Sober since Saturday

Yeah, I guess maybe it's not such a good idea to kind of set my self up that way. Maybe it was better that I just stayed home, you're right, at least I didn't drink!
LOL about the laundry, I had SEVEN LOADS on my bedroom floor... that's what happens when I'm down, all I want to do is sleep, and nothing productive gets done. Just did the dishes too. It helps when my room mate is home. I think sometimes I just stop caring because I'm alone here and my cat doesn't care what the place looks like either.
PC, I'm glad you did well during your week off!

So I slept for fourteen of the last 24 hours.
I dreamed that I was drinking and smoking. I had a 26er of something sweet, around %25ish, in my right hand. Maybe banana ramazotti, something fruity. I could feel the sticky liquor drying on my lips. The bottle was almost empty, it sloshed as I held it by the neck and tilted it toward my mouth to swallow it like it was juice and let it warm my esophagus and stomach. I had a cigarette in my left hand. I was curled up on a couch just getting s#!t faced... and I liked it. I also had to save a baby killer whale, but that's a little harder to explain...
I woke up with a real urge to drink. I thought about it all day long at work. I even tried to convince my self at one point that it wouldn't really matter that much if I went out and bought a bottle of something like that and sat down on my couch tonight to get 'er done. I tried to convince my self it would be ok because I've been good, it's only one time. I tried to tell my self that no one would know, that I just need it tonight... just to get through the night.
I hate feeling like this. I can't understand my self, I can't figure out what it all means! I'm frustrated... I can't put together the ups and downs and make them make sense, make them form some kind of pattern that's discernable, so that I could say, with absolute certainty, "This is what is wrong with me. This is what I can do to fix it." And never have to think about it again. I don't understand how I can feel emotionally even, yet have absolutely no energy. I don't understand how I can wake up elated and think "Today is a good day to die!" I don't understand how I can be utterly depressed, yet not be able to sleep. I can't make it fit together. Everything seems backward.
My mind just races with thoughts, about everything... christmas, my family, my future, things that depress me, things I should be doing but I'm not, what to do about the doctor which I feel pretty hopeless about, which keeps me from even trying just in case it goes badly... I spent the day between piling boxes and trying to keep warm in below-freezing temperatures at work, shoving my feet into the electric heater in the office writing and thinking in circles, trying to figure out what is more helpful; unravelling someone's illogic to arrive at a similar conclusion by thinking in terms of their missing information and speaking as though I have the same beliefs in order to communicate with them better, or being blunt and explaining where I believe their logic is flawed and opposing them at the risk of not being able to communicate with them further... it's confusing. I have the ability to think on a lot of levels, and understand where a lot of people are coming from, while not necessarily believing what they believe, but talk like I do because I understand it. Is it misleading? Trying to reach someone... I just want to help, but I know I go overboard sometimes. A lot of this has to do with this forum. I worry about everything I write lately, how it could be taken a way I didn't mean, or maybe it really doesn't read the way I think it does... I know what I want to say and I just don't know how to say it... and I know I break the rules sometimes, talking about god and stuff... I explore everything... like putting on a coat, I can try on different beliefs and thought patterns, but still stick to my basic beliefs. I get my self in to trouble sometimes, I say too much or say the wrong thing, maybe I offend people and no one says anything... maybe I'm just trying too hard? Maybe I just think too highly of my self some times. Maybe sometimes I'm just too critical of everything!
ACK!
Sometimes it's all too much!
I'm looking for escape and I can't find it today. These are the days I wish I was medicated.
Today the voice told me to take my steel toed shoes home with me for christmas. Laugh, I know it's stupid.
So I know the voice is just in my head. I know there's not some cosmic force trying to keep me from losing toes this weekend in a freak christmas accident. I have to confront everything with logic and see it for what it is - a symptom of a disease. And yet, I will probably take my steel toes home, and wear them, for christmas. I will do it because I know that if something does happen, I will regret not listening to the voice as I have regretted it in the past. I know that thinking you're psychic and stuff is a symptom if a disease too, but like an audio hallucination that's right there in the room with me, I can't convince my self that it doesn't exist. And other people belive it too, which makes it even harder. How do I tell if I'm thinking illogically if others think the same? There's so much more I wish I could say about that, but I know this isn't the place for it. I should probably just be talking to a counselor but right now I don't have one. Sorry for rambling, anyone who reads this. I just get tired of being the only one who reads this stuff sometimes.

Hi there. I read your posts!! It's spooky to read someone's words that look like they came out of my own head. My mind races around on its own, thoughts going here and there without my consent!! I don't understand why sometimes I'm OK about not drinking, and at others I can smell that darn martini - Bombay Sapphire Gin and Noilly Pratt Vermouth, with a humungous olive that practically counts as salad, speared and sitting in a frosted glass. It's the only drink I actually salivate at the thought of. I don't think I have dreamed about it. My lucid dreams are all over the place and usually involve feeling highly embarassed or trapped in an unpleasant situation.

I have had a lot of trouble falling asleep lately, but feel bone tired and not quite awake when I'm supposed to be. How much of this is depression and anxiety versus being a good old drunk, I have no idea. What I'm learning, however, is that by trying to do other things with the time I'd "normally" - HA! - spend drinking, it really does help reduce the cravings. Maybe that's why I'm so tired....

Anyway, I'm here. I read. I relate. I feel these things, too.

partlycloudy

Wow, that's funny. Sometimes I can taste canadian club, lol. It comes out of no where. It's like it's been waiting somewere in my system to release a particle or two that somehow wind up on my tastebuds. It's like being hungry and salivating at the thought of a burger. It's interesting how vivid the imagination can get when the body or mind feel deprived.

Wow what a response you have on this post! It seems a lot of people are dealing with the same ideas.

I hope it turned out well for you going to both functions. All I can say on this issue is that I would not have been able to go. I would have stayed home and ate M&M candies and watched television. I think I am weaker then you for sure! If I feel temptation will be there waiting, I stay home. It may be awhile before I can go out again and have a coke, or cup of coffee.

Congradulations on your 3 weeks! I hope you continue.

Thanks for posting.

Colors

“an intangible supposedly superior being would be a cop out for me”

You, I, all of us are surrounded by powers greater than ourselves all the time. Every time I looked in my rear view mirror, and saw those blue lights flashing, I knew that a power greater than myself was going to be tapping on my driver’s side window soon enough.

The bottle was a power greater than myself, and I got a feeling it’s a power greater than yourself as well. If you could quit on your own, you would have done so by now, and there would be no need to post your question. You are staring a power greater than yourself in the face right now.

So for the sake of argument, lets accept the fact that there are powers greater than ourselves out there. The question that faces you is can you find one that can relieve you of the obsession to drink.

You may be suffering from a disease that only a spiritual experience will conquer. As a good friend once said to me, if the word God runs you off, I ain’t worried, liquor will run you back.

If you think you can beat this game on your own, without a power greater than yourself, I wish you luck. But if you find that that just ain’t happening, may I offer you a quote I’m rather fond of…

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”

One more thought on this question.

It’s not the idea that there are powers greater than ourselves all around us all the time that stumped me when I first showed up as a wet drunk, it was the idea that reliance was based on blind faith. I came in as an agnostic. How can I possibly know if there is really anything out there? How can anyone? Those guys that believe in this higher power thing either learned it as a kid in Sunday school, or they are just afraid of dying. And if they just believe real hard (whistle past the graveyard) they won’t be so afraid.

You, on the other hand, have more in common with the Theist than I did. As a atheist, you have made a set of assumptions based on nothing more than faith. The idea that we are lone consciousnesses that spun up out of dust, live our lives as differentiated pools of awareness and when we die, the lights simply go out. Maybe.

I have always been a big fan of the scientific method. Don’t give me a bunch of mumbo-jumbo and except me to buy it. I want proof. Scientific proof. One scientist will concoct a formula, mix a given amount of “A” with a given amount of “B” and he always gets “C”. Take that same experiment anywhere in the world, follow the mixing instructions carefully and I’ll always get the same result, “C”. That’s the kind of proof I like.

The proposition that was put forward to me by the men in the rooms when I first showed up was the same. They told me that I couldn’t say that a simple set of spiritual principles as outlined in the program would not work on my problems if I didn’t conduct the experiment. It was suggested that I follow the mixing instructions exactly, and if I didn’t like the result at the end of the process, I could have my old stuff back, no questions asked. They used my own words to box me in.

What did I have to lose? I was blessed with a lack of good alternative ideas. Falteringly, fearfully, apprehensively I began to mix “A” & “B”.
This program (AA) does not work for a lot of people, every other program I know anything about doesn’t work for a bunch of folks. But I tell you this, what really didn’t work worth a %#@&#! was trying to fix me all by my self in secret. That my friend was a fools errand.

I made a very hard going of life near the end of my personal goat path. The old relationships with my favorite substances was to be no more. Those old happy days were over. Over any measurable length of time this stuff only gets worse, it never gets better. That bitter news sounded like a death sentence to me. But I was wrong. It was the truth, and the truth will set me free. Knowing the truth about myself is a very powerful medicine. It is the beginning of all progress.

If the idea of wearing this world, warts and all, as a loose fitting garment is at all appealing to you, try what I tried, You really have very little to lose. Maybe a few hours spent with people who laugh and have that old sparkle in their eyes, But compared to the hours that I squandered in self induced oblivion, there really is no comparison.

As always, a man will decide for himself what he will and what he will not do, but don’t let false pride, fear or contempt prior to investigation keep you from looking at this for what it is. This power greater than ourselves wants you to be happy and free, but this power isn’t a labor saving device, action is required.

There is an old Chinese proverb that goes something like this, “Trust in God, but row away from the rocks.”

Shadowalker164

My Higher Power when I started in AA was the group for it was explained to me that I alone could not pick up the group table but together we could which means it is a power greater than myself.
Larks