Oh Good! Hang in and Stay safe!! I hear yah on all the old stuff....Stay in the Now as best You can:)
Happy Turkey Day!
BiG Hug!
Billy

When you get the craving or the shakes, sip some sugar heavy drink. orange juice with a little honey stirred in, Coca Cola, etc. It will help you get through both.

Find an AA Group and ask for a Sponsor who lives our Program the way ouf Founders did. Just going to meetings won't work for most chronic alcoholics.

We recover by the Steps we take, not the meetings we make

Your doing great!

I'd say almost over the worst! Was for me first 4-5 days was HARD, then light at the end of the tunnel, you'll feel better, be more positive and cravings will reduce, things will start turning for the better SOON! believe me, was there only 25 days ago! If you give in you'll have to go through this shit again

Cravings don't last forever, use delay tactics, do something, biscuit, tea, read book, anxiety starts high but can only go one way, LOWER. Like a wave ride it!

Will seem like a long time, but reality cravings will be short!

Small steps, day at a time, even hour at a time, loads of support and encouragement for you on here, keep posting, stay on here, send me a message if you want?

Sending you strength!

English.

Do both. Continue to connect with sober others in any program. Whatever you do don't take that drink...

Hugs,
Dennis

Welcome. I'm sorry you are feeling that way. If you are feeling suicidal, call someone immediately. Call family, at a minimum, and call a hotline as well. Take these feelings seriously.
Early sobriety is very hard. Up, down, all around. It evens out over time. For me I needed alott of support. AA, the women in the rooms, a sponsor. Early on I'd wake up, thankful for a morning sober, and pray. I'd go to a meeting, and I'd take it a minute at a time when needed. When I freaked out, and I did, I'd call my sponsor and women in the program and just tell them how I felt. It got easier.
I'm grateful to be celebrating my 3rd sober thanksgiving I'm thankful there is a solution and I don't have to live like I used to.
You can be entirely free too. Just takes a bit of faith, some work, and surrender.

I hope that the Universe will send you calmness and strength. Many people suppress their feelings by drinking or drugging. Once that drink or drug is not there numbing those feelings. They will come up.. Which is what they should do. That's a part of healing. Try to breathe, take a walk, read a book, journal,,, find something that can take you into a place of serenity while you learn to deal with those feelings. I'm just trying to get through day 1 so it's helping me commenting and reading the posts.

You are doing great. There are some wonderful suggestions here and super people to support you through any trials.

Keep posting so we know how you are doing - best wishes for a happy and peaceful weekend.

If we really want to live without alcohol, it would be a good idea to follow the Path Bill, Dr. Bob and our early Members blazed for us. What they did is clearly and simply laid out in the Basic Text for Alcoholics Anonymous.

If we will carefully study pgs xxvii - 43, we will have their understanding of what chronic alcoholism is. If, when we drink, we always drink too much even though we planed to only have a couple, we are powerless over alcohol. If we have made an honest decision to never drink again but we do, our life is unmanageable. If we could manage our deciision to not drink, we wouldn't need the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

To learn what goes on in our mind that leads us to return to drinking, once we have made up our mind to never drink again, is covered from pg 64 - pg 75

Once we understand what it is that activates the insidious insanity of chronic alcoholism, we are given clear-cut directions on what we MUST do to survive this deadly malady, we are to begin learning to precisely (xiii), specifically (pg 20) follow the clear-cut directions (pg 29) from pg 75 to pg 164 with a daily committment to practice Steps Ten, Eleven & the second- third of Step Twelve moment by moment and day by day. (pgs 84 thru 103)

If we are as serious about learning to live sober as we were to getting our next drink, it will not fail.

We recover by the Steps we take, not the neetings we make

I have lost the power of choice and if I drink one I want a hundred. You can do this I am glad you went to aa. it is the only reason that i am here today.. i would be dead. keep us posted to your path of recovery.

1is2many

Hi cj8258 - I am so sorry that you are struggling. I am in the same boats. I have good days and bad days. Drinking: A Love Story is a great book, I think you will enjoy it. I haven't read the other one that you mentioned. Therapy will help but you have to believe in yourself and that you are worthy of having a better life. Try talking to your disease and saying "I know what you want but I will not give it to you! I am better than that so f*** off!". You are not alone! Sending you warm thoughts.
Namaste!

Just talking about your pain right now is the best thing you can do. I know you don't want to take a drink and you are taking some positive steps in the right direction. You have set some positive goals and are working toward them.

You need alot of support and I can't stress that enough. Keep going to the smart and/or the AA whichever one you feel is helping you the most, or both.

It gets better, much better but you have to tolerate the storm in order to see the rainbow!

BIG hug!

God Bless!

You can do it. Educate yourself as much as possible on the subject of recovery and alcoholism. Hayden puts out some real good books on the journey of recovery.

They also offer work books to help you to deal with your pain.

I am so glad that you have made the decision to quit drinking....please reach out to A.A. if possible....you will find people there who are just like you and that have made it.

We all need support and love and that can be found in an A.A. meeting.

Hi cj8258, personally I would not mix methods of sobriety, it only serves to confuse especially as SMART and AA are completely different.

You don't have to be strong to recover. A lot of us die trying to change our mental and physical relationship with alcohol and so the simple solution is to stop drinking for good and all. It removes the battle. But how?

Any good method of recovery offers that help because the hard won lesson for people like me is that it is impossible to maintain abstinence on my own power. In AA that is why the solution is a spiritual one.

If you decide on AA and you are pushing yourself, i suggest you push yourself in the direction of getting a sponsor and going through the 12 Step programme. That is what makes the difference and gives you the solution as a result of the effort you put in.

Let us know how you get on.

Hi, I found that the hurt may not be necessarily related to my drinking accept to ease the pain....but in not be able to stay sober long enough to understand that. All I did was keep adding scar tissue to it which caused me to become far more adaptable to it as a coping mechanism. I'm glad when I got sober in AA the crowd was very open minded about psychotherapy along with all the understanding I was finding in AA and Na also! There really was so many things in myself I needed to put a face on and begin to understand what the reasons for them were:)
Billy