Newbies Nest

[Mands]

Newbies Nest

jane27

no worries

I felt a little whiny posting it, but I am actually really upbeat.

I hope that the issues you are having come out as positives, and that you get lots of energy to tackle them.

Re the herbal tea, its a new habit and my favourite is "sleepytime" and my husband drinks it too.

A couple of nights ago we were both stretched out on the bed drinking sleepytime tea.

I could not help thinking what a nice change it was to being tucked up in a ball with a sore head hoping the hangover in the morning would not be too bad.

Much more peaceable

[Steady Hands]

Newbies Nest

Hi guys...

Feel so much better after reading the nest stories.

I skipped class this morning. Just needed one morning taking things a bit slower...

I am a bit depressed too... Mostly because of academic stress. That combined with all the changes that being AF brings. I am lonely. Partly because I am so busy, but also because my own family doesn't know how to react to me now that I am sober. And half of the week I am a single mom balancing everything with a 4 and 2 year old. Suppose some crazy would come from this situation.

I had to extract a child's tooth yesterday. I study dentistry. The child was kicking and screaming so we had to do it forcefully.... This reminded me of how we act when we are without the booze... The resistance!! It makes it a 1000 times worse. Reality is that it is mildly uncomfortable (injections), but the fear makes it impossible to do it without more pain. Withdrawal is uncomfortable, but not as bad as the fear of living without the booze.

Oh, and all the talk about not telling people and the stigma... I seriously consider being on call 24/7 to say I cannot drink.

What I am trying to tell myself that although this is uncomfortable to be under a lot of pressure, single mom and lonely, it will pass and will be better if I allow this time to suck mildly as it is supposed to be. Resisting these lonely emotions or numbing it with Al, will only make it worse!!

Got to run. Will check in tonight.

Have a good day Nesters!!

[canadian gal]

Newbies Nest

Hiya Nesters!

Not much time now...have to go to work. Just wanted to say to B1- I think it is unbelievably amazing that you and your hubby are doing this together! It will make it so much easier for you.

Willow- Sorry your hubby is not more supportive. But these cranky feelings wont last forever. Tell him to be patient. This is something that in the end will really help your marriage. If I didn't quit drinking I could see my hubby leaving me within the next 5 years. That is not how I want to go down. Your hubby is, in his mind, "perfect" right? He truly doesn't understand what we are going through. Perhaps if he read a book about quitting drinking, he might be able to understand it a little better.

Hubby came home yesterday. His first question "How are you?" Second question "Were you drinking while I was gone?" I was so happy to be able to HONESTLY say "No".

Byrdie- You are right. It is no one's business if I drink or don't drink. It's just that she is such a good friend and if I had told her I quit she probably would have said "That's amazing." But whatever. I know I have quit and you all know it too. That's enough for me.

Off to work. Will post more tonight. Have a great one all!

[canadian gal]

Newbies Nest

And Library G- You have EVERY RIGHT to be super angry right now. Get that anger out of you in any way possible except through drinking. Tomorrow is another day and hopefully a good one for you!

[Willow23]

Newbies Nest

Morning all! Thanks CG - I know it will get better eventually. It's just a rough road at the minute huh!

Busy day for me - taking DD to school and then DS to soft play. Then DH will come meet me to collect DS, take him home, give him lunch and get him to preschool. I'm going to the opticians, then the gym and swim and pick up the kids on the way home. A lot to do which is great but then my witching hour will start ..... :0( Day 8 so I need to stay strong!

Hope everyone has a great day, talk later x

[MinStar]

Newbies Nest

Morning Nesters!
Hope everyone is ok- Many thanks Library G - I hope you have managed to stay off AL- Situations like that are tough. When I used to get them earlier on in quitting I used to make a mental note of how that was a 'trigger' and then 'file' it away. To know that it will arise again and I can tackle it again. I am not sure how many 'triggers' I have filed away now!

Last night was one and it was a shocker so many days into AF. I had some chocolate (that seems to curb the craving) and had my dinner. I no longer wait for DH as he comes home late. I have to eat to stop my AL cravings.

Willow and LoLab- forgot to include in my last message that Baby girl is 1 years old. She is great and I am doing this mostly for her. I must keep reminding myself, reading posts on here and not become blaise about this. I hope 100 and more come my way. How are you ladies doing?

Got a client coming over now so I need to sign off. I am away until the weekend working and at my mums so I am hoping to be strong. Will be reading if not posting.

Love and strength to all.

Min

[allswell]

Newbies Nest

Reading through and the comments on seeing the life situation through a new set of sober eyes and realizing massive changes are due really struck a chord. Same here, status quo ain't going to cut it anymore. One more reason to keep motivated, it would be a real tragedy to get half way to real change only to start drinking again and slide back into dark mediocrity. Right now at 52 days feeling like change is very doable.

[jessie]

Newbies Nest

Hi everyone,

I really wish we could enroll all our families in a course like " Know everything about alcoholism and alcoholics and how to deal with them, or rather, how not to deal with them. I'm sure evryone will benefit.

Have a great day all.

[Nursie]

Newbies Nest

Morning!
Allswell, Jane, we are still in it! I can't believe we are at 52 days! Things seemed so bleak and out of control just a few short weeks ago.

Those of you in the early early days, hang in there. This is the most important thing you can do to have a better life. The insanity doesn't stop if we don't stop!

Have a super day everyone!

[Unwasted]

Newbies Nest

Hey Nesters - this is a long post, but I think the information is well worth reading and understanding.

The Addiction Web Site of Terence T. Gorski
Best Practice Principles - Articles - Publications

Levels of Relapse Warning Signs
By Terence T. Gorski


Recovery from chemical dependence occurs at five levels – abstinence, situation change, behavior change, emotional change, and personal belief change.

Abstinence
The first level is abstinence. Chemical addicts must stop using alcohol and drugs and stabilize from withdrawal before they can begin to recover. At this level, we have to make a decision to stop drinking and drugging and reach out to get help.

Situational Change
Once abstinent, they move into the second level of recovery that focuses upon situational change. This level involves replacing an addiction-centered lifestyle with one that is sobriety-centered.

To stop drinking and drugging we have to get away from people places and things that make us want to use alcohol and other drugs. Counselors call this “getting into an adequately controlled environment.” If you keep hanging out with people who are drinking and drugging your chances of staying abstinence are nearly zero. To break the cycle of destructive alcohol and drug use you need help. You need to put yourself around people, places, and things that will encourage and support your abstinence and help you to learn a set of specific skills to keep yourself from drinking and drugging even if you feel like it at that moment.

Behavior Change
The third level of recovery, is behavior change. Chemical addicts must learn to identify and interrupt addictive behaviors that give short term pleasure, create long term pain, and reactivate the urge use addictively. At this level, addictive behaviors must be replaced with sobriety-centered behaviors that produce pain free pleasure by resolving the problems that create the pain.

Change In Thinking
This leads to a fourth level of recovery, a change in thinking. Addictive thinking is based upon the irrational belief that addictive use can magically fix us, solve our problems, and make us something we are not. We are thinking addictively when we believe that we can never feel whole, complete, or have the good life unless we are using addictively. The antidote for addictively thinking is sober thinking that helps us recognize the destructive effects of addictive use and see the positive benefits and opportunities provided by sobriety.

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 and drug use 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 and drug 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 shw would be better off to start drinking and drugging again. When Jessie was drinking and drugging she was unemployed, earning money by drug dealing and 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 and other drugs will somehow magically fix out problems and make our lives better. WE forget that alcohol and drugs make 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 drugging 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 and drugs could magically fix them and make everything in their life wonderful once again. This creates a strong desire to use alcohol and other drugs.

Emotional Change
The fifth level of recovery is emotional change. By turning off our addictive thinking, we turn on our feelings. Initially this is difficult because we must experience the pain of the past. The shame, guilt, and the nagging pain caused by the addiction surface. There is an urge is to stuff these feelings and run back into addictive or compulsive behaviors. The permanent way out is to resolve these feelings by recognizing, labeling, and communicating them to others. Then we can recognize the underlying thoughts, behaviors, and situations that create the feelings.

Effective emotional management involves learning a set of feeling management skills. First, we must learn how t or recognize the inner experiences that tell us that we are having a feeling or emotion. We have to learn to calm down, get centered and pay attention to the sensations in our bodies. Whenever we feel tense, have a knot in our stomach, feel queasy, or start clenching our jaws or fits, or can’t calmly sit still we are probably having a feeling.

The second feeling management skill is to learn how to label the feeling with a word or phrase. This means that we need to develop an emotional volabulary that will let us think about what we’re feeling on the inside and figure out how those feelings are connected with what we’re thinking and what’s happening outside of us.

The third feeling management skill is to talk about our feeling swith someone who will listen to us, try and understand our feelings, take us seriously, and respect us. The best place to find someone like this is at Twelve Step meetings or by going to a counselor or treatment program. We can’t manage painful feelings without talking about them. It’s important to talk about our feelings before we try to block them out by using alcohol or other drugs.

A Change In Core Personal Beliefs
As we learn how to manage pain and unpleasant feelings we can enter the sixth level of recovery, a change in core personal beliefs. Here we confront the core mistaken beliefs about ourselves, other people, and the world that make us miserable in recovery and make us want to use alcohol and drugs to block out the pain. These self-destructive core beliefs were usually developed when we were children before the age of 10. If we come from a dysfunctional family, we have probably internalized a dysfunctional set of core beliefs. We believe that the world is a painful and difficult place and we must always struggle in order to survive. Many of us believe, on a core level, that we a pretty hopeless and that there is no hope and no way we can ever learn to enjoy life.

These core mistaken beliefs cause us to recreate our family of origin in sobriety. We begin to unconsciously set up the situations of our lives to create the same pain and dysfunction that we experienced as children. To combat this tendency we must learn to identify these mistaken and irrational beliefs that we learned as children, to examine the logical consequences of continuing to believe these things, and to make appropriate changes in our belief system and our actions. It is only when we confront our family of origin and learn to be free from the dysfunctional and irrational beliefs that we can develop the kind of life in sobriety that will give us meaning and purpose.

The Developmental Sequence Of Recovery
Notice the developmental nature of this recovery process: (1) stop using alcohol and drugs, (2) replace addiction centered living with sobriety-centered living, (3) interrupt addictive and compulsive behaviors, (4) replace addictive thinking with rational sober thinking, (5) learn to identify and manage feelings and emotions, and (6) change the self-defeating core beliefs about ourselves, others and the world that we learned as children.

This model of recovery suggests that relapse is more than just alcohol an drug use. It is a process that can occur at each level and progress from one level to the next.

For most people who relapse, the first step is a subtle return of the core self-defeating beliefs that we learned as children. Something shifts inside of us and we no longer feel a sense of self-worth and self-confidence. We no longer feel worthy of living or having good things in sobriety, or we no longer feel capable of doing what we need to do in order to feel good about ourselves.

When our old, dysfunctional beliefs from childhood are reactivated, we begin to have negative feelings. These feelings seem out of place in our newly found recovery. There is a tendency to repress them. We would rather not think about them, so we try to push them from our minds. As a result the pain get worse and we tend to reactivate our irrational, addictive thinking to cope with the pain.

Our addictive logic tells us we must find something, anything, that will make the go away. This urge to blot out the pain awakens the echoes of our addictive past. We begin to remember how good it was when we could medicate with alcohol and drugs. We exaggerate the positive aspects of those memories while minimizing or denying the negatives. We then begin to awfulize our sobriety. We take all the negatives of being sober and exaggerate them, while blocking out all the positives. Then, we begin using magical thinking about what alcohol and drug use could do for us in the future. The addictive logic goes like this: "Since alcohol and drugs worked so well for us in the past, and since it is so terrible to be sober today, alcohol and drugs will somehow be able to magically fix me in the future."

These irrational thoughts begin to mobilize addictive behaviors. We begin looking for something, anything, that will make the pain go away. Since our sober friends are beginning to confront us by telling us that we are in trouble and we need help, we seek out "more supportive friends." We want friends who won't confront us with the fact that we're backsliding into old behaviors. This means we begin surrounding ourselves with two types of people - codependents who won't challenge our self-defeating behavior, and people who are still actively addicted.

Relapse prevention is both proactive and reactive. As a proactive strategy, relapse prevention teaches us the importance of panning our recovery, moving through its various stages, and recognizing when we become stuck and taking corrective action. Reactively, relapse prevention teaches us to recognize the warning signs that show us we are backsliding into previous stages of recovery. We can then take action to manage those warning signs before we return to alcohol and drug use.


About the Author
Terence T. Gorski is internationally recognized for his contributions to Relapse Prevention Therapy. The scope of his work, however, extends far beyond this. A skilled cognitive behavioral therapist with extensive training in experiential therapies, Gorski has broad-based experience and expertise in the chemical dependency, behavioral health, and criminal justice fields.

Mr. Gorski holds a B.A. degree in psychology and sociology from Northeastern Illinois University and an M.A. degree from Webster's College in St. Louis, Missouri. He is a Senior Certified Addiction Counselor In Illinois. He is a prolific author who has published numerous books, pamphlets and articles. Mr. Gorski routinely makes himself available for interviews, public presentations, and consultant. He has presented lectures and conducted workshops in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

[shueaddict]

Newbies Nest

Unwasted, thank you,

That was most insighful and thought provoking ... :thanks:

[lolab]

Newbies Nest

Lav, that is very very helpful ? knowing even you experience those occasional thoughts about alcohol. Makes us realize that we?re not doomed for failure!

jane27;1270921 wrote: Mands, your post reminds me of things I'm going through now...similar because while I was drinking there were things, people, situations etc that I was able to smudge, ignore or tolerate with the help of wine. How quickly that has changed.

The drinking is so complicated...physically addictive, socially appealing, soothing...and an excellent way to not cope with difficult stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if we all have a little dirty laundry to face once we give up the booze. Somehow as hard as it all is I think we are gifted by the very motivation to try to face it. I know people that can't...I'm sure you do too. And I know they arent happy lie ing to themselves via the booze, and also that they are sure to die young.

Thanks for your post. Made me feel less alone. :thanks:

Jane, I hope you?re feeling better soon. Your post made me cry this morning?all of it. Sometimes someone else?s words just hit home, ya know? I've thought of that too. I know lots off people who SHOULD be here...so we should all feel very good that we are. and the smudging comment...oh yeah. Well said.


I?m doing great minstar ? thanks for asking. I just passed the 5 month mark ? and still have my moments, but I?m trying to look at each one as a learning experience. Words of wisdom from so many here are such a huge help, too.

I wish I had more time this AM, but gotta run. I am going to try to check back in later!

[SAUSAGE]

Newbies Nest

Hi Nesters
Just checking in , Day 6 for me. Definitely think I'm feeling better health wise -so much better when I first wake up, and last 2 nights I've slept really well too and woke refreshed. When I was drinking I regularly would wake at 2 or 3 am , very dehydrated and needing the loo. Then i would struggle to get back to sleep with lots of worries going round in my head. Anyone else find this?

I'm feeling reasonably positive about tonight as its early evening meal for me and the kids and then I take them out to swimming club at night. So when I get back in it will be almost bedtime and I hope I'll be satisfied with a drink ( of tea or ginger beer,) and a biscuit . We'll see! Wed night was always the night I drank the least before.

Anyway have a good day all and I'll be back later

sausage. xx
Day 6 ******

[Lavande]

Newbies Nest

Good morning Nesters & happy Humpday!

Dark & damp in my end of the nest today but that's OK as it's just rain, not snow!

Wishing everyone a great AF Wednesday. Keep going

Lav

[canadian gal]

Newbies Nest

Hey Nesters!

Just checking in before bed. I'm at the end of day 14 and feeling great. It really is amazing how much one's life can change in just 14 days. I do find that I have a lot of energy at night though...usually starting about 9 pm. It's hard for me to get to bed before 12. Any one else find this? But I'd rather have all this extra energy than dragging my ass everyday.

UW- Thanks for that great post. I loved the read and will keep all of it in mind!

Sausage- You are doing great on day 6. You see what I mean about how much 1 al free week will do for you? And you will feel even better than now the more days you rack up. Now if that isn't something to look forward to, I don't know what is.

Jane- I hope you are doing ok. Are you feeling better cold wise?

To all my other nesters, I hope you have a great day!