Mornings

[stopthecycle]

When I wan't my AL why can't I remember how good it feels, both physically and emotionally, not to be hungover? 2nd day AF....again

[Boss.man]

Mornings

In my reading, I've come to understand it's a different part of your brain. Your memories are in your higher brain, part of your logic, speach, learning. The AL feelings (an nearly all addictions) mostly affect your emotional brain. Emotion untied to logic is the problem.

Can you clear the house out of AL while you are hung over? That can help. I also put a note for a long time on the cabinet saying "NO", and if there was AL in the fridge I would write NO on them too. That helped to remind me when I was about to break my new rules.

[42cat]

Mornings

I wish there were some way to just "feel" how it was, even for a minute. If you could just do something while you're hungover so that you can experience sobriety for a moment, it would really help! Or, on the other side of things, if you could feel withdrawal effects for a minute while you're sober but tempted to drink, it would make all the difference in making the decision to pick up that first glass.

What has been helping me is to write down my feelings - both the hungover ones and the sober "feeling great" ones -- so that I can re-read them when I need to. (When I was going through withdrawals, I wrote a paragraph each day on how bad it was, and I'm so glad I did because I've re-read those paragraphs umpteen times when I've been tempted, and they really help to "bring it back".)

If you're hungover, write about how it's making you feel. When you're sober and feeling great, write about how good that feels too...... Then read over the good stuff when you're hungover so that you have something to fight toward ... and read over the bad stuff when you're feeling good but tempted to drink.

Even though you can't actually "feel" how you felt when you're not experiencing it at the moment, if it's written down you can at least read about it as you try to remember how it was.

Power to you! And congrats on your Day 2.

[savon19]

Mornings

Although I'm a woman... I haven't experienced childbirth. I was thinking about that today, how it sort of relates to alcohol. (Bear with me!)

When a woman has a baby and goes through INCREDIBLE PAIN... she somehow will still go through it again (often). They say that women experience a kind of amnesia, forgetting the pain they went through...

In a way, I think drinking (when a problem!) is like that. All the negative consequences, whether hangover or drunk-dialing (eek!) or whatever, seem to conveniently be Forgotten when the opportunity to drink comes again...

We selectively FORGET. We can be strong for a moment, waking up with a terrible hangover, vowing we'll Never do that again... yet, we do.

Most of us learn quickly that putting our finger in a candle's flame will burn and hurt. And we don't do it again! Drinking can have much worse consequences, yet we do it over & over again!!

I know, I know. Addiction, in a word. It seems that addiction makes you believe that the consequences will be different the next time. Pretty scary.