Breaking the cycle/gaining traction

[Maddie]

What a fabulous post Squidger. So well put, and so much to think about as well. Thanks for sharing that.

Maddie X

[Tink]

Brilliant post Squidger, really struck a note.
I posted this on the regrouping but I really think it also applies here and hope it offers a bit of help? I wrote this in to reply to another post on there. It was kinda a revelation to me really and I really hope it strikes a note for others as well?

What makes us drink? Why do we want to? Want to drink? We want to so we do? The question is very deep inside as to why we really do want to though? It isn't really what someone says or does to us now it is what is deep inside us that makes us reach for the bottle, the pill, the stuff as a hoarder does or what ever the crutch might be? I think it is underlying anxiety? Not knowing how to comfort ourselves as we missed that somewhere down the line. I think so called normal folks have coping skills with stress that allows them to find healthy ways to comfort themselves in times of stress? We should learn that very early on but some of us miss that step? I did and that is why I think I smoke, drink and have such serious anxiety issues? I use to get the anxiety attacks so bad I would laterally almost faint. I couldn't even drive on a highway for some reason every time I saw a green sign to get on I would go into panic mode. It was terrifying and I couldn't breath, my arms would go numb and my vision would go all weird. One day I decided it wasn't gonna do this to me. I was going to fight. I was tired of takin the side roads. I got on. I (for me it was a little gold cross I wore on my neck) held on to it and said OK if I am gonna die it ain't gonna be in a panic attack. So I took off down the highway. When I felt it getting bad I just kept saying to myself just a little further, you are alright and if you need to pull off you can. Just the next exit and so on, kept getting nearer and nearer to where I wanted to go that day and it just so happened to be to the mall to pick out dresses for my son's wedding with my monster DIL . I was not going to let this take me out of doing something I really really wanted to do. I kept going. When I finally arrived I was shaking, pale and sweaty. I just kept breathing and saying I did it. I did it!!!!! Once that happened I had broke the spell it had on me. I knew I did it once so I could do it again. It came out of the blue these attacks and still don't know why? I have driven everywhere before they started and just all of a sudden there they were? WTH? However I did make myself see that I would be alright. I could do it and had done it. I haven't had one like that since. Why? I don't know still why they started. I do know why they ended. I learned to comfort myself. That was before I ended my drinking career. I now see it is attached to that as well. All connected. Comfort mechanism was all messed up. I am still learning how to comfort myself in healthy way instead of hurting myself. I don't know if this will help anyone else but it was a break through for me to know this. To finally see it through the fog of illusion I had in front of me most of my life. If you can see the enemy you can fight it. This is why I keep saying we have to be painfully honest with ourselves and have courage to face it. So hard. So scary but well worth it and once you do you really can be free again. Be kind to yourselves and truthful.
Tink

[squidger]

Tink, so wonderfully put as always, full of hope and feeling .
If they could just figure out a way to bottle your posts or even bottle you and sell them instead of alcohol this world would be a far better place.

[Connie44]

Good post Squidger, I can so relate to that right now xx

[squidger]

Strong words not so well followed up in practice. Maybe its part of it, finding the ultimate boredom in drinking.
Certainly the biggest thing i miss is going out, feeling confident and meeting people. The dark side of that is drinking to cover up the embarassment of what happens next for the next few days.
Drinking a few beers here and there on your really serves no purpose anymore, with no big drunken messes to forget about. Getting the head into the right perspective for each individual is very important, and i think patience is important too, dont fall into the trap of getting dispondant about being able to stop, and drinking more again.
So i have discovered drinking alone is really boring when you dont need to, and the only reason i would have to is boredom/ lonlieness in the first place. I know i cant be trusted to go out drinking for one or two, so the time has now come to start going out again but not drinking at all.
Its quite hard when most of the places frequented have bar staff that have your pint on the bar by the time you have reached it.
The next trip wire is the whole aspect of the opposite sex. Much like the smiley i tend to mumble and bumble rubbish and miss that extra confidence. Quite sad when i think back that every time i have met someone it has been inebriated. So yet another cycle within the cycle to break. It would be quite nice to trust my sober judgment, without doing something later regretted or where more committed to because of things i said whilst pissed.

Lovely day out, no longer shall i sit here looking into false light garbling.
Have a good day all

[london bloke]

Squidger,

I get what you say about flirting / meeting prospective partners. There is a whole culture around 'needing a drink' in these situations.

Can I pick you up on your language ?

i tend to mumble and bumble rubbish and miss that extra confidence.

Alcohol does not give extra confidence IMHO. (Alan carr puts it better) If it did I would have been the world's most confident lothario. Instead alcohol disrupted my ability to chat and flirt as me. Also, I made an association between alcohol and attraction. Since becoming sober i realised that I do not see myself as attractive, I don't like rejection, and I don't like taking the initiative. But I am making progress on all these things cos my brain is working now! I am facing up, and its better (for me) than being all foggy about it. 'Rejection' and unwanted advances are all easier to deal with now.

IMHO - you are dead right that there is a 'cycle within a cycle' to break. But take heart Squidger - you are on the right track. It will get better when you break those wrong associations. Today, when I go to a club sober I feel MORE confident than when I had a drink or two. Go for it!

[momof5girls]

I am absolutely fed up with myself
I fell off the wagon and am in really crappy shape.
I think I have to talk to my doctor for help
I almost made 30 days...

[Bubbysmum]

Lisa

The first thing to do is to hold your own hand today and be kind to yourself..
Yes you made a bad/probably impulsive choice .. but you had almost 30 days and it shows that you can do it and do it again .. if you think your doctor will help try that..
But just pick yourself up and start over with a nice new day ..being down on yourself isn't needed..
Can you go back and think what your trigger was.. Lonely angry tired bored sad ...
It helps to know.. and I must say I have found CBT and REBT helpful for myself..
Check out SMART recovery online or go back and read some of the articles Tobin has put in at the at the beginning of this website.. often it's a distorted thought pattern that does us in..
Take care of you today

Oh.. i just saw your other post..it's over 'confidence'..
You are so creative.. your stuff is amazing..!!! I remember when you first joined you were worried about losing your creativity sober..working without a beer which had been your constant companion in the studio.. well yes you can.. you can be just as creative sober..

And don't panic.. just breathe.. everything will be ok.....

Wendy

[squidger]

Hey momof5girls or lisa if i may call you that,

Not much i can add to Wendys wonderfull post.

30 days is huge or any amount close to it.
Think back to when you started and how you would have given to even manage a week or a couple of days.

Dont give up, be patient with yourself. If you look hard past the dissapointment you will see so many great things that you have managed to change about your life already.

Look after yourself.

[Bubbysmum]

[healing]

Hi im new here and I have troubles when I drink I only drank three years but I binge and I start to say and do things that are NOT good. anyone relate the morning after panic??? also some grey-outs where details get fuzzy this stresses me out. I then have a hard time functioning for three days afterward.

The problem with not drinking is that it is a problem socializing. I recentlly had six months sober time. I primarily stayed in and focused on life improvements which was very very helpful. I just dont want to spend all of my time isolating and on self help boards which i did during that time,


a dream of mine has always been to have lots of entertaining at my home, and of course that includes alcohol, we are having our first holiday open house and I need to be very very careful. I think I should make up my mind that Im going to be sober! its just the tradeoff of isolating which I find very miserable!! i can keep busy with hobbies, job training etc but no nightlife and i Feel like a senior citized staying in ALL the time watching television. Im not a bar or club person Im talking about occasional parties or get togethers here. I can go and not drink I guess--it stinks to have this problem because its risky even drinking occasionally unless I were to be extremely careful and aware, which after the drink hits is hard!! YIKES


where is the best place to get advice? I would love a chat buddy who would like to pm me or email me, or anyone who wants to banter on here too!!

[squidger]

Hey Healing, How are you today? Love your name by the way hope you are doing a lot of it !

Glad to see you about. I can sooooo relate to the socialising thing. Its that idea of damned if you do damned if you dont thing.
There is so many people on here that seem to just be able to say no when they are out, and have a fantastic time, more than any of 'us' that normally go overboard and make a mess of things.
The most wonderfull thing is, they were 'us' not so long ago, so all is not lost.

You will see the EAF being mentioned quite a lot ( Evil Alcohol Fairy) she can be very persuasive, and make us feel like we are missing out on things by not drinking. In our own minds we know all we are missing out on is, dehydration, a big bar bill and all the other traps of a 'big night out'.
You sound, from your posts, like a confident and friendly person, its realising that you dont need the hastles alcohol brings.
Try joining the 7 day challenge, i know you have done a lot longer before, but its a great way to meet new and old peeps, and a great way to sound off thoughts.

[AlexT]

Hey All,

Really interesting reading on this thread. Love it.

Re: Healings last comment. Have you tried reading Allen Carr. I would recommend it, alot of folks on here have and he's really helped give me perspective everytime I've tried to quit. You say that last time you quit for 6 months (superb effort by the way), you locked yourself in. Basically that means you've been trying to quit via the willpower method which no matter how strong one is always crumbles eventually. Avoiding social occasions is if I may be so bold the wrong way around it because you are building up a 'forbidden fruit' in your minds eye. Your brain is conned into thinking its missing a valuable substance that somehow gives it benefits. Alcohol is a poison and does NOTHING for us.

I'd really recommend a good read. Easy for me to sit here and preach but ive been in exactly the same place. Always thinking nights out are going to be as boring as hell without alcohol but when you recondition your brain to understand that its been brainwashed over decades of drinking you'll realize that when you have no cravings what is left is enjoyable dinners with friends or social get togethers in bars (the ones where you can actually here each other). Of course there are those times when the music is far too loud and your friends are getting way to wasted to talk to anymore. I tend to get a bit bored at that point and make my excuses.

Allen makes a really good point about ALL drugs and brainwashing. He compares alcohol abuse to any drug abuse. It just so happens that we've all been conned by one of the most ancient of 'accepted drugs'. Since birth we've been conditioned (depending naturally on your upbringing of course) to alcohol being revered as some kind of 'exhilirating and beneficial substance that provides a high'. When someone passes their driving test, gets married, dies, is born, completes their degree, goes on a first date, has a birthday, meets for christmas...what do 90% of the population do...celebrate with alcohol. In films the 'hard men' are the tough guys drinking the whisky. Think of role models like the rat pack (martin and ol blue eyes hardened alcoholics!)...None of us should be kicking ourselves about 'losing control' when it comes to alcohol NONE OF US WERE EVER IN CONTROL. Those 'lucky' other drinkers that seem to be able to have a couple of glasses and quit, they arent really in control either, they just have perhaps different upbringings and better control methods but guaranteed in 10 years if they stay with the drink their intake will exponentially increase...its the nature of this sly drug.

Im on day 15 now and really spent time slowly digesting carr's book for the 3rd time and deeply analysing the perceived 'benefits' that I myself bestow on alcohol and why I put it up on a pedestal. It really is all about counter brainwashing. Think of heroin...none of us (god willing) want to inject that into our bodies because we all see it for what it is but we dont see alcohol for what it truly is. We perceive benefits to be gotten from it the same way a heroin user does heroin. But it is a devastating poison. Here's what I've been contemplating on my own drinking:

1. That I really miss my favourite tipples. Real Ales, belgian beers, champagne, guinness and red wine (so half the bar then Alex? )..Its taking a while but im beginning to see. Basically our favourite drinks still contain the same poison alcohol. But they also contain nice things like hops (in the case of the beers), grapes (in the case of the wines) loads of sugar and flavourings....Like any packaged nasties (monosodium glutamate etc. Its easy to get hooked on the nice things so that you cant even taste the nasties). But the irony is that we can choose to jsut drink some nice soft drink if we really need those nice things. Chucking a poison down our throats..especially 9 pints of it is really really silly when you think about it....remember we've been conned. None of us is at fault here we were never in control...Alcohol has conned us.

2. The perceived 'High' that alcohol gives us. This is the hardest thing for me that I am battling with. I dont quite agree with Carr on this one. He says there is no 'buzz' to be gotten from this drug because what its actually doing as a known suppressant is surpressing all our senses rendering us 'senseless', therefore if we like the perceived high from alcohol we must like being hit over the head with a sledge hammer....I don't honestly feel like that. When I take my first pint, especially first one in a long time. I can feel the drink going around my body, my body getting a little wobbly and it feels like a 'buzz'. That said Carr recommends we continue to drink whilst reading his book and analyze what the drink is doing, so at the end of this month I will be trying a pint...will keep you posted!

3. Another hard thing is your friend networks. Undoubtedly you like me may have family and bestest friends that are massive drinkers and 'enablers'. It can be very hard to hang out with them when you are so used to them being your drinking buddies. I have one of my besties coming over to visit me in sweden at the end of the month..thats going to be a hard one!

4. All Carr's other logic is totally sound. Alcohol doesnt actually give you confidence in social situations, what its actually doing as a debilitating poison is taking away your confidence in the long run. What its actually doing is rendering you senseless which means you dont care what people think. It is this quality that makes us think it gives us 'dutch courage'

Anyway enough of a ramble from me. Wish you all continued luck in your own struggles just try and contemplate alcohol and see it for what it really is. As long as we all hold it up on a magical pedestal as some forbidden fruit with perceived benefits to be had. We'll never rid ourselves of the trap we have been conned into. There really is no benefits to this poison!

Good luck xxxx

[momof5girls]

Boy.
Thanks for that AWESOME POST.
I was off booze almost 30 days and then really screwed up.
I then quit for 10 days as I was "REALLY" on antibiotics that the DR. said YOU MUST NOT DRINK ON THESE
So-I stopped.
Then December 20...Right back to drinking.
I am super stressed and my story is a long one.
But I will get the book I need a starting place.
What's the name please and looking forward to reading it.
He doesn't want you to stop drinking while you read?)

[momof5girls]

Just ordered the book off e-bay for 9.00 CND.

[AlexT]

Hey Momoofgirls,

Yes its Allen Carr 'Easyway to control drinking'

Good luck with it. Very powerful words in there. Has become somewhat of a bible for me during quits. The irony is why i continue to creep back to bingeing even after being blessed with the words therein. I put it down to 1. stupidity 2. a massive network of close friends still being drinkers 3. not really getting the information to sink in. If one doesnt contemplate properly whats being revealed in that book it doesnt work. Its the 3rd time im reading it and really re-reading quite a few chapters over and over. Every point he makes is valid. You have to address your own relationship with alcohol and question why you like a foul-tasting poison that systematically debilitates, annihilates, destroys confidence, families and has held many good folks back in their lives.

Best of luck! My real challenge comes end of this month when my friend comes to visit from London.

x

[momof5girls]

My Doctor has given me a prescription for Valium
Has anyone used it to help with withdraw...
I am very shaky and and feel really whacked.
Does it help with all this?
How long is in needed?
Any advice greatly appreciated

[farthing]

I haven't been able to break the cycle for the past year. I drink about 10-14 units. Spend the next day feeling awful and knowing I must give up. I have a couple of really positive days, then get grumpy and flat. Then want to break out of feeling flat and feel like the teetotalling is going nowhere. So I drink again - almost out of relief. But that's because it's an addiction!
Oh it's hard. A hard journey. It's hard because we have choice. As a child you're not allowed to eat all the sweets in the shop and when you're older and have money and could buy all the sweets in the shop you don't because you know it's bad for you and stupid. But with addictions - food, drink, shopping, whatever, you're constantly trying to buy up all the sweets in the shop, and scoff them down until you're sick. Sigh. Madness!!
Miss F

[zoe]

Thought I'd just bump this thread up as this aspect is a such crucial part of recovery, especially in the aftermath of a slip when things just seem so impossibly hard. It's easy to forget just how hard, and how wobbly those first steps feel ... all the more so for having done OK up until the latest or greatest slip.

I think back to the many times I slunk away to lick my wounds in private instead of using the support here. My pride played no small part in this but also to be honest it's hard to know what to say. It feels so ... I don't know ... desperately dispiriting perhaps is the best way to describe it.

Many times I thought there was little point in persevering when it was becoming increasingly clear that I just wasn't made of the "right stuff" to get on the sober road and stay there ... wasn't even sure that's where I wanted to be either as I had half a mind towards trying to control my drinking rather than abstaining. This despite the various degradations and debacles of the past.

I can only say this. When I felt this way I was in part responding to the negativity brought about by having had a drink. There is no question that dealing with a problem of this magnitude is hard. Very hard. There is also no question that we ALL have it within us to help ourselves in a way that nobody else can. Yes we can ask for support and it's always available here on BE, I've yet to meet a bunch of more open hearted folk than I have on here, but ultimately the steps are ours to take.

Regaining traction is a useful phrase in that it conveys something of the difficulty involved. It also contains that vital word ... action. It is in learning to act rather than merely wanting, wishing, hoping and dreaming that we become our own best advocate in this hardship. Hope this helps.

[kingsnoopy]

Great post as always Zoe! I especially like this part...

Regaining traction is a useful phrase in that it conveys something of the difficulty involved. It also contains that vital word ... action. It is in learning to act rather than merely wanting, wishing, hoping and dreaming that we become our own best advocate in this hardship.

For so long I have wanted, wished, hoped and dreamed that I would no longer have the desire for a drink. I finally learned that it rarely works that way. We truly must take ACTION to beat this addiction.

Great food for thought today Zoe...thanks!

Linda