quit drinking

I have made 7 months of sobriety on April 1st. I just want to let anyone reading this, who thinks it can’t be done, know that IT TRULY CAN BE DONE!! I used to drink daily from morning until night and often felt like I would never be able to quit. I haven’t drank at all since September 1st, 2008. You can read How I Did It or any of my entries along the way on this forum. If you want help, please feel free to ask myself or others who have had success with this!!! There are some great successes around here like my good friends Angel, 43AvatarGuy, Criscee, Dakini, Mistakes, Rynlikesit, (Hi everybody!! :) and others who I’m sure you have gotten helpful messages from, or read their stories and posts about success in this goal and sometimes failure along the way. Keep posting and never give up! If I can do this, ANYONE can! ;)

I am officially going to consider this goal “done” today. I have been thinking about this for awhile and was thinking of maybe waiting for some symbolic date or poignant moment and finally realized any day is as important as the rest to come. I certainly will not stop posting and anyone who knows me well here knows I could never stop reaching out a helping hand and encouraging remarks to everyone here. I have come to a point in my personal growth in this goal to know that I truly have done this and it has been amazing beyond my wildest dreams. For all the friends I have made here, this isn’t going to be my tearful goodbye as like I said I will continue to read this forum and participate as always. I am just changing my status. I HAVE“QUIT DRINKING” and I know damn well that I will always continue to do so. It is no longer something I am doing, but just a way of living for me now so it would be like adding the goal, “breathe” which obviously I will just do, for the rest of my life.
As always, I offer myself to anyone who would like a “sponsor” or just someone to talk to. For anyone still struggling with this, please utilize all the helpful sources available to you even if that means going to AA, talking to a counselor, or taking drastic measures. It is worth it and you are worth it. That is what finally helped me beat alcoholic drinking and with God’s good graces I am 142 days sober today. :)

If more gifts are to be received, our awakening has to go on.

Sobriety fills the painful “hole in the soul” that my alcoholism
created. Often I feel so physically well that I believe my work is
done. However, joy is not just the absence of pain; it is the gift of
continued spiritual awakening. Joy comes from ongoing and active
study, as well as application of the principles of recovery in my
everyday life, and from sharing that experience with others. My
Higher Power presents many opportunities for deeper spiritual
awakening. I need only to bring into my recovery the willingness to
grow. Today I am ready to grow.

(This entry taken from AA literature “Daily Reflections” entry for September 1st) September 1st is my personal sobriety date, 134 days ago. So clearly this entry meant a lot to me then and still does today. I just thought I would share it for all.

I just wanted to say Merry Christmas to each and every one of the wonderful people I have met here sharing our common goal to quit drinking. I have met some incredible friends here and to my surprise even got two Christmas presents from some friends I have spent loads of pleasurable hours talking to and enjoying sober life with. I responded to Neally in his recent post something that I want to share with everyone…The greatest gift we can give ourselves and the ones that love us, is our own continued commitment to sobriety this Christmas and the coming year. Thank you EVERYONE for always just being here, for me and for all the others that came for support, a place to feel that they are welcome, where no one will judge them, where they can openly talk about their success and failure with quitting drinking, and where they aren’t alone in facing their problems with alcohol.

Merry Christmas and best wishes,
~Josh

Well, I finally made it to day 100 today! I am so excited, proud and happy about it that I just wanted to share it with everyone here who is always so supportive. I really love the people here and the common goal we all share to finally have power over our drinking instead of vice versa! The support we offer to each other is priceless and has meant so much to me through the difficult days. I will probably stop counting the days for awhile now and just count months at this point. Life has just really blossomed in unexpected ways since I started to have success with this goal and the promise and hope of the future is brighter then ever!

I just returned from an AA meeting I was invited to be the “guest speaker” at! It was actually at an AA meeting downtown for the homeless. It was such an honor for me to be asked and also to be able to do this. If someone would’ve told me 100 days ago, when I was still a hopeless drunk myself, that I would be speaking at an AA meeting after 95 days of sobriety I would’ve told them they are insane. This is clearly my shortest post ever but I was just really excited, happy, and fulfilled from having had this experience and wanted to share it with everyone here. I have also been offered a position to chair the same meeting every week now which I have accepted. Many of you may have noticed I don’t post much, but I comment on nearly every post. It is because I really enjoy trying to help others get this goal and by helping others, I feel like I am helping keep my own sobriety safe. So being a guest speaker and now a host of 2 AA meetings is just an incredible feeling for me!

For everyone still working on this goal, like myself, keep at it! You never know what kind of positive things lay ahead in your sober life unless you get on that path and stay there!

This may sound too simple to be true, but here it is. I have figured out the key to quit drinking or any addiction. Thousands of books have been written about the subject with millions of chapters and billions of sentences but I have managed to figure out the secret and condense it into one simple sentence. READY?! Here goes:

The key to quit drinking (or quit any addiction) is the desire to quit must ALWAYS and CONSITENTLY outweigh the urge to use.

Go ahead, read it again, soak it in. It truly is that simple. Simple to say, perhaps the hard part is finding the courage and determination to keep your desire to quit greater than your desire to use at all times. Desire to use comes and goes though and sometimes it is more intense than other times. The key is to always be able to match that urge to use and then just one small increment more, counter it with a desire to quit. One moment of weakness during those times when the urge to use is strong is all it takes to fail and succumb to your addiction. So just stay stronger than your addiction, even if just by one small increment at all times. When the urge to use is strong, you must be slightly stronger. When the urge to use is weak, you only need a slight determination to overcome it. When the urge is gone, you can put down your guard but remain vigilant to keep it at arms reach for when the urge returns. The more you are able to defeat the urges, the more you will find them easier to beat. As you become stronger, they become weaker.

I hope this helps someone and please feel free to discuss or let me know if it was helpful for you. Often I decide to post because of people telling me that my posts have been helpful to them and I cannot express how much that means to me. Thanks for reading and sharing. Best wishes to all.

A really wonderful thing happens when a person gets sober and empties the feelings of despair that once filled their life. The vast space that was once occupied tyrannically by despair gives way to a new incumbent, hope.

When alcohol has become addictive and the use of alcohol becomes more than the user intended, the user begins to become like a sponge and alcohol becomes the drenched endless sea of despair. The person is soaking up despair in every consumption, sip by sip, glass by glass, bottle by bottle. The more a person indulges in alcohol the more they become lost in hopeless feelings, loss of self confidence, lack of optimism and resolve for the future.

However, on the bright side, after quitting drinking the despair slowly leaves and dries up and without alcohol the cycle can finally cease. In it’s place comes a wonderful feeling of hope. The sponge still exist but the well it soaks itself in has changed. No longer filled with alcohol and the despair that follows, a person becomes filled with hope, optimism, and compassion in the place that despair once occupied.

I cannot speak for everyone but it has proven true in my own experience. It has been an unexpected welcome side effect of sobriety that I have been feeling and wanted to share. Has anyone else felt this way? Has anyone else felt the despair which slowly reigns after long continuous drinking? Or has anyone else felt the hope which prevails in time after alcoholic drinking is ceased? Please share.

Best wishes to all who do feel despair today, to let it go so hope can take it’s place tomorrow.

I haven’t posted my own entry in ages so I thought I would today. I often leave comments on others post but rarely post my own entries. I am up to 46 days sober and feeling rather proud of that. I don’t think I will ever drink again and very glad to feel that way.

I have changed my perspective about alcohol from a harmless beverage that is fine to casually enjoy in social settings, to thinking of alcohol as it is, a destructive drug that has negative implications on a person’s health and life with a strong addictive nature. I think because alcohol is legal people treat it much more casually than illegal drugs and find alcohol acceptable. However to me there is no distinction now. Cigarettes are also legal but that doesn’t mean they are good for anyone to use or something I would put into my system ever again. In fact, tobacco and alcohol are known to create adverse health issues for the person using them and both are labeled as such yet still enjoyed by millions of people. Alcohol is a poison and is destructive to the mind, heart, liver, kidneys, pancreas and other areas of the body.

So why is it so acceptable? Simply by deception from the companies that make billions from their destructive products. Like the way cigarettes used to be handled much more casually in the 1950’s and prior. Advertisements would show healthy happy people enjoying life while enjoying a nice smoke. They used to advertise such ridiculous things as “4 out of 5 doctors choose Camel filters” or Kool menthol cigarettes advertised they were like “a breath of fresh air”. You know what is more like a breath of fresh air? How about an actual BREATH OF FRESH AIR!!? And alcohol advertisements today always show people having a great time and boast how “refreshing” an ice cold beer is…they don’t show people dying of liver failure, or winding up a hopeless addict homeless and begging for beer money. Likewise, I will stick to what nature intended and nothing helps me have a great time these days or is more refreshing than a glass of cool water.

Best wishes to all trying to exclude alcohol from thier lives!! Stay strong, your life may depend on it!

Part of AA literature is a nice book called, “Daily Reflecitons” and often in the past I have considered sharing them here. I will share today’s reflection and would like feedback if people would like to see more of them or not:

October 5 -YESTERDAY’S BAGGAGE

For the wise have always known that no one can make much of his life until self-searching becomes a regular habit, until he is able to admit and accept what he finds, and until he patiently and persistently tries to correct what is wrong.

I have more than enough to handle today, without dragging along yesterday’s baggage too. I must balance today’s books, if I am to have a chance tomorrow. So I ask myself if I have erred and how I can avoid repeating that particular behavior. Did I hurt anyone, did I help anyone, and why? Some of today is bound to spill over into tomorrow, but most of it need not if I make an honest daily inventory.