Pinback's Recovery Central Introduction
Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2015 12:37 pm
Hello! Welcome to the new base in which we will be discussing recovery from alcoholism (specifically mine, but not limited to that), and secondarily or in combination, roller coasters.
The impetus for this is:
I'm an alcoholic, now six days clean, and it's going well enough this time that I think it might finally actually "take", and I thought this would be a good place for me to document the experience of recovery, answer any questions you may have, offer to listen to your own experiences, and/or talk about roller coasters.
Some background!
I've been drinking alcohol daily since I was about 19. First just a couple beers a day, then a few glasses of wine, then in my late 20s, taking those first few tenuous steps into liquor, increasing that amount through my 30s, and eventually winding up with this as an average daily intake:
3/4 of a bottle of vodka, two little airplane bottles of "99 Bananas", and four or five beers. That's a representative example.
As far as "functional" alcoholics go, I think I win? I never lost a job, always paid my bills, always provided for the people depending on me, and other than lying to my wife about it and not picking Knuckles up from the airport that one time, didn't overtly harm anyone during the whole stint.
However, I'd reached the point (in the past month) where I'd actually started getting into morning/day drinking. Some of it was just for fun, but some was because I was always hungover from the previous night, and it was the only surefire way to feel better. This could go on for days.
It could have gone on for years.
Everyone felt bad about it, and I was sick of it. I think the only way this actually works is if you finally, deep in your heart, really, sincerely hate the whole thing.
Even hating it, though, doesn't always do the trick. The first day of sobriety is easy because you're hungover as fuck from "going out in style" the previous night, and you just want the pain to end.
Day 2 is when it gets hard, because you're feeling fine again. Hey, I made it through! Let's get the party started again! But you made a commitment, so you can't. And it's terrible. You realize that it's the only thing you had that made everything else fun, everything else tolerable. You don't feel like doing anything anymore, because what's the point, it's not fun anymore.
I've only made it to Day 6 through a combination of mindfulness meditation, self-administered "ACT" (Acceptance/Commitment Therapy, of which mindfulness meditation is a large part) and most recently and so far amazingly, the Hyland's Nerve Tonic I mentioned in the main base, which perhaps Jonsey can move here to keep this all in the same place.
Right now I feel like if I keep this routine up, I'll make it to the most important mile marker, which is the one where figuring out ways not to drink and fighting with the voices in your head trying to scheme a way to get back to it somehow, where all of that stops, and you genuinely don't care.
How long does that take? I don't know. Never gotten there before.
We'll see.
The impetus for this is:
I'm an alcoholic, now six days clean, and it's going well enough this time that I think it might finally actually "take", and I thought this would be a good place for me to document the experience of recovery, answer any questions you may have, offer to listen to your own experiences, and/or talk about roller coasters.
Some background!
I've been drinking alcohol daily since I was about 19. First just a couple beers a day, then a few glasses of wine, then in my late 20s, taking those first few tenuous steps into liquor, increasing that amount through my 30s, and eventually winding up with this as an average daily intake:
3/4 of a bottle of vodka, two little airplane bottles of "99 Bananas", and four or five beers. That's a representative example.
As far as "functional" alcoholics go, I think I win? I never lost a job, always paid my bills, always provided for the people depending on me, and other than lying to my wife about it and not picking Knuckles up from the airport that one time, didn't overtly harm anyone during the whole stint.
However, I'd reached the point (in the past month) where I'd actually started getting into morning/day drinking. Some of it was just for fun, but some was because I was always hungover from the previous night, and it was the only surefire way to feel better. This could go on for days.
It could have gone on for years.
Everyone felt bad about it, and I was sick of it. I think the only way this actually works is if you finally, deep in your heart, really, sincerely hate the whole thing.
Even hating it, though, doesn't always do the trick. The first day of sobriety is easy because you're hungover as fuck from "going out in style" the previous night, and you just want the pain to end.
Day 2 is when it gets hard, because you're feeling fine again. Hey, I made it through! Let's get the party started again! But you made a commitment, so you can't. And it's terrible. You realize that it's the only thing you had that made everything else fun, everything else tolerable. You don't feel like doing anything anymore, because what's the point, it's not fun anymore.
I've only made it to Day 6 through a combination of mindfulness meditation, self-administered "ACT" (Acceptance/Commitment Therapy, of which mindfulness meditation is a large part) and most recently and so far amazingly, the Hyland's Nerve Tonic I mentioned in the main base, which perhaps Jonsey can move here to keep this all in the same place.
Right now I feel like if I keep this routine up, I'll make it to the most important mile marker, which is the one where figuring out ways not to drink and fighting with the voices in your head trying to scheme a way to get back to it somehow, where all of that stops, and you genuinely don't care.
How long does that take? I don't know. Never gotten there before.
We'll see.