Daily addictions check in #[two]

Thanks Up, I actually am having kind of a miserable time, not even had a good buzz. And honestly, it just made me want crystal really bad.

My girlfriend are in the middle of World War III. I'm having serious shoulder surgery six days before Thanksgiving...& of course whe wants to have Thanksgiving here, with 15 people crowded in the house. We're both really pissed off at each other & have hardly spoken to each other in two days (rare for us).

Last night I realized that I was feeling the same way I did before I used to go out drinking...which was a shock. I didn't have a plan, or anything...& I talked to a few people in the program, but it really bothered me that I had that emotional craving after all these years. I emailed the doctor yesterday & even he agreed that six days after surgery was too soon. I'll be in severe pain, unable to sleep, & on pain meds. If someone were to bump into me it would hurt even worse - like jumping through the roof hurtin'! So why would a drink appeal to me after 12 years? It kind of scares me...

@emgreen

It's because it's an emotional trigger you may have never learned after you got sober how to deal with that pain you drank your emotions away in & now that you have to feel it. you are maybe feeling it intensely so much so that all you remember how to do is drink.

I go see my addictions counsellor and my psych nurse and they put it into perspective for me so I can understand why I am feeling the way that I am feeling! I have to learn to go with that emotional roller coaster and say look I am not drinking because (answer here in an emotion). I am learning to reevaluate myself and figure what goes with what since I am very literal person which doesn't make sense because I am also a metaphorical person as well.

Could you hold the dinner before your surgery? Doesn't thanksgiving happen near the end of November? Do you really need to celebrate it? Or could you just do some sort of larger Christmas party?

Sometimes I worry about getting depressed for more than a few days. As I mentioned earlier, I haven't ever triggered back to drinking; it was a decision with what seemed like a clear head at the time, followed by easing back into it. But I still worry that it could factor in to that thinking. It has been a long while since I was depressed with no "escape plan".

emgreen - At least you are in a solid enough relationship that no one is packing a bag.

greentires,

Thanks for the response & the quote. I really appreciate you taking the time to write. I've tried to suggest alternatives to having dinner on Thanksgiving, but we weren't able to find one...& we were both being spoiled brats. I made an emergency appointment with my therapist at 8am this morning & went to a noon AA meeting where I talked to several people about me feelings. When I use the tools of sobriety & mental health wellness in general, things work out. I just have to stay away from catastrophic thinking. I texted my girlfriend at work & apologized for the things I said without mentioning the crap she said to me during our fight. Sometimes it's best to just "keep your own side of the street clean."

UpDownAround,

I feel for you. I'll add your observation about not packing bags to my "gratitude list." Having one does help me when things are really looking down...you might try to find some things to be grateful for before you get depressed again. I hate to sound pessimistic, but being bipolar that time will come for us all (BP sucks). We have to prepare somehow when we're feeling stable.

I think making a list like that would be depressing. Don't get me wrong; there would be stuff on it. But some of the things missing really get me down when I think about them. Yeah, I will likely get depressed again and it will suck. I need something or someone to turn to at those times to keep from thinking about drinking or using as an escape. I could easily slide back in with the same old pattern.

I was unhappily married for many years, but didn't realize how unhappy I was until I left the marriage. I don't mean to sound like a relationship counsellor, because I'm certainly not, but it seems the situation you're in is depressing by nature. By the end of my marriage there was little communication & no intimacy. Bad relationships can be like bad habits, though; hard to break. There's the financial side of the ledger, too. Sorry to butt in, but you & your wife sound very unhappy. Is your marriage a factor in your drinking?

UpDownAround, don't you have an anniversary coming up??? A third of a year? When is that?

4 hours (I am east coast)...

Woo-Hoo!!! I feel like this is Times Square!

She would say my drinking is what caused the marital strife while I would say it is largely the other way around. I never drank alone until after we started having problems. We have had them off an on a very long time. We used to have good times between bouts of bad. We talk and it's friendly but it isn't a close relationship. Yeah, finances would suffer and at this point that would loom large. It seems like we are headed for an estranged retirement. She is on board with me getting a fishing cabin; even encourages it. I can just about guarantee you she will never go there. If the financial boat is not rocked, I can swing that. I have been maxing out my 401k for about 20 years. So that may happen. If it does, it will be in some place with a clubhouse or association so I can meet other people to fish with or whatever. If I become a hermit, drinking would be way too tempting.

Yeah...I took a real financial beating in my divorce, but I was much younger. It gets more complicated as one ages. That fishing cabin/association sounds great! From what you've written, I kind of gathered you wished things were better at home, but at least you can still have friendly conversations. By the end of my marriage, even that was gone. I know what you're saying about being a hermit. By the end of my drinking I was a solitary drinker with nothing & no one to answer to.

It's three hours now!

The friendly conversation is a double edged sword. It is better than terse icy exchanges but it is oddly frustrating because I keep getting my hopes up. I really think she wants the estranged retirement, as odd as that sounds. She talks about how the things we want in retirement could cause us to wind up in different places. She wants to maintain a home big enough for kids to visit and doesn't want the palm trees anymore (we used to share the dream of retiring where it's warm near or at the beach). So she wants to pick "our house" while I get "my cabin". The location she is talking now is back where some family is and I understand why she is drawn there but it was on our roadmap only as a place to visit. Things changed. My cabin could happen as early as a year from now depending on how a few things go. It's unlikely it will be that soon but it could be. It would definitely be part time if it happens in the next 5 years.

Slip turned into a bender :/ Getting myself back on track today I guess. I'm buying myself a yetti bong to keep myself occupied instead of reverting back to crystal. That's my theory anyway.

@updownaround

What's retirement age for u?

My dad retired at 57 his dream was to continue his golf strokes but it didn't come to that anyway he would go to golfing range every second weekend and still continued to coach woman's soccer and then offered a position with the district he had volunteered for when he turned 60 his health started to decline he had a stroke 63 and could no longer do the BC soccer job that he just accomplished to get when he turned 62. Then when it all happened I was put in charge of that whole aspect but they wanted nothing to do with me they wanted me and my sister to do it. My sister had no understanding of the programming of the software he was using or how he was doing it. me and him spent countless hours on the system to get to mould and function to the settings he could use it on a server that was so slow then. Then when BC soccer bought a newer technology and a server and wanted people to use that it was like working with sand to fix a bridge that's made out of metal. Any how it took my dad 6-9 months to learn to successfully talk again but he could speak quite well when he spoke slowly but when he spoke fast it sounded like garbled mess. Of course I was off work while this was happening as I had an accident at work was on workers comp. I steadily forced emotion after emotion down into a bottle and moved out just after 2 years and workers comp ending and sick benefits for EI starting. And moved into my own apartment.

In 2012 when I went for a vacation just before I had moved out my dad had an accident that ended his career as a fast paced race car driver since he had gotten 2010 matrix years before I think it was his dream car. Anyways he broke his arm in two places they did some scans and found cancer. I moved out anyway they did surgery to repair the bones and he was in an itchy cast for awhile.

The bones didn't heal the metal inside his arm was just a nuisance but they left it in. His dreams of flying back to England shattered as he was going to go in the spring but they started aggressive cancer treatment I watched as my dad suffered from afar he broke his other arm a short time later and said where it was likely it would either heal on its own or not.

In 2015 he succumbed to cancer it had spread everywhere and he refused to take his meds, drink fluids, and eat.

I had gotten sober 2 months 17 days before he died.

All my supports expected I was going to drop my sobriety but I kept on going. Because I was doing this for me I said to them.

Moral is u need a reason to tell yourself about your drinking of why you stopped or why you did the things you did. But it cannot ever be for another person I realized it had to be for me!

A yetti bong? For weed?

Indeed! I'm going to attempt to just stick to weed and small amounts of tobacco.

Don't they have a name to that when you do both tobacco and weed together in a bong?

Yes it's a yetti lol

Barely got the kids to school on time today, no thanks to the 2 beets and big glass of port last night. But big thanks to my hubby who got the kids dressed in their uniforms and fixed breakfast “to go” in 15 minutes flat. I’m thankful for him

We call them Thai hoot here

Today makes 4 months clean and sober!

Way to go UDA!

Well done!!