Can you cope with feeling better?

[goingsobermum]

Each time I stop drinking for a while I tend to improve my diet, drink more water, take sups and generally start feeling better. Then I seem to feel lost, unsure of the feeling well me and go back to the booze.
Its like I can't cope with the change and the new me, even if the new me is better tempered and has more energy etc.
I don't even think I want the drink as such but it seems a good idea as I feel so good.

Does any one out ther get this sort of feeling?

Thanks
Suz

[wwbarb]

Can you cope with feeling better?

Yes - why do we do that to ourselves?? We feel good, so something must be wrong. When I do something right, I try to do everything right, as you said with quitting booze, eating better, etc. So, I make too many changes and slip up in one of the areas. Somehow, I let that give me permission to chuck everything. Part of our personalities.

I am trying this time to put "one toe in the ocean at a time". This week, I am focusing on no booze and exercise (well, two toes). Next week go back to counting points.

Remember, when we give up something that is so much of who you are part of you fights to get it back. If I focus on the other big parts of who I am, I find it's easier. Otherwise, the "drinker" inside of me takes over.

Barb

[xtexan]

Can you cope with feeling better?

Suz:

Ha! Lets see, over the last 20 years or so or repeated attempts to stop either smoking or drinking, I have only had that happen maybe a 100 times.

Been there, done that. In my early thirties, I went on a program, and got to feeling real good. I felt really great!! The booze demon welled up, ready to pounce my butt hard. And he did.

Lets see, the thinking was, "Well, I'm on my way, and I've got this thing covered now. So, I'll just reward myself with a couple of beers and a cigar.

Next thing I knew, 8 hours later, it was 18 beers, and a pack of cigarettes polished off.

Not saying it won't happen again, but I've gone a week, a month, two months, three months, four months at times in the past, and it always ended the same. Then the drinking spree would last years.

This time though, I think I have it firmly entrenched in my head that alcohol is NOT A REWARD. It is poison to my good feelings, every single time.

The key I think to making through those times, is acquired wisdom to know oneself. This I thought for sure I had so many times, but this last run (over nine months), I have a new way. Inside of myself, there is drinking Neil, and sober Neil. Drinking Neil is very, very smart at fooling, and lying to sober Neil. Just through repitition, and constantly getting fooled by drinking Neil, sober Neil is slowly learning all of drinking Neils tricks and lies.

Drinking Neil is always going to be there, and I have to live with his crap. This is strongest run sober Neil has ever had.

So what I am trying to say is that, it's a real psychological issue to address. This time around, I have you folks. This time around, I am taking care of little Neil, the child inside. This time around, I am also listening to what little Neil has to say to sober Neil. Little Neil sure does not like drinking Neil at all I have found, in some gut wrenching revelations of terrible anguish.

It sounds weird, and maybe a little schizo (mulitple personalities and all that), but it's something that at long last I think I have finally developed the courage to deal with. If I may yet fall again, at least I know new things, and have new tools for the program.

I know the fear of succeeding all too well. It's scary. It's one of the reasons I am here now, and read, and post. It helps me a lot to just write these things out.

So, yes, I have had that feeling a great many times. I hope you don't have to learn so many things the hard way like I have had to.

Be well.

Neil

[goingsobermum]

Can you cope with feeling better?

Barb, thanks for answering and letting me see I am not alone in trying to run before I can walk and then tripping up.

Neil, you don't sound daft to me, I have plenty of different Suz's to deal with. Perhaps we are all a little schizo.

Thanks a lot
Suz

[YoungAtHeart]

Can you cope with feeling better?

Big Amen! Neil and Barb, I couldn't have said any of it better myself!

[iia67]

Can you cope with feeling better?

Thanks for bringing this up !!

I do the same thing. I am AF for about 3-4 days in a row....I feel awesome..working out hard, and then Friday night comes and...BAM. I usually only drink when I am up. I am not one to reach for the bottle when things are down. I drink to celebrate. The problem is that I always find that silver lining and find a reason to celebrate...like Friday nigt. Whats so special about Friday night ? This week is different. I have continuing education this week with a test Saturday morning to finish a prefessional designation. Its not a huge deal, but its the last of 5 exams. I have a Wedding Saturday evening to attend and boy o' boy I am already trying to talk myself into letting it rip (between drinking me and sober me).


If I could only figue this out...I really don't think I would have a drinking problem anymore.

[gypsi]

Can you cope with feeling better?

You really hit the nail on the head

I find myself doing the same thing. Get a couple of days AF under my belt, and start feeling directionless, guilty. Like I don't have the right to feel good (?)

I think that part of that stems from the fact that I've spent most of the last twenty years or so beating myself up emotionally for the drinking. After a while, that becomes a normal way to live, and this waking up feeling good, not hungover, is alien. I think Xtexan has the way to go. We need to re-train ourselves that alcohol is not a reward.

[goingsobermum]

Can you cope with feeling better?

Isn't it daft that when we start to drink it is so normal and everyone expects us to do it , so do we. Then we feel bad about it and when we stop we feel bad about that too?

I noticed this evening that we started drinking too early, then I was tired too early and didn't want to go to bed as I would wake up in the night, so stayed up, so had to have another glass or two, to keep me awake, of course.

New reward systems are definatly needed.
Suz

[Changeling]

Can you cope with feeling better?

To have or not to have

How spookily familiar
Shall Ior shan't I have a drink today.....
I feel better when I don't
Communicate better,
remember the movie/conversation,
am more interesting/discreet
more caring
YET - am always thinking when shall I have the next drink...
I know there is nothing in my life that is improved by drinking yet still continue to do it.
But since finding this site - a revolution -
I AM NOT ALONE
THANKS

[Nina328]

Can you cope with feeling better?

I can so relate to this. Although I felt I did do well overall on the program, I felt the best when I was abstinent for 38 days straight. Everytiime I want to drink, I say is one hour of euphoria worth the hangover the next day and all the guilt. Well NO, but still I drink. Why is this.

For me right now I am escaping. But I know eventually, sooner rather than later, it will become a habit again and not an escape. I fear it already has.

-Nina

[mikeupnorth]

Can you cope with feeling better?

This is an excellent topic and is probably the root of a large percentage of relapses.

Here are some of the possible reasons I self-sabotaged my own recovery after a few days or a few weeks, just when I started to feel better:

- I was "addicted" to whole cycle of drinking, hangovers, guilt, shame -- it all reinforced my negative self-image.
- I was unaccustomed to feeling good; it was alien to me and I didn't know how to handle it.
- I believed that I didn't deserve to feel good.
- I was stuck in ruts that were so deeply entrenched that I had a very hard time getting out of them and forging new, healthier ruts (still working on this).
- I had a fear of the "undiscovered country" of long-term sobriety.

Thanks, mum, for bringing this up! Good food for thought~

Mike

P.S. Neil, I am also going to borrow your sober self/drinking self/little self paradigm if you don't mind.

[zampa75]

Can you cope with feeling better?

Me Too!

Changeling wrote: How spookily familiar
Shall Ior shan't I have a drink today.....
I feel better when I don't
Communicate better,
remember the movie/conversation,
am more interesting/discreet
more caring
YET - am always thinking when shall I have the next drink...
I know there is nothing in my life that is improved by drinking yet still continue to do it.
But since finding this site - a revolution -
I AM NOT ALONE
THANKS

:h I am soooooo much like that!!! I know I'll feel much better if I do not drink, but then, it is like a demon, something that is too strong to resist, I HAVE to drink, even if I do not enjoy it that moment, I do not feel like it, it doesn't make me feel better.....man, it makes me so angry.......!