Your help and support have been nothing short of incredible, and I am still on my streak. I don’t have many people around me, and it is here that I received this purposeful and accurately measurable support that greatly helped and continues to.
That’s great news. I would like to encourage you to continue and the very best way to continue - according to most knowledgeable sources - is to take things one day at a time - starting with today!
I would like to encourage you to make a friend - specifically with someone who would act in the capacity of a sponsor. You say that you’ve had some experience with AA. Would you agree that having a person you can meet with and talk over your problems with is a real big help?
Anyway, I would very much encourage you to find a sponsor at AA and find someone who you can call and you can see most any time that you feel the need.
Having a sponsor that you can talk with and meet with whenever you feel the need is a tremendously valuable asset. It will help you maintain sobriety if you have someone like that you can talk with.
Posting on this board is a real good idea. But a real live person is even better.
Congratulations. I hope you can stay sober - for today, anyway. Best bet is to focus on today and to do whatever you need to do to avoid having a drink today.
I’m quite sure that you know this already. Now it’s important to follow through with what you know.
You’ve taken the first step and you deserve to feel proud of your accomplishment. But now you need to take one step at a time. I wish you all the best of luck and continued success!
You are quite correct. Blackstock, there is nothing wrong with your going to other 12 step meetings such like NA or CA. The underlying principles are the same. No one will object to anyone coming to one of their meetings - even if they don’t suffer from the exact same disease.
Going to a meeting and/or talking with one or more people in real life is tremendously helpful and I hope you are able to find other meetings if you can’t get to an AA meeting when you feel the need.
And if you can’t get to a meeting or can’t find someone to talk with, you can always post on this board and I’m quite certain the people here will want to help you and support you. Many of us who have received support here are happy now to give it back to other people who ask for it.
So … keep on keeping on!
Nothing will make you feel better than sobriety and many of us know that from first hand experience.
What a wonderful post!
Your story is an inspiration for so many other people.
I’m going to stop posting in this thread because I feel like I’m hogging the posting and that’s just not fair. But I want to thank you so much for sharing your experience here. By doing that, you have helped many other people who are struggling with their diseases.
May your Higher Power bless you and help you keep clean and sober today. You can do it and you can help Blackstock and others do that too!
12-step meetings (e.g. AA, NA) are all fairly similar in terms of the focus on spirituality. If you object to that, you might look into non-12-step groups for alcoholics, such as Rational Recovery. I don’t know much about them, just know they exist.
At least in many parts of the country, it’s quite possible to find AA groups that don’t emphasize reliance on a personal God. It’s definitely in the literature, but you can take it or leave it. In one of my meetings, at least half of the members are atheists, although they certainly consider themselves to have spiritual lives. I don’t want to start the usual AA debate on your thread and I make no claims for its success rates. Just wanted to note that personal experiences vary significantly. You have to shop around.
Here’s my thing. I can get sober. I’m sober right now. I am usually sober and I never drink before 6PM. But about twice a week I want a drink to unwind the cares of the day, and it always goes way, way over and beyond. Like consuming up to a fifth of whiskey. This seems like a kind of alcoholism. For various reasons I am fortunate enough to mostly dodge the consequences and conceal the behavior. I don’t want to stop drinking, I just want to stop being an insane binge drinker, but I don’t know how.
First of all, well done, Blackstock. You’ve done a brave, loving and wonderful thing. Keep it up.
Now, HMS: You’ve mentioned the fact that you don’t drink every day many times now. What you’re doing isn’t a ‘kind of alcoholism’; it is alcoholism. Your body, your relationships and your job will suffer greatly if you stay on this course.
I highly, highly, highly recommend therapy, regardless of whether or not you stick with AA (I suggest giving it a try though. And try more than one meeting, because they all have different personalities). A counselor who deals with substance abuse issues would be best, but any port in a storm.
As far as your ability to so far manage the consequences and conceal the behavior goes, so did my husband…until he couldn’t. He held his job until the last year of his life. Over the course of 8 or 9 months, he got pneumonia and went into total organ failure and died, as a direct result of his drinking.
My father probably got drunk less than 1/2 dzen times when I was growing up but I am convinced he was alcoholic, once he started to drink he simply couldn’t stop. He dealt with it by not drinking most of the time.
In my case I drank everyday but I drank because I was irresponsible and procrastinated on things, I also made too many commitments. Once I got my life in order drinking was no longer a problem. I have found I prefer sobriety so choose not to drink anymore.
Good luck with it, you have allready made the first step by recognizing you have problem.
Binge drinking is a form of alcoholism. Note, I have no idea whether you are an alcoholic or not, I am just passing on information.
For a good number of years I was a lone drunk. I almost never drank around other people. I did not drink around others because I had learned from experience that if I drank around others there was a very high probability that I would either a) do something really embarrassing or b) do something that would hurt the people I was around.
I also had ‘rules’ for drinking. I couldn’t drink until after 5 pm. I couldn’t drink before work. I couldn’t drink at gatherings of family or friends. And so on. I followed those rules for a while. Until they didn’t work anymore. When the rules stopped working, I stopped putting myself in situations where the rules would apply. Can’t drink around family or friends? Beg off any gathering if possible. Can’t drink until after 5. Well, that doesn’t count on weekends. I did manage to keep the ‘Don’t drink before work’ rule, however that was because I was usually still drunk when I woke up.
So the obvious answer was to drink alone. That sorta worked for a while. It sorta worked because I didn’t hurt anyone and I didn’t embarrass myself. It didn’t work because my life sucked.
Then my drinking got worse and it didn’t work at all. This is a normal pattern by the way. Read the A.A. big book or go to a meeting and you will hear this story repeated over and over again.
I’ve talked to quite a few folks about alcoholism. From both sides, when I was drinking and when I was sober. One piece of advice I got from A.A. and really believe is this. Get empirical. Run some tests. If you are unsure about whether you have an alcohol problem try controlled drinking. Make a rule and see if you can follow it. Drink only one drink and follow that rule for a while, like a month or two. If you can have only one and stop with no problem, you are probably not an alcoholic. If you cannot stop at one, then you probably have a problem. And the kicker is, you will know after trying this if you have a problem.
Because if you have a problem you will either fail the test or your brain will be going full on apeshit while you aren’t drinking.
If you decide you have a problem the next step is, what to do about it?
First, you cannot drink. Period.
Next, find something that can help you not drink. I like A.A. Not everyone does, and I understand that, but I believe with a little bit of effort most people can find an A.A. group that they fit with well. If not A.A., find a therapist, preacher, reformed drunk, someone who can help.
Third, work on finding out why you want to drink. Is it habit? Boredom? Stress? Guilt? Find the issues and clean them up. I drank in large part due to guilt, though there were some other issues as well. I built a little circular cage for myself where I’d get drunk, do something dumb, feel guilty, not know how to deal with the guilt, then drown the guilt out with a drink. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Anyway, hope this helps. If you want to discuss this ou can always P.M. me. I have spoken with a couple folks on the S.D. in the past and am always willing to offer any advice I have.
Slee
I appreciate your insights, Slee (and everyone else). I keep mentioning that I don’t drink every day, not to minimize the severity of the problem, but I keep telling myself that if I can stop for 2 days, why not 3 days or 3 weeks? Every time seems like it must surely be the final time. Except it’s not.
Your description of your own drinking pattern is so like mine that it’s scary.
I think I will not take the empirical test. I already know what will happen.
Thank you all.
Addressing the topic of AA; I did mention that I’ve attended many AA meetings. Particularly in 2008 and 2009, when my drinking was - though equally compulsive - not characterized by the systematic, functional nature it assumed later on. Back in those days I used to put vodka in a bottle of water and take it to work. I used to have a full glass of sic gin right out of bed. I couldn’t function without alcohol. I was also suffering from a tremendous heartbreak at the time, and I found that AA (and NA as well, since I am also a recovering heroin addict who’s been clean for 8 years) did help a lot on more than one front.
My problem with AA isn’t really an intellectual problem, that is, about the literature or the repetitive mentions of a Higher Power, or a God. I don’t believe in any god or higher power, but I can very easily restrain my thoughts and not be too critical. I am rational enough to stick to a group of people among whom I could be healthier and happier without necessarily having to dispute the core tenets of the community. My problem with AA’s is that I view it as an inflexible community insofar as the meetings are held, the reverence for the Big Book and the adherence to the 12 steps. I am naturally opposed to any unconditional acceptance or rejection of any number of commandments or rules on account of their perceived effect on a number of people.
I couldn’t find anything in the twelve steps that I could view as an actual, effective way of abstaining and remaining abstinent, according to my understanding, at least.
Step 1: **We admitted we were powerless over alcohol **- that our lives had become unmanageable. - Done. My life wasn’t unmanageable. It wasn’t the reason I have quit recently, and it shouldn’t be the reason people quit, because the degree to which a life is manageable or otherwise is up to the person and how they conduct themselves. My life was absolutely manageable, but at a very, very low quality with very, very low expectations and chances for growth. I used to drink almost one complete third of a bottle of whiskey and I’d do more errands around the house than my completely sober housemates or girlfriend, including cleaning up, sweeping and mopping the floor, running the washing machine, doing the dishes, feeding the pets, watering the plants, eating, cleaning up again afterwards, making sure everything was in order for next morning, send a few messages to people I loved here and there to tell them that I care about them, call my aunt long-distance to tell her I cared about her, and go to bed to wake up less than six hours later, shave, shower, get to work, work well, finish work, commute back and repeat. This, every single day, for years. This sounds like manageable to me. But is that it? Absolutely fucking not, and this is why I’m clean and serene right now.
Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. - I don’t even find it necessary to comment on this nonsensical statement.
Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. - No thanks. Won’t go through this; I don’t want to be too critical as I said earlier.
Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. - Probably the only thing worth any salt. In my OP, this is exactly what I did, though I definitely wasn’t thinking about this step when I did so. Maybe I was, albeit subconsciously. It wasn’t moral though, but rather intellectual.
Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. - the exact nature of my own personal wrongs is that I’ve wasted too much money on alcohol. Never hurt another human being in word or deed before, while or after drinking in any manner that is related to, or affected by, alcohol. You may contest this by saying it’s my judgment, but I assure you it definitely isn’t. I’ll get more into this in Step 8.
Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. - No, I was prepared to work on myself toward being a sober human being, because I feel better. My defects are in place, but are practiced in sobriety.
Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. - I sure have not.
Step 8: **Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. **- I am not a saint. I did harm a lot of people, but not in any way that resulted from drinking or any form of dependence on any substance. The only people I’ve seriously hurt were my family, and they’re still hurt because I am an atheist, and I’m not willing to amend that by renouncing my beliefs. One can believe in something and be kind and gentle in how they express it if they know it will hurt someone they care about, and that’s exactly what I did, but some people will demand more than you can give and that’s that.
Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. - Any amends I’ve made in the recent years, and any apology I’ve issued, was done with equal sincerity under the influence as well as soberly. I’m not in denial over my behavior, and again, I am no saint, but I am an extremely soft spoken-person with a high level of sensitivity for other people’s feelings and I always conduct myself according to these values, which I have never lost or abandoned. Therefore, I also find this step irrelevant to me. I didn’t need to sober up before embarking on such endeavor, much less need it in the first place.
Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. - I absolutely don’t know why this point is repeated.
Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. - Won’t go through it for the same reason as Step 3.
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. - I can absolutely get behind this one. In fact, I have convinced a number of friends to go to AA and NA in the past.
Now, taking a look at how this matter stands, am I in denial? I hope not. My head is very clear on what’s wrong - in my opinion - when it comes to these steps, and this is why I always find it annoying at AA meetings of different types, closed or open, speaker or Big Book, when these steps are followed with religious devotion, while the text could have easily - and should have been - updated to be more encompassing, neutral and inclusive of valuable psychological insights that could have benefited someone like me, for example.
What I do love about AA is how warm everyone is, the idea of having a sponsor, and the general kindness that hovers over the meetings. But in my current quest, I’m avoiding going out in the evening at all costs, at least for the time being. I know myself and at this point I know better than to venture out except when absolutely necessary. I basically finish work, get home, start reading, writing and watching documentaries. Worked out perfectly so far, largely as a result of all the encouragement I received here. I wholeheartedly mean it when I state that every message did have a positive impact on me. I come here often to read them again and again.
Thank you Emiliana, Charlie Wayne and everyone else.
I’m an AA regular, Blackstock, and I agree with some of what you have to say about it. As you most likely know, there are different types of meetings. I tend to stay away from step meetings because the steps themselves aren’t all that central in my recovery. I avoid Big Book Step Study meetings like the plague–those, in my experience, feel like participating in an evangelical cult. Speaker meetings and (most importantly for me) non-step discussion meetings, don’t focus so closely on the literature or the steps.
One small discussion meeting a week with good folks can be a lifesaver. Add in a larger speaker meeting if you like that sort of thing. The key thing here is to find some thoughtful and more experienced sober alcoholics to hang out with. They won’t be so inflexible about recovery, higher powers and what not. I’ve met quite a few people that I very much enjoy hanging out with.
I rarely read the literature because it drives me nuts. I do read some non-AA stuff that combines the steps with Buddhism and if that’s of any interest I’d be happy to PM some titles. You don’t have to be Buddhist to find it interesting. Also, check out step meetings that aren’t formally associated with AA (but are for alcoholics). Sometimes these are organized by AA folks who have issues with AA as a program. issues similar to yours. I know of a couple of Buddhist recovery groups like this.
If you do tip your toes back in, wait a bit until you find a sponsor. There are really, really different approaches to sponsorship and a bad fit can drive you out of the program.
Feel free to PM me if I can be of any help.
Post snipped.
Your view of A.A. and mine seem to be quite different. I am an atheist (well, actually, I flail between agnostic and atheist when asked. In general, I just really don’t care about the whole god thing at this point). The whole higher power thing is quite simple, to me at least. I am biologically built to have this problem. There is nothing that can change that*.
If you have been to meetings and found those meetings to be “an inflexible community insofar as the meetings are held, the reverence for the Big Book and the adherence to the 12 steps”, I gently suggest you try other meetings, possibly an atheist/agnostic A.A. meeting. They have some around.
I have been in meetings that, after a few minutes, I left because the people in the room were just not my type of folks. Nothing wrong with that, the fit was just wrong. I’ve also been in rooms where I learned a huge amount from people who have been through the same problems that I have and they found a way through those problems.
Also, the steps don’t really talk about booze too much because, for many alkies, the booze isn’t the cause of the problem, it is the symptom. The steps were created to get to the cause of the problem and also clean up the mess most alkies make of their lives so that, going forward, those issues don’t come back.
A last thought, the phrase I have probably heard most often in A.A. is ‘Take what you need, leave the rest’. This is a very valuable idea.
Slee
*A note, some studieshave been done showing that the A.A. meetings and the 12 steps activate the pre-frontal cortex. This, in turn, has a giant impact on how people react to negative consequences.
in relation to Slee’s excellent post:
Think of sticking around at any kind of meeting for more than a few minutes, even if people don’t look like your kind of folks. I’ve learned a great deal from crotchety, old, right-wing, working class guys who definitely aren’t, generally speaking, my kind of folks. One of my favorite old men is a Trump supporter.:eek: I absolutely love the guy. Fortunately, you don’t talk politics in AA meetings.
I could also walk into a room of people who looked just like me in terms of class, education, etc. and know in five minutes that the format of the meeting, and the people that format attracts, just aren’t going to be helpful to me.