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November Getting/Staying Clean/Sober Thread v. It's Fall! Again!

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@TPD, yes, here in the US, Tuesday is going to be hilarious!!
 
Oh god, don't remind me. . . :\ LOL I wasn't even thinking about that! Oh well, that's okay. Go right ahead and rain on my parade why don't 'cha ya :p ;)
 
sobriety date, august 22nd,2016, and today i am grateful for that day,because on that day i decided to live a new way of life.
 
splendid, D's! if you don't mind my asking... have you been doing anything that you find particularly helpful to keep your recovery moving forward? 12-step meetings? rehab? medication? or maybe you're improvising, making your own way? just curious b/c that is some awesome work, man.
 
sobriety date, august 22nd,2016, and today i am grateful for that day,because on that day i decided to live a new way of life.


Congratulations!!! How are you feeling?
 
Right on!

splendid, D's! if you don't mind my asking... have you been doing anything that you find particularly helpful to keep your recovery moving forward? 12-step meetings? rehab? medication? or maybe you're improvising, making your own way? just curious b/c that is some awesome work, man.

Congratulations!!! How are you feeling?

today i am feeling, that i have a chance to recover. i say that because i woke up this morning feeling better then i did the day before, and each day i wake up, i wake up feeling better then the day before. i know about myself today, i know when i start waking up without feeling gratitude then my alcoholism starts to tell me that 'hey man you feel like taking a drink today'? if i feel some type of way when i wake up then i call my sponsor, and share in a meeting about it.
i tell on my self, because today i work a program of honesty, and the more i tell on my addiction then the more help i receive.

i attended AA , CA, and NA meetings, and work an AA program with a man whom i call my friend and sponsor, that has been taking me through the twelve steps. we work by reading the book of alcoholics anonymous, and the twelve & twelve, along with a morning meditation book.
i wake up each morning and night i will read pages 86 & 87 in my 'big book', and at the end of the day i put pen to paper if i am dealing with any issues.

I also want to add that I am in a treatment program, yea I call it 'Big Book Boot Camp' because it's a state-ran AA rehab thats 6-9 months program, and all they teach from is from the 'Big Book of AA'. I'm in the part of the program called 'phase' and am about to start work on the 4th step.

Just saying, by no means do I have this program down, and I still ask tons of questions. I like to call it 'behavior modification', learning how to wake up again at 5:00am, (or sooner if i am working in the kitchen),laundry,sign in, and sign out.
'trust the processes' they say.

Just for today, I have the choice not to take that first drink or drug. Just for today
 
today i am feeling, that i have a chance to recover. i say that because i woke up this morning feeling better then i did the day before, and each day i wake up, i wake up feeling better then the day before. i know about myself today, i know when i start waking up without feeling gratitude then my alcoholism starts to tell me that 'hey man you feel like taking a drink today'? if i feel some type of way when i wake up then i call my sponsor, and share in a meeting about it.
i tell on my self, because today i work a program of honesty, and the more i tell on my addiction then the more help i receive.

i attended AA , CA, and NA meetings, and work an AA program with a man whom i call my friend and sponsor, that has been taking me through the twelve steps. we work by reading the book of alcoholics anonymous, and the twelve & twelve, along with a morning meditation book.
i wake up each morning and night i will read pages 86 & 87 in my 'big book', and at the end of the day i put pen to paper if i am dealing with any issues.

I also want to add that I am in a treatment program, yea I call it 'Big Book Boot Camp' because it's a state-ran AA rehab thats 6-9 months program, and all they teach from is from the 'Big Book of AA'. I'm in the part of the program called 'phase' and am about to start work on the 4th step.

Just saying, by no means do I have this program down, and I still ask tons of questions. I like to call it 'behavior modification', learning how to wake up again at 5:00am, (or sooner if i am working in the kitchen),laundry,sign in, and sign out.
'trust the processes' they say.

Just for today, I have the choice not to take that first drink or drug. Just for today

That's great to hear! Alcohol is so difficult for some of us to quit. If you ever need to talk feel free to hit me up- I was in treatment off and on for over seven years to quit drinking and I was finally successful in 2014 - I almost have three years alcohol free. I can definitely relate ;)
 
I am glad to hear you are finding value in the 12 Steps! Keep up the great work my friend!
 
I was sober from May-late September of this year, then I stopped when I got off work. I hooked up with someone I knew from childhood (she's in her early 30's now, with a small child, and multiple serious felony charges hanging over her head...it's all a bit surreal considering the fact that I've known her since we were about 7 years old). Indulged in a bit of a "binge" in the couple weeks following the cessation of fishing including, but not limited to: cocaine, methamphetamine, methadone, bupe, multiple tranquilizers for roll-slowing purposes, and tar...mostly tar, though.

It always comes back to tar.

I'm currently on a cross-country trip, but before I disembarked I decided to see how my old "running partners" in my old city were doing. Turns out not so great. One person copped an assault charge, and when they searched her they found a dirty rig & heroin in her pocket. She's semi-homeless now ("semi" because I'm pretty sure that she's not supposed to be living in the abandoned trailer she's squatting in). Several others I knew are now in prison, one apparently for puncturing someone's lung in a dispute over stolen drugs. My old dope dealer actually "moved up" and apparently only sells wholesale weight now...he has more money than he knows what to do with but no sense when it comes to actually protecting or expanding his newfound wealth. Mostly buys expensive accessories and status symbols, etc. He bought me a very expensive (for my taste, anyway...several hundred dollars) pair of sunglasses when I was up there hanging out with him. He's a good guy in the final analysis, very generous and intelligent...but also kind of evil and calculating...he was the first person to convince me to shoot up, and I've heard others say the same thing, including his now girlfriend, who he got hooked on tar. FuuuckI got a gram and a half of raw tar when I was up there and didn't finish it before I had to leave a week later. Ended up giving quite a bit away. Despite all of the drugs I've done and all the gutters I've crawled through, there's just something about hardcore illegal drug use that has always left a horrible taste in my mouth, particularly the "social aspect" of it, and I've never been able to get over it. A lot of addicts just ignore it or even embrace it/celebrate the "hustle" (those people are the worst IMO)...I guess it just irritates me more than most people.

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But currently I'm just enjoying the warm, southern Cali sun while I'm on vacation. :) Haven't done any drugs other than cannabis for...at least a couple weeks! Just trying to enjoy the present moment in time...

I also met a couple people from this website on the way down the American west coast, and that was interesting
 
I just really, really love drugs and getting high.

Like, really love that. ;) But I'm capable of loving life in (relative) sobriety, too...I don't know. Sometimes I don't know if what I'm doing is the "right thing" or not...shortly before I left on my trip my mother told me with tears in her eyes that I would die if I kept doing what I was doing. That didn't feel very good...hurt me right in my heartbox. I've never ended up in the hospital or prison because of hard drugs, and I've never stolen anything from them like prescription drugs or money or anything like that, but...they still know. They're my parents so of course they know. 8)
 
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I can totally relate - I also really, really love drugs and getting high, though what I really wanted to add to the thread this morning goes more along the lines of:

These days, it seems like the universe is conspiring to place amazingly gifted people along my chosen path in life <3
 
I don't miss getting drunk or high, or waking up the next day feeling like death. I hated the mood swings when I was using, and I hate my my perceptions being so skewed and my memory being completely toasted. The only benefit to using was having the brief temporary escape to my stress and the minor dopamine response. Even though I still have a lot of stress and sober I don't get a break from it, not like the immediate "On-demand" type break I could get using, life is so much better now than it was, and I'm so glad to be out of that nightmare! Figured I would share, it feels good to wake up in the morning at a reasonable time and not have to vomit or wake up in vomit, or worse. Sometimes it's the little things in life that get me ;)

Hope everybody enjoys the rest of their weekend!
 
LOL thank you Moreaux for that reminder. I am so much happier today knowing I don't have to wake up and do something I don't want to do in order to get the resources together to get loaded. Boy have the times changed! Fuck that game. I am glad you are not waking up puking on yourself anymore, that sounds just horrible ;)

P.s. and FYI I can related to waking up with a bed covers in puke, just so we are on the same page. Different DOC, same addiction :) if ya know what I mean =D
 
I loved getting drunk/high and nodding out. But I don't love it enough to deal with what comes with it:

- Getting arrested
- Sitting on pins and needles wondering if my lawyer, yet again, is going to be able to get me off on a technicality
- Setting fire to a motel bed while nodding off with a lit cigarette
- Needlessly damaging my car while driving when I shouldn't have been
- The isolation because no one wanted to be around me, or even hear from me
- Being involuntarily committed to psychiatric hospitals
- Losing jobs
- Having to buy new mattresses because the current one had been soiled beyond being cleanable
- Having my living space in a perpetual state of chaos with paraphernalia, empty bottles/cans and takeout food containers scattered everywhere and dog shit and piss on the floor (definitely important to me now that I live in a place I own)
- Feeling so shitty when I woke up that the only thing that made me feel better was the second slug of vodka (the first was almost always puked back up)
- Sitting in a 7-Eleven parking lot at 6:58am so I could go and buy alcohol when the clock struck seven

This list could go on ad infinitum. All things considered, I'm much better off sober.
 
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Wow, aihfl, that's a sobering list of up-sides to being clean! I have a list, but it's not nearly as impressive:

- not having to count pills
- not having to check the clock 18 million times a day to see if it is time for my next dose
- waking up peacefully instead of waking up in mild wds every f'in day
- being able to eat when I'm hungry (as opposed to scheduling food in between doses so my stomach was empty)
- not being terrified of jail (it's a lot less scary when you know you won't go into opiate wd)
- being more present in life and less preoccupied with pain/opiates (ironically, my pain is about the same as it was on the opiates - but somehow I'm less fixated on it)

Im still in PAWS territory so I'm sure as things progress I'll have more to be happy about, but so far I'm happy with where I am at 41 days in.

- VE
 
Maybe that's my problem, is that I never faced many consequences for my actions lol

I can't really relate to waking up in puke, clock watching for booze/drugs, or living in the hospital/prison. That stuff never happened for me. But at the same time I was/am an injection user, which is serious business. Something somewhere went wrong for me.
 
I don't have to lie to people I love today. I'm so fucking glad for that.
 
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