had become had really turned me into a giant liar and I hadn’t even realized it. But you can’t benefit from counseling or AA unless you tell the truth, especially if it’s the ugly kind of truth that you KNOW you’d have lied about while you were drinking. I don’t know that everyone has this problem, but I sure did.
I was going to write something that wouldn’t have added much to the discussion, so instead would just like to say my warmest wishes for your recovery and physical and mental health.
Me too, to all the SoberDopers.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m sort of a ringer here. Or maybe I mean a sort of impostor, as it were, but I offer the following as a potential source of encouragement.
I never acknowledged being alcoholic, nor did I ever make a conscious decision to quit drinking. In retrospect, though, I was starting to mop the stuff up a bit too fervently, work-related stress being the cause. At any rate, there came a time when, due to a medication I was on, I was cautioned not to drink more than one glass of wine a day. At the time I was drinking martinis, generally at least one a day along with one or two additional alcoholic drinks of some kind. To be honest, it was hard at first, and I really missed having that second, or even third, drink. I changed my drinking “schedule” so that I would have that one glass of wine at the time when I would have had one of the extra drinks before, feeling that it was the second drink I was missing more than the first that I was still allowed to have. Weeks passed, and then months, but I stuck to it. Then surprisingly I started to want it less. I started cutting it out all days of the week but one, when I would allow myself some sort of libation. After that, I noticed I was forgetting to have alcohol on that one day. I’m not sure why this happened; in my case, it might be due to a medication I’m on which diminishes the urge to drink; I still like the taste of alcoholic beverages, including the way that alcohol itself tastes in those beverages, but I don’t like the way it makes me feel, either at the time of drinking, or the next day. Possibly it’s just age; I’m narrowing in on fifty-one. So now, without having ever planned for it, or decided to do so, I’m aboard the wagon except for a pinky toe or two hanging out the side. If you asked me three years ago if this would happen, I would have said it was impossible.
The thing that makes me happy about all this is that my mood generally has improved a great deal.