I agree, this is not the way to handle an all-the-way-around-stressful situation. Maybe the two of you need a little space until you settle into your new routine. It’s not very supportive. Yes, he’s stressed and he’s been wronged or whatever. I guess he has a right to be pissed, but he shouldn’t be telling you he’s going support you and then do shit like that. He’s got to understand that is’ not cool to treat you like that, regardless of what you’ve done.
We talked it through yesterday afternoon and we pretty much agreed on what you’ve all said. We’re making an appointment to see our therapist ASAP, and I also told him that if he can’t fully support me right now, I understand, but that I need to do this for me and I’m going to keep going through with becoming sober regardless. He understands what he did wrong and apologized, and explained that he doesn’t know how to act right now, hence why we’re going to the therapist as soon as possible to help both of us figure out how to work through this.
I again had a horrible sleep. I feel useless right now, and on top of a poor sleep I had to go sit at the Lab for 1.5 hours, after fasting for 14+ hours, for my blood tests. Now I’m all headachy and my eyes are dry, but I feel WAY better then I usually do on Sunday mornings!
Sounds like you’ve got your goals, and priorities set correctly. I hope that the therapy can help you both.
(emphasis added)
Don’t forget this. 
Seriously, remembering how your body complained after using seems to be one of the better ways to help keep yourself from going back. It’s not that I believe you’re going to feel good, now. The self-talk for people whom I’ve seen backslide often follows the pattern, “I’m feeling bad, now. When I was using I didn’t feel like this. So I might as well use again.” Which ignores the morning after feelings you’re focusing on, now.
There are a lot of ways to look at addiction. One of the ways I’ve always found easiest to internalize is the idea that your addiction can express itself as a separate series of thoughts, or patterns. In effect, it can feel like you’ve gotten a separate personality that wants you to fail. Obviously this isn’t a true disassociated personality, but I think it may be useful to ascribe what one might call your ‘addiction thinking’ to this self-destructive personality. When you recognize those thoughts you can label them as coming from that quarter, and they’ll lose some of their power. Not all, alas, but it’s one more way to put barriers between who you want to become, and who you have been.
If I make it through today it’ll be a week! A WEEK! I haven’t gone a week without alcohol in over a year, at least. I also slept like a log last night, I didn’t even wake up when D came to bed.
So I tell my boss this morning. I’m at work now waiting for her to arrive, as well as the Manager of HR, so I can get the ball rolling. My boss has a major presentation to the Board of Directors this afternoon that I’ve historically taken minutes for (I’m not an Assistant or anything, but through the years in previous roles I’ve taken minutes for this meeting and the VP’s and BOD love how I can do them real-time, etc., so the minute-taking role unfortunately stuck), and so I’ll be at work today.
I start my first workshop tomorrow morning, and although I’m nervous, I’m also very excited to get started on this.
I have also been dreaming of drinking almost every night. It’s always in a sneaky way and I always feel very guilty in my dream. It’s a relief when I wake up and I haven’t actually fallen off the wagon.
I also just wanted to thank all of you guys for your support. This past week has been rough, but I honestly think it would have been a lot worse if I didn’t have the support and empathy that I’ve seen in this thread. I wish you all every happiness you deserve.
I’ve been sober more than 20 years and I still have using dreams from time to time. You’ll learn to take them in stride.
Congrats on all the positive steps you’ve been taking.
My grandpa was an alcoholic for the majority of his life, and finally began to turn around about 10 years after retiring. Let me tell you, I am so glad he had the will to make that change. He died of a stroke several years later, but the few years we had left with him were great because without the drink, he was able to let go of old anger and resentment and we were able to get to know him for who he really was, and not the stumbling, embarrassing person he became when he was drunk. He was a happier person when he became sober.
Recovering will be hard at times, but the rewards you reap from sobriety will be great. It won’t only affect your life, but the lives of everyone close to you, and will enrich your relationships to those people. Good luck.
This is *very * common. They will diminish in frequency, but after ten years, I still have one occasionally.
EmanJ
Good on you! You’ve made it another day. 
It’s such an awesome thing to wake up sober every day isn’t it? Even though the process is scary and grueling sometimes, it beats a hangover any day.
The dreams, yeah, I have the dreams too. My sponsor has 10 years sober and she says she still gets them, especially when she’s under a lot of stress. Don’t let them get you down. You just ended an affair with an abusive lover and dreaming of her/him is part of the grieving process, part of the letting go.
Right now getting sober is at the forefront of everything you do, (which is good!!) and it’s not surprising that it’s invading your dreams. It’ll subside as you heal.
You’re doing all the right things, getting help for yourself, getting help for your fiance’. You’re talking to us. You’re staying away from the drink. I think you’re gonna be ok. Hang in there. You’re going to watch a world of opportunities for your life open up that you never thought possible. I’m proud of you.
Well, let’s not raise her expectations unreasonably. Some days, sobriety really sucks. She is going to have those days too. Those are the days you rely on the wisdom you learn from others who have gone through the same thing. One day at a time, the gift of today, letting go; they are trite little aphorisms, but sometimes they are the only knot in rope you have to hang on to when staying sober feels like shit. That is the value of meetings, to get the tools necessary to get past the days that don’t feel so awesome.
I was mostly a moderate drinker, having maybe one or two drinks each evening. Late last year I started a prescription regarding which the doctor said I needed to limit my alcohol consumption to just one glass of wine a day or the equivalent. In retrospect, I think by that time I was getting just a bit out of hand; what 10 years ago might have been a couple of glasses of wine in the evening, by last year had become a martini followed by a glass of wine, or two, or maybe another martini. At first I resented that I had to take this med, because I missed being able to have that extra drink if I so wished; nonetheless I’ve been successful at holding the line. And I don’t miss it much anymore. I feel better and I’ve lost midriff weight too, which totally rocks. Here I am, 50, and I’m wearing a pair of jeans that are 29 in the waist (thought this brand does run big). I’ve lost about 18 pounds, which worries the wife, but I think it was almost all alcoholic flab.
So what is my point in this rambling post? Try to focus on the benefits that come from reducing your alcohol intake or quitting completely.
I do agree with you. I’m not trying to squirt sunshine up her ass by any means. The process you go through to get sober can be grueling and it really sucks sometimes but as it’s been said before and I’ll say it again. “My worst day sober has been better than my best day drunk.”
I know I’ll have some rough times ahead, but right now I’m living in the moment and trying to remember how GOOD it feel so if I’m tempted in the future, I’ll think of this.
I had my first meeting this morning and it went really well, better then I expected actually. I thought it would be really dry and boring, but the people in the group wanted to talk about stuff, and it was really nice to be able to totally open up about my experiences and hear about theirs.
Today’s topic was Legal, Social and Activity impacts from drinking/drugs. We were made up of alcoholics, pot smokers, and crack addicts, all working to become sober. Although I don’t have any legal issues (thank goodness), listening to the problems they have, like legal/lawyer fees and problems travelling to or through the US was kind of a reminder of just how bad it can get.
I’m glad I went and feel more hopeful today then I did yesterday. I’m starting to be able to feel like I’m going to be ok.
After 3-4 years I don’t really think about my not drinking all that much. Last Sat after golf I had a couple of NAs while my buddy had a couple of pints.
But it did piss me off a bit when I went to an affair at our church, and they had NO NA options to drink. WTF? I wasn’t dying for booze, but I WAS thirsty!
I’m glad some of the darkness is lifting. That first week for me, the quitting, getting into an A.A. meeting, telling everyone what was going on, was so hard and gut wrenching. It’s taking that first step into the darkest forest and knowing you can’t turn around, you have to trudge on through. Just remember every step into the darkness is one step closer to getting out of it. When you’re halfway in, you’re already half way out.
It’s great that you liked your first meeting. Leaning on these people is integral to staying sober. Keep on keeping on and stay in touch when you can.
If you find that the “There,-but-for-the-grace-of-God,-go-I” stories are helpful, flip to the back of the Big Book for more.
WTF? I hope you complained to the people in charge of refreshments for that function. There are so many groups of people who cannot imbibe that having NA beverages seems a complete no-brainer.
Though, I’ve heard mixed feelings from treatment people about the wisdom of NA beers, esp. First, there’s apparently some residual alcohol in the beers, which bothers some of them. Second, are the concerns about the taste reminding the recovering person of using for simply psychosomatic reasons. I’m not saying you’re in danger of a relapse because of them, Dinsdale, but I want to make sure that EmAnJ hears that NA beer isn’t always considered perfectly safe.
Speaking of which - EmAnJ, I’m glad you had such a positive experience at your meeting. Those stories are always heart wrenching to me. It’s cold comfort, indeed, to know someone experienced worse than I did - and more frightening because I can usually see some echo of myself in their behaviors.
Like The Chao Goes Mu - just keep on keeping on. (And good on you, too, Chao!)
Oh yeah, it is quite a shock when you realize that you reduced your resistance to the point that you get a buzz off a couple of NAs! 
I rarely have NA around the house, but on occasion when I’m out somewhere I’ll have 1 or 2. to me, it is a pretty bright line that I am able to not accidently cross. And I haven’t met the NA yet that could possibly be confused with my favorite ales, stouts and porters of yore! 
I suppose it isn’t the same for everyone. Purely from the taste point of view, many traditionally popular NA drinks are overwhelmingly sweet. NA beers and mocktails can be a godsend to those who don’t want to drink alcohol, whether on a particular occasion or for the rest of their lives, but also don’t care for sweet drinks. A favorite mocktail of mine is cranberry juice with a liberal squirt of lemon or lime juice, and a dash of bitters. The bitters do contain alcohol, but you only use a few drops so it probably doesn’t matter for most people. I could drink those all day then go for a drive and I wouldn’t have enough alcohol in my system to worry about. Tonic water, bitters, and lime is another good one.
It’s not as long as it sounds. Four years ago I managed to drag myself up to the frozen tundra of Marquette, Michigan for 90 days of residential treatment of opiate addiction. This was my third rehab over a span of fifteen years; yeah, sometimes it takes more than once if you’re not ready to hear what they’re teaching.
Inpatient rehab is very regimented and some of the rules and activities will seem pointless or juvenile…and it’s possible that they really are. But I found that having someone else make all the simple daily decisions for me left my battered mind free to concentrate on learning how to stay clean. Being sequestered for three months meant that if I wanted to use again, I was going to have to work harder to do it than if I was in the outside world. It was actually a relief to be in an environment with very little freedom since there were safety nets in place to catch me when I was overwhelmed by the jones.
Really, six weeks will fly by. If you go in with the knowledge that you’ll be giving up some control in certain areas so that you can learn how to resume control of others, you’ll do just fine.
Good luck to you. Obviously, you and the others in this thread who’ve spoken of your current struggles with addiction are not at all alone. Whether you have remarkable total success, success in small increments with foibles and backward steps, or total failure, we understand because we’ve been there. And we’ll be here for you, too.
I should just add that this was not an AA meeting. This is through AADAC (Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission) and is not religious-based at all. It’s the same idea, but not at all including religion or a higher power (yet, I guess you never know!).
I was actually thinking yesterday evening, after a long bike ride in the heat, about how a beer would be nice and considered how maybe in the future I could have NA beer. But after consideration I realized that it’s the actual fizziness and cold of the beverage, so why not have a pop or something instead if I’m craving that.