( I posted this already in the long term abstainers thread,hope it helps here to)Yesterday i was standing outside of a pub in my area and you could here all the noise and laughter coming out,and it started getting me thinking of was i missing anything as i thought they all seemed to be having a great time,i then followed my thoughts through and wondered were would they all be in a few hours ? drunk, talking stupid, sick, broke ?Thinking about using alcohol and other drugs increases the risk of relapse. Thinking is a cognitive process controlled by the cerebral cortex or thinking part of the brain. There are three ways of thinking about alcohol that are particularly dangerous.
The first is called euphoric recall. You remember and exaggerating the good times that you had when using alcohol and other drugs while blocking out or minimizing the bad times.
A recovering person who called himself Jake the Snake used to tell the story of the great time he had when he got stoned on cocaine and stole $150,000 worth of coke from his supplier and went off for a marvelous one week binge in Las Vegas. He forgot to mention that he caught a serious venereal disease from a prostitute, and was nearly killed when his supplier showed up to get his coke back. After being shot and taken to the emergency room, the police found a small bag of cocaine and some marijuana in Jake?s room and he ended up in jail and was serving a seven year sentence when I talked with him. He still argues that he had a good time.
The second relapse-prone way of thinking is called Awfulizing Abstinence. You think about all of the bad times associated with being alcohol free while blocking out and minimizing all of the good times.
A woman named Jessie told me that nothing was working out for her since she got sober and she felt she would be better off to start drinking again. When Jessie was drinking she was unemployed, earning money by prostitution, and was in a skid row cubicle hotel. Now she was physically healthy, working a regular job, and sharing a decent apartment in a middle class neighborhood with two women she got to know through her home group of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). But in her her mind, at that moment, she felt her sobriety was awful, terrible, and unbearable.
The third relapse prone way of thinking is called magical thinking about use. Cognitive therapists call this positive expectancy. We start to believe that using alcohol will somehow magically fix out problems and make our lives better. WE forget that alcohol makes us feel good for a little while and then wipes out our judgment and impulse control setting us off into a cycle of self-destructive behaviors that destroys us and those that we love.
People who relapse often begin to spend of their time cycling between these three ways of relapse prone thinking. They remember drinking and exaggerate the good times while refusing to think about any pain or problems. They exaggerate all the pain and problems of living sober while blocking out any benefits. They then begin to think about how alcohol could magically fix them and make everything in their life wonderful once again. This creates a strong desire to use alcohol......I needed this today as reminder
The first is called euphoric recall. You remember and exaggerating the good times that you had when using alcohol and other drugs while blocking out or minimizing the bad times.
A recovering person who called himself Jake the Snake used to tell the story of the great time he had when he got stoned on cocaine and stole $150,000 worth of coke from his supplier and went off for a marvelous one week binge in Las Vegas. He forgot to mention that he caught a serious venereal disease from a prostitute, and was nearly killed when his supplier showed up to get his coke back. After being shot and taken to the emergency room, the police found a small bag of cocaine and some marijuana in Jake?s room and he ended up in jail and was serving a seven year sentence when I talked with him. He still argues that he had a good time.
The second relapse-prone way of thinking is called Awfulizing Abstinence. You think about all of the bad times associated with being alcohol free while blocking out and minimizing all of the good times.
A woman named Jessie told me that nothing was working out for her since she got sober and she felt she would be better off to start drinking again. When Jessie was drinking she was unemployed, earning money by prostitution, and was in a skid row cubicle hotel. Now she was physically healthy, working a regular job, and sharing a decent apartment in a middle class neighborhood with two women she got to know through her home group of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). But in her her mind, at that moment, she felt her sobriety was awful, terrible, and unbearable.
The third relapse prone way of thinking is called magical thinking about use. Cognitive therapists call this positive expectancy. We start to believe that using alcohol will somehow magically fix out problems and make our lives better. WE forget that alcohol makes us feel good for a little while and then wipes out our judgment and impulse control setting us off into a cycle of self-destructive behaviors that destroys us and those that we love.
People who relapse often begin to spend of their time cycling between these three ways of relapse prone thinking. They remember drinking and exaggerate the good times while refusing to think about any pain or problems. They exaggerate all the pain and problems of living sober while blocking out any benefits. They then begin to think about how alcohol could magically fix them and make everything in their life wonderful once again. This creates a strong desire to use alcohol......I needed this today as reminder
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