Sobriety

Let's talk Aguachile Alley

Postby bear » Fri Oct 12, 2018 12:24 pm

I don't think they're incomparable in that they can both be crutches. Habitual weed use might not be as devastating, but it can still prevent you from addressing the source of your problems. That's not to say that's true of all weed smokers, or even problem drinkers who now just smoke, but it's a possibility to be mindful of. I think you just have to be rigorously honest about your patterns. For some and for me, recovery is an experimentation process. But you have to accept the results of your experiments and change if needed.
Last edited by bear on Fri Oct 12, 2018 2:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby Hideaway Lights » Fri Oct 12, 2018 2:17 pm

bear wrote:one year today baby! woo woo!


Congrats bear!!!
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Postby rixx » Fri Oct 12, 2018 2:42 pm

bear wrote:I don't think they're incomparable in that they can both be crutches. Habitual weed use might not be as devastating, but it can still prevent you from addressing the source of your problems. That's not to say that's true of all weed smokers, or even problem drinkers who now just smoke, but it's a possibility to be mindful of. I think you just have to be rigorously honest about your patterns. For some and for me, recovery is an experimentation process. But you have to accept the results of your experiments and changed if needed.

yeah I had a friend who is big in AA now that didn't have major drinking issues but when he was smoking weed, he would smoke 24/7, literally at all times of the day. and it definitely prevented him from addressing any of his problems in life. it also drastically changed his personality and demeanor. he was extremely emotionally distant and had no attention span. like a walking dead zombie. he is so much more pleasant to be around and alive now that he is sober. so yeah don't discount weed addiction
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Postby bear » Fri Oct 12, 2018 2:54 pm

accidental post
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Postby spaghetti legs » Sat Oct 13, 2018 7:09 pm

got 7 years yesterday, feelin real good
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Postby mooncalf » Sat Oct 13, 2018 7:21 pm

king ding-a-ling wrote:got 7 years yesterday, feelin real good


congratulations! and to bear also!

i also have a little more than 7 years, it's amazing to be sober :D

i normally only hit between 1-3 meetings a week the past few months, but I'm having an AA-filled day today. woke up and met an ex-sponsee at a morning meeting, attended a secretary workshop and business meeting this afternoon, and will be speaking at a meeting tonight. let me tell you, this saturday is 100x better than the saturdays i used to have when i was drinking and using. and i'll feel much better tomorrow lol
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Postby Swelling Itching Brain » Sun Oct 14, 2018 4:12 pm

pablito wrote:ye. when ur drinking a lot, and you notice something about urself that u dont like, ur natural instinct is to shrug and say "well i guess i just suck". the farther u get from drinking the more u begin to see ur behaviors as surmountable and ur problems as solvable

Great post :)
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Postby tea preacher » Sun Oct 14, 2018 6:37 pm

Congrats on the anniversaries bear and king ding-a-ling.

I still remember right when I came into AA thinking “after a year of sobriety I can drink again, I’ll have this all figured out”. Glad I came to my senses.
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Postby j-ol » Tue Oct 16, 2018 4:00 pm

decided to get off the weed for reals. i hit a tipping point years ago where the cons became more apparent than the pros, but i kept smoking routinely, it was such a well-ingrained habit. hadn't gone a week without in probably 12 years... today is day 10. pot is legal here in canada as of tomorrow, L O L
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Postby Hideaway Lights » Tue Oct 16, 2018 4:20 pm

king ding-a-ling wrote:got 7 years yesterday, feelin real good


Amazing!!!! Congratulations. That is a HUGE accomplishment
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Postby spaghetti legs » Thu Oct 18, 2018 4:09 pm

ty everyone, so happy to be sober
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Postby bongo » Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:19 am

i’m still going and happy with/proud of myself but things seem harder lately in ways i hadn’t expected. i went on a family trip to vermont which was actually triggering and tough. i thought i’d managed to cynically tear down connoisseurship and recognized how i couched abuse in its normalizing faculties sufficiently to make a trip to the “napa valley of beer” be meaningless to me, but when my brother in law mentioned some barrel aged saison release at hill farmstead (a brewery i romanticized quite a bit while drinking) i found myself thrown into a bit of inner turmoil which manifested in thoughts such as “would it be bad to drink 6oz of a really well made beer in a beautiful space with loved ones and look out at an amazing landscape”? “why can’t i do that?” and these kinds of thoughts eventually spiraled off into thinking about how daunting it is to never drink again and various mental pushing and pulling that occupied my brain for a couple entire afternoons, pulling me out of the moment while i should have been present and enjoying beautiful scenery etc.

still, i didn’t drink while in vermont and im proud of that. i think really it was a good reminder that sobriety is actually very hard. i maybe forgot. to be an anxious person and to have used alcohol for a very long time in very furtive, complex, self medicating ways and to no longer have that is hard, particularly in a world where it’s so very accessible, promoted, and embraced, a world wherein you’re constantly othered for not partaking.

more troubling is lately i’ve been fantasizing about drinking in general which is a new thing for me, my first i guess 15 months sober were devoid of any positive thoughts towards booze. i am dealing with bad bouts of anxiety and i keep fixating on that feeling i recall so well of drink 4 or 5 when you feel that massive gush of anxiety relief and actually feel calm and able to breathe and be in your own skin. what’s odd is that i actually don’t want to drink, i really don’t. i don’t feel as though i want to be drunk, i don’t want to “party”, i resent alcohol, hate alcohol culture, and want no part of it. even still i find myself dwelling on the severity of abstinence and really idealizing that ephemeral anxiety relief (which i know is very short lived, problematic, not sustainable).

i have been avoiding looking at/posting on this board but in the past this thread has been useful to me so i thought i’d make this post. i don’t go to meetings and don’t have any intention of starting to unless some crisis really compels it. if anyone has any experience with these lines of thinking, pushing past them or falling prey to them and relapsing, id really like to hear them. be well everyone
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Postby southpaw » Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:27 am

Good to hear from you bingo. Thanks for sharing.
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Postby southpaw » Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:32 am

I am trying for the 50th time to quit smoking weed all the time. I'm on day 10, and I feel spectacular. I've smoked daily since 1999, except for a three month break in 2006.

My problem is I detox, feel fantastic, but the romantic draw comes back after a few weeks, like I've forgotten the negatives. I still constantly think about it. Then I slip up and immediately go back to all-day everyday mode. Honestly I feel guilty even posting about it because it doesn't really interfere as much with my life as drinking did, but I also know I can't regulate my usage. It's all or nothing. And I have a good friend coming to town today so I know the old behaviors and temptations will be a stong draw.
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Postby rixx » Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:36 am

bongo wrote:but when my brother in law mentioned some barrel aged saison release at hill farmstead (a brewery i romanticized quite a bit while drinking) i found myself thrown into a bit of inner turmoil which manifested in thoughts such as “would it be bad to drink 6oz of a really well made beer in a beautiful space with loved ones and look out at an amazing landscape”? “why can’t i do that?” and these kinds of thoughts eventually spiraled off into thinking about how daunting it is to never drink again and various mental pushing and pulling that occupied my brain for a couple entire afternoons, pulling me out of the moment while i should have been present and enjoying beautiful scenery etc.


this ability of the brain to selectively retain information is such anathema to recovery. i romanticized the fuck out of the cold ft greene winters of 2014-2015 when i'd get home from work, pick up two bottles of wine for my best friend & roommate josephine and I, and we'd crash on the couch and throw on a horror film together. wine seemed so innocuous and sophisticated and just something to take the edge off, and why shouldn't I drink it with my best friend while we bonded? that couldn't be alcoholism. but you never remember all the details. I wouldn't remember that I’d get a persistent headache halfway through the bottle, or I wouldn't remember that my face would feel gross and bloated, or that I’d be self-conscious about how fast I was drinking my bottle compared to her, or how when I did inevitably finish it halfway through the movie, I’d lose focus on the actual film and only on when it'd end so I could say goodnight to Josa and pretend to go to sleep and sweatily bust out a fifth of vodka. wine was an idea to me but always a miserable experience in execution.
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Postby bunkbeds » Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:44 am

don’t have much to offer in the way of advice, but just wanted to thank you for the post bingo. i echo your sentiment about this thread’s usefulness, especially within the context of the board and it’s history of normalizing alcohol abuse. i’ve always enjoyed your posts, even since i started lurking many many years ago, and i’m glad to hear that you’ve still been doing well despite the temptations presented during your recent trip.

i’m about 26 months sober and the only way i’ve found to successfully contend with the thought of “how come everyone else can drink and i can’t,” even in like a very low-key, family gathering type environment, is to just try my hardest to remove any sort of judgement of myself and the situation, just constantly striving for “radical acceptance,” a term used frequently in dialectical behavior therapy. you can google that term for a clearer, more in depth explanation, but it’s main function is to accept life on life’s terms, just acknowledging reality in a very pure and unjudgemental way. i’ve found that line of thinking to be very helpful and will often save me a lot of the inner turmoil of “why can’t i drink? it’s been a long time; maybe i can drink now and it’ll be okay? how come my mom can have two glasses of wine and be able to be euphoric and slightly flushed and dance like a dummy at my brother’s wedding and know that she doesn’t need any more booze? how come all my alcoholic friends can keep it up after all these years and be okay and still manage to progress in their lives?” for me, at the end of the day, none of that shit actually matters or holds any significant weight in my life. i’ve been able to experience a wider range of emotions, a clearer and healthier way of thinking without alcohol in my life. i’ve found it so much easier to identify what is and isn’t important to me and actually have the fucking energy to work towards those things, instead of drunkenly spouting off ideas i have to close friends to make myself feel better about myself without ever following through on any of them. i’m basically rambling at this point but just felt inclined to say something after reading that post, bingo. thanks again for sharing and keep up the good work! you’re crushing it every single god damned day that you go without drinking, no matter how long it’s been, and that’s worthy of celebrating on its own.
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Postby bongo » Sat Oct 20, 2018 12:51 pm

thanks for the replies, these are useful to me and just what i hoped for
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Postby national e-day observer » Sat Oct 20, 2018 9:29 pm

there's certainly a collective nostalgia i think that is tied to autumn/winter that generally makes the idea of booze a hell of a lot more appealing this time of year

i'm 23 months sober now and i feel like i was a half-human in the years when i was drinking at an adult-level capacity. yeah i do have a shrinking circle of friends since i quit drinking, but i haven't depended on these people to prop up my weekends in years - and i don't even like most of them anymore besides -but also it's not like i wasn't also an outcast to them when i drank (deeply unrelatable obsession with the booze, it's true)

anyway after doing it for half my life, i feel like i can say without question, drinking for anxiety relief is probably the dumbest shit ever

great post bingo, keep up the amazing work!
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Postby bear » Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:30 pm

writing out bad memories in detail helps keep the pain fresh, can be quite triggering though
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Postby An Indulgent Mother » Sun Oct 21, 2018 12:05 am

that's a good and helpful post, came to wreck

edit: your edits have me worried that this sounded sarcastic. didn't intend that!
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Postby An Indulgent Mother » Sun Oct 21, 2018 12:57 am

I'm struggling to find any literature about how you'd be expected to feel after two months of not drinking, but all I do know is that I constantly feel faint and I'm having a lot of trouble articulating myself. Did anyone else go through this sort of thing at a similar stage of the journey? I know it gets better, if anything I'm excited to emerge on the other side of these feelings of physical and mental weakness
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Postby mooncalf » Sun Oct 21, 2018 4:24 am

Sports Fan of the Year wrote:I'm struggling to find any literature about how you'd be expected to feel after two months of not drinking, but all I do know is that I constantly feel faint and I'm having a lot of trouble articulating myself. Did anyone else go through this sort of thing at a similar stage of the journey? I know it gets better, if anything I'm excited to emerge on the other side of these feelings of physical and mental weakness

I think that's totally normal, I went through it myself. Took me about 6 months to get out of the mental fog, and another 6 months or so to experience consistent emotional equilibrium. So yeah, for me, it was a tough slog the first year but it totally gets better given enough time. Not sure the exact mechanism, but there is a bunch of literature on PAWS (post-acute withdrawal syndrome). Exercise helped me with this more than anything.
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Postby pablito » Sun Oct 21, 2018 7:50 am

bingooo! its so important to have those moments where you are acutely aware of how nice drinking can be and even better when you can resist. those are the actual moments when you can lay down sober bricks
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Postby woozy ducks » Sun Oct 21, 2018 6:11 pm

Excercise helps with everything
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Postby CatGyal (Tu Babysitter) » Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:05 pm

oh lawd I banged someone from AA. I've only been there a few weeks
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Postby shacky » Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:16 pm

it's only been 40 days for me and tomorrow night will be the first show ive attended sober since, iunno, 2010 maybe and im sorta unsure how to navigate the situation and don't really have any plan beyond maybe just chain smoking n swallowing a ton of valium. my gp has recently given me a number to call to organise professional support and guidance but, yknow, anxiety-procrastination.

in the last 40 days i've been p socially avoidant, with the exception of my gf who im fine to be round, ive only hung with people twice. i showed up sober to band prac for the first time ever which was kinda a big deal because the rest of them had never seen me sober before in any context, but surprisingly i was socially mostly fine (and obv much more musically competent). and i actually managed to go to a bar with a friend and just order a sprite (lol) which was an even bigger deal and i told her this was the first time she'd seen me sober, she hadn't suspected anything, and she was actually more nervous than i was, worrying that my sober self wouldn't like her, but we actually had a chill time chatting for an hour, i wasn't triggered at all by her nursing a beer the whole time.

so this has given me a bit of self-belief but, like, that was just an empty bar on a weekday afternoon, v low key. ive stayed away from bars at night, any kind of nightlife, any large crowds or claustrophobic spaces. and obv the gig tomorrow is going to tick all those boxes. im not sure what's scaring me more, the idea that ill cave or that ill abstain but be unable to enjoy myself. honestly i think there's more chance of the latter happening and ive started having alcohol-related nightmares this past week, consisting in a horrible abstract sense of a future of perpetual anhedonia. i feel like my subconscious is screaming at me that ill never truly feel happiness again without alcohol, which is obviously v dangerous, and so i guess i just really want tomorrow to dispel this fear by my being able to enjoy myself. and i don't know what to do to ensue that happens, maybe there's nothing to do.
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Postby shacky » Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:20 pm

tl;dr how do u go 2 rock n roll shows without drugz??
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Postby bear » Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:51 pm

it's important to remember that even if you don't or can't enjoy yourself tomorrow, that doesn't mean that you'll never enjoy yourself in these situations, and that it's necessary to go through this period if you want to be sober. it takes time to adjust, and it's natural to go through some period of anhedonia, but is not, in my experience and the experience of those I know, perpetual.
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Postby CatGyal (Tu Babysitter) » Wed Oct 24, 2018 2:07 pm

Spend the entire time shitposting on this thread when not seeing the band
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Postby tgk » Wed Oct 24, 2018 2:09 pm

shacky wrote:tl;dr how do u go 2 rock n roll shows without drugz??


find out ahead of time when the set times are and then show up right before they start and leave right after
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