I ran across this article by Belle "How not to quit drinking"
I actually found in pretty fascinating. I feel like I am doing the hardest part over and over and over. Just like when I quit smoking. I would "quit" every morning. Then, something bad would happen during the day (or I would just make something up and over dramatize it) and I couldn't quit that day. I would buy cigarettes on the way home, make myself sick smoking most of them and quit the next morning. Sometime I would get a few days strung together but rarely a weekend. It took me over two years of this torture to quit...and I had to quit drinking for 6 months to do it. I pretty much withdrew from society and focused on not smoking. With cigarettes I knew without a doubt I wanted to quit. I hated everything about smoking and none of my friends smoked. I was just so incredibly addicted to nicotine that I had a hard time not giving in to the cravings. I did day 1 over and over and over and it was ridiculous.
I think what is harder about alcohol is that almost all of my friends drink. Almost all social events involve alcohol. I just have to want it for myself and stop doing day 1 over and over and over.
And....I need to use tools and strategies to do it...it can't just be about wanting it more and "willing" it into reality.
No. Now it is actually about doing the hard work, accepting that wishes don’t make life a reality and actually finding help.
ReplyDeleteI hated Monday’s and for a long time I felt like you. I was unwilling to change everything.
Until I did.
Excuses and denial will always exist. They will hold you in alcoholism indefinitely. Maybe things will stay as they are...maybe things will get worse. A DUI...a health scare.
All possibilities for a drinker.
You do have to do it for you. You tried doing it for your daughter and it just didn’t work.
It’s your life and it’s up to you. People do drink themselves to death. They drink until they lose their families, their job, their life. The reality of that helped me try sobriety. And it was better.
It’s all up to you. You get to choose.
Hugs. It’s a hard hard thing to be an addict.
Anne
Exactly everything what Anne said!
ReplyDeletexo
Wendy