I kept busy doing things I enjoy. I went for walks., I read a book, started going to a knitting group, worked on negkected projects around the house. (I felt guilty for neglecting those projects so it gave me a sense of accomplishment and pride)
Laying off the alcohol resulted in sleeping better and actually alleviated a lot of my anxiety and depression.

One strategy I used was the realization that there was nothing so depressing, so anxiety-ridden, so stressful that alcohol couldn't make even worse. Alcohol was not a solution, but rather added to the problems.

Many people use alcohol to self-medicate, myself included. With hindsight, I now know that I used alcohol to treat my undiagnosed bipolar disorder. What better way to counter a manic episode than to drink a depressant? Alcohol is classified as a depressant. So using a depressant to medicate depression is kinda screwed up.

What helped me was daily AA meetings. I spent a lot of time around sober people, learning from sober people how to cope with life. Besides, meetings kept me busy, left me with less idle time spent obsessing about alcohol or the lack of it.

Nowadays with 13+ years of sobriety, I use everything I learned in AA to live "life on life's terms", to "cope" with any and everything life throws at me. It's a pretty good life.

That’s what I’m worried about, during the week I have a lot of time on my hands. I’m off Monday through Friday and work two 12 hour shifts on the weekends. I’m in school but that only takes up so much time. I have way too much time to think and obsess over it and talk myself into drinking

I found mindful meditation to be the best aid in coping with life.

I went through an outpatient treatment program which taught us coping skills. It was called the "Serene Program" and every hospital has one or else they have something similar.

There are other ways but outpatient treatment combined with AA meetings is what helped me.

God Bless

bobinmaine, so you did all outpatient? Even the detox phase?

shortchick92, I went through 4 days of detox and the counselors there signed me up for the next available IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program) that was in the evening hours which allowed me to work at my full time job during the day. It was 3 weeks with 4-5 hours in the evening, can't remember exactly but it really helped me alot so I highly recommend.

God Bless

Hello shortchick92,

My experience with recovery from alcoholism may not be typical but I will tell you how it went. Looking back now, I can see clearly that there was ONE thing that made the difference between relapse and success.

The magic word was ACCEPTANCE.

I had a problem with alcohol for many years but didn’t really want to do anything about it and indeed, I avoided thinking about it too much, in case I did not like what I discovered. I did not know that I was an alcoholic, simply because I didn’t know what an alcoholic was. At the very first AA meeting, they read The Doctors Opinion from the Big Book and people then shared about it. I immediately knew then why I drank in the way that I did, and why I had been unable to stop drinking. That was the first light-bulb moment.

I went along to meetings for several more weeks and although I was not drinking, something wasn’t quite right. I talked about it at a meeting and someone gave me the answer, even though it was an answer I didn’t want to hear. He told me that I was admitting to being an alcoholic but not ACCEPTING it. That was the second light-bulb moment.

What followed was a period of self-pity - the ‘Why Me’ syndrome. Then I slowly came to ACCEPT the reality that I am an alcoholic and cannot drink safely. I then had a choice and a decision to make. I could continue in the ‘poor me’ mode and keep forever talking about my ‘problem’ and looking for sympathy from anyone who understood. Alternatively, I could do whatever was necessary in order to recover. I choose the second option.

Once I accepted the reality of my situation, nothing on this earth would convince me that it would be OK for me to drink. Drinking and the drinking people and places that I associated with were all in the past. I looked to the future and the exciting possibilities that lay ahead. At last, I was free from being imprisoned by alcoholism and the sky was the limit.

Therefore, what I would suggest to you is to first of all ACCEPT the reality that you cannot drink safely. After you do that, move on with confidence and something magic is likely to happen. You can become your own person and what other people know or think about you won’t matter so much.

What helped me was realizing I wasn’t just drinking for anxiety. Personally for me I drank when happ, sad, to celebrate etc. I have never felt with my anxiety better than I have sober. I meditate before bed and say the serenity prayer a lot. I also found that either a warm bath or a hot cup of tea does wonders. There is a sleepy time tea that really helps me relax. It all boils down to you have to learn new strategies that help you. Drinking never helped the anxiety it just stuffed it away for a short time.

I had to ask myself what did I need coping for? Most of the time the answer was pressure and stress. I started to ask myself serious questions like who is pressuring me and is a life possible with less stress. The answer I got every time was I was the one putting enormous pressure on myself, and I was the one who made decisions that brought enormous amounts of stress. Somewhere along the line I picked up the idea that the only way I would be seen as a man by others is if I were able to handle tons of pressure and had a very stress filled life.

The truth was I made terrible decisions under pressure, that lead to embarrassment, temper tantrums, ruined relationships, and a "need" to get away from it all with binge drinking, followed by the use of some sort of drug. I thought I need to cope from the fact that I drank, but I really needed to cope from the belief system, the wrong belief system I had built of my own devices and my own will power, that was simply not including a higher power or other's help.

Psychiatry and therapy did little to help, in fact, it put more pressure on me to say "the right things" because I remember those people always having some irrational power to lock me up, a terrible truth in this world and how it deals with the mentally ill and drug addicts. Eventually I was having to drink more to cope with the reality that when I asked the medical community for help, they would always harm me by locking me up, charging me an absurd amount for pathetic "treatment", so it just made things worse. I remember therapist rolling their eyes, doctor's purposefully giving me hardcore psychiatric drugs that made my motor skills and body defective, so at first thinking it was coping, turned into a raging vengeance driven resentment that made me plot against them, and just drink more!

The real coping came with acceptance and an understanding that it was all real, yes I was an alcoholic, yes God had been trying to tell me for a very long time it was so, yes he gave me the solution a month after I turned 18 by allowing the criminal justice system to arrest me and then availing AA and recovery by other recovered peoples to my experience. The longer I fought that AA and other's who had recovered were going to provide the coping and spirituality necessary for me to cope with the harm damned entities like the medical community and the criminal justice system, in regards to dealing with mental illness and drug addiction, the more impossible it was to cope.

I was the one trying to create and manufacture the coping, and I had to admit I couldn't, and magically it came, it was great. I had to be realistic, not run from the harm others had caused, but also educated and learn the harm I was doing, in my delusion and in my drinking and drugging.

As long as there is a profit motive when it comes to therapy or medical help, that help will always have a hidden liability that in the end might not provide real help that allows proper coping skills. Selfishness is the root of all sick problems, and I have found it not wise to seek advice or counsel from those too sick to say they are doing it so they can get rich.

Run away from people who say they can help, but only if you pay them this much. They are very bad people.