Anyonje here dealing with alcohol addiction or in recovery? I'm volutarily checking myself into rehab on Tuesday and have questions.
I don't but I'm glad you are making the step to take better care of yourself
Grats on you for making the step. I'm haven't had issues with alcohol addiction, but kudos to you for making the right steps.
I have 26 years clean, which means no drugs, (and alcohol is just another drug). I have the disease of addiction, which is the way I think. A good rehab will help you detox, but if you want to stay clean, a meeting a day for your first 90 days out in the world is a very serious suggestion. Even with my clean I go every day because it feels good.
@Saysoh I have some clean time. I haven't done meetings lately. I guess I did one since they've resumed from the pandemic, and for me typically it's just to hang with certain people. The 90 in 90 is a good thing. For me it was relatively simple. Was never married, no kids. Committing to the program wasn't complicated by family issues. I lived in a recovery house and was held to a rigorous program. By the time I moved out, I was solidly in recovery mode. It's been the bedrock of my life since then, although that's not to say there haven't been struggles. Life is a great gift. I'm glad that you're taking steps. I hope you also learn to value recovery as the foundation moving forward. It's that important to living a meaningful life.
@Saysoh That is a very powerful move o. your part. I can only wish you the very best in your recovery.
There's not much I can do to help but wish you good luck, @Saysoh.
@Saysoh Good luck on your path 😌
Wishing you the best of luck on your path of recovery. Remember the road won’t always be easy but it’s worth it !!!
No but I have a number of friends who do. Best of luck to you.
Ok. So here are my questions. I get recovery, I get sobriety. I get health. The thing is. I'm having a hard time with accepting who I might be because I love everyting about me. All my creative outlets are on point and I've put thousands and thousands of hours into them. I have zero issues with relationships because I'm so blessed that with any friend or family, the conversation ends with, "I love you."
I know I'm speaking from fear and insecurity.
@UCpaaHVg6u0 @HugNeedy
How did you deal, if any, about your change? What was your change in perspectives like and how did you come to understand the paradigm of addiction vs sobriety?
And I thank everyone for the support. It' s literally water for the fire, but I think it needs to be said I'm not looking for attention in this post. I legit just want to talk to people that got sober because I want to know what it's like to actually go to war with yourself.
Why do you have to go to war with yourself? There are many roads to sobriety. The puritanical 12 step religion is only one of them, and doesn't have a particularly stellar success rate. Behavioral approaches that deal directly with cravings through mindfulness do just as well if not better. Research is showing that psychedelics can cure addiction in a few months or less. If you read up before accepting conventional wisdom, you'll find The Program became the standard for reasons other than effectiveness.
I'm not in recovery, but I've known many addicts, and done quite a lot of reading about addiction. I also have a lot of experience breaking bad habits and building good ones. I didn't need to do a 'fierce and searching moral inventory' to quit smoking, go vegan or build muscle. Ultimately changing habits is about managing cravings and replacing toxic behaviors with nourishing ones. Figuring out the payoffs from a bad habit, and finding ways to get them some healthier way.
You seem well suited to a practical approach, given that your life is otherwise going so well and suggests a great deal of self mastery. The 12 step hardcore will say you're in denial. They say that to anyone who insists they're not broken and have a pretty good life. For them, you drink not because your brain has become wired for it, but because of the spiritual hole at the center of your being. There's no evidence for this, but religions don't require evidence.
In any event, congrats on recognizing the problem and taking this step. You have a lot of the things that promote success, not least your loving family and friends. Keep the sober ones close, and the others at a distance.
Good on you for reaching out, I wish you the best on your recovery! 😊
Good on you for seeking help , I can imagine that it has been a journey to get to this point . If anybody tries to judge you for it stick both middle fingers into their nearest holes and dig deep. Bonus points if your nails are long and pointy .
I often wonder where I would be in life if I were still on drugs and alcohol . Loved the hell out of it but I love being sober and in control better, as well as the added benefit of not having been to prison and not being unemployed, which likely would have been the case had I stayed high into adulthood .
I must give my disclaimer about how sharing personally sensitive info on the interwebs can be dangerous, as anybody can see it , and those who see it might not have your best interests in mind
Best of luck to you, get well and stay well
Who is this person you think you might be and why are you afraid of them? Honest self-examination requires us to look at the person we are, right now, for all our virtues and flaws. Who we might be is speculative and about the future. Are you wondering what you will be like sober? Is that the fear? If so, exactly what do you fear? Are you afraid you’ll be less creative? That your relationships won’t be as good?
Two good friends of mine had very opposite experiences getting sober. One was a closet drinker, mostly drank alone and hid it from others until he couldn’t hide it any more. His relationships started improving tremendously once he got sober. The other was a social drinker. His social life almost exclusively revolved around drinking. For him, getting sober meant he had to rebuild his social life & get new friends. That was tough for him but paid off in the end.
The first step is sometimes the hardest!
@Babichev
I don't disgree with anyhing you said. I absorbed all of it. I'm going to comment then I'm going to answer your questions and this might be a long read. I'm not a TL:DR person so there's going to be no summary at the end. Paragraphs incoming:
"Honest self-examination requires us to look at the person we are, right now, for all our virtues and flaws."
This is true, but you have to bring ego into this, yeah? What our ego tell you who you are and who you actually are are two different things. And that even can be broken down, right? What is a, "you?" Honestly, I don't want to go down that path because that's a level of introspection and journey inside yourself that's really just a dream within a dream within a dream. Yes, honest self-examination. It's interesting, because how many people do that? I'm bringing ego back and if the ego tells you your honestly examining yourself, can't it be said it's just deluding? I think knowledge of self and awareness is way more complicated than we understand. I say that because the journey is so unique. For example, I got into a car wreck where I should have died and wasn't even injured. I thought everything was all figured out; fancy title on the business card, 401's and savings and now I'm asking myself if I loved everyone to the best of my ability as a human and even if I was grateful that I was gifted the human experience of emotion. I get what you're saying, but a bar isn't set for honest examination because it's such an objective perspective. The human experince, yo.
"Who we might be is speculative and about the future."
I don't remember where I read this pairing of words but for some reason I remember them and not the context, "pessimistically optimistic." I connected this to fear. I wish you would have expanded on this, but I can see you were setting up a question. Now to those:
"Are you wondering what you will be like sober?"
I think I'm fearful of how I'll think when I'm sober. I should preface, this is my second time going into rehab (2013 was my first time) and I relapsed. The reason for the relapse was a book written by Annie Grace titled, "The Nake Mind: Control Alcohol." In that book, it basically tells you to drop addiction from your vernacular and you can manage alcohol without reminding yourself each day you're an alcoholic. No lie. Then I started justifying until I'm at the point I'm at now. It's not bottom, but I'm on that path. But I have an issue with the system. It's a 15% success rate for addicts to divorce their addiction. Not just alcohol or drugs, but porn, sex, sugar, eating disorders, whatever. I put myself on a path to become an addiction counselor, so since 2017, I've read stacks of books about addiction, reached out to treatment facilities, doctors. I'm well-versed in addiction, but yet, here I am. I'm scared that I'm going to be so obsessed with sobriety, that I'm going to lose curiosity, interest, effor in prioritized relationships.
"Are you afraid you’ll be less creative?"
Very much so and this is where fear comes in. I know it changed during my last recovery, but I evolved with it. I'm exploring words right now and how they can be bent. I know that might not make much sense to you, but it's a graduation for me. I was a graffiti writer for a couple of decades, so taking an obsession with letters on paper then moving to words on paper makes sense to me. This is a new decision and I'm enjoying the grind, but whiskey has been a part of it. I do have fear that I won't be interested because creativity is a fire that needs to be fueled by something and if whiskey is that fuel for me, then I'm going to be lost and how much I know me, that's the truth.
I'm happy to hear your friends got sober and they were able to rebuild their lives. All the love to them.
Not alcohol addiction, but I had a really bad marijuana dependency a couple years ago and I’ve been sober since January. Any type of addiction is hard and it’s a constant uphill battle to be who you want to be ! Proud of all of you!
@Saysoh There are slogans on little placards pinned to the walls of meeting places. They are simplistic phrases designed to remind addicted people how to simplify things. That's because our brains are working overtime to trigger us into quitting the program, because the part of your brain that likes to get high would love to sabotage your recovery. This is a real thing. "Keep it simple, stupid!" It's not supposed to be an insult, but a reminder to keep to your program.
@Saysoh Over 10 years sober from heroin, and then methadone, here. I never thought I'd escape that particular hell. But I wasn't going to war with myself, exactly. I was first understanding and healing the brain injury and chemical imbalance from substance abuse. I had to face that drugs had become my sole coping mechanism as well as a celebratory ritual. Feeling good? Get high. Feeling bad? Get high. Interpersonal issues? Get high. Anything difficult in life? Yes, get high.
One could see it as war with oneself, but you surely know that the language and framing we use is powerful. I felt I was fighting a beast on my back. Something that had hijacked my brain, which is what addiction does. The reptilian part of your brain sends signals that without your substance of choice you'll die. It's mostly semantics in my mind, but it's not really you that wants to keep drinking. It's your addicted brain and body.
What truly worked for me was cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). I did attend an intensive outpatient program, 4 hrs/day, at least 3 days/week. I tried NA, wasn't for me. Of course it works very well for some. It provides structure and support. There are those who get so into it, that it seems like a new addiction with all the time and energy put into it. But if that works for someone, great. If you work the program, there is more than one way to do it anyways. There are many paths to change, all valid.
I believe you referred to whiskey as your fuel. There are plenty of addicts with no creative talents. I see alcohol more as a key for you. Everything is inside you; you're just used to alcohol as a facilitator, a midwife. Find a new key. Get into mind-altering states with kirtan, ecstatic dance, meditation, holotropic breathwork, yoga nidra, whatever floats your boat. Find inspiration by immersing yourself in unfamiliar territory of any sort. You'll access new parts of yourself.
Lastly, the part of any addict that wants to keep using - it will make up all kinds of fantastic rationalizations, stories about what the substance does for you. It will get lost in over-intellectualizing for some and you'll waste time in rabbit holes of faulty thinking. As someone above said, keep it simple.
You are going to find out what you're like without alcohol. It will take awhile to regain yourself, to heal. You won't see the real you in your fullness for awhile, depending on the length and severity of habit. Once you do, if you are dissatisfied, you can always go back to drinking. Worrying about how getting sober will change you isn't fruitful. It just provides reasons to avoid sobriety.
I don't know anyone who's gotten clean that regrets it, who doesn't have a better life. This includes a variety of creative types.
My opinions and experience. Take what resonates, leave the rest. Good luck to you.
@snugglebug3
I love your words. Thank you and congrats. The 4th, checking in tomorrow, I'm not in the state for your words to resonate. However, I did copy them to notepad, like other comments in this thread, to take with me tomorrow. For me, my personality, I do go to war with things especially adversity. I handle it then go to war with learning from it. Maybe it's just a metaphor in my head that only makes sense to me. For me, there's nothing simple and that's probably the creative side of me. I mean, you don't buy a canvas and paint a Monet the first time. Like I said, right now, I know I'm using fear, insecurity and a buzz to push back. When I get out, I promise you i'll ressurect this thread just so I can comment in truth back to you (you have dm's turned off).
Again, thank you and congrats. Respect.
@snugglebug3 Great comment. Congrats on your recovery. That is an amazing, inspiring story. I'm not an addict but if I were I would go the route you did, focusing on the mechanism of addiction and behavioral methods for thwarting it.
WITHDRAWN
I'm gonna miss you. Sorry if that's too sappy:)
@achetocuddle
I'll miss you back!
@Saysoh - I'm glad you're getting help. My inbox is always open. 🫂
@Mike_Girard
"Research is showing that psychedelics can cure addiction in a few months or less."
Bro, you must have missed so many comments I've made about psychs. I'm a HUGE advocate and one, if not several, conversations I want to have while in treatment.. I do 7g doses of shrooms twice a year. I go that high in dose because I know my ego is no longer going to be involved and whatever comes out, comes out. It's a controlled setting (usually camping with my friends) and they know I'm exploring this route so I have sitters (very close friends that support this). I know I compartmentalize and they know this is my release. An 1/8th, that's just a walk in the park with pretty colors asking permission to pet dogs to cute girls in yoga pants. I'm yet to find the solace in the soul with addiction even with phsychs, but that's my journey. Smiles come out of nowhere.
@Saysoh I hear you. You have my support and admiration. Sent you a DM for future reference, in case my acct is still paused when you return.
Thanks for your kind response to my post.
Your post was spot-on and very useful. Especially insightful regarding 12 step and what they will tell @Saysoh . I highly doubt AA is the route for him.
And yes on the psychedelics for addiction! Ayahuasca seems to offer better efficacy, but I think most psychedelics have potential depending on the person's physiological characteristics, their intention and mindset, etc.
As someone who hasn't been an addict themselves, you've got some solid info.