who has stopped overdrinking on their own?....

by oompa 35 Replies latest jw friends

  • Nowman
    Nowman

    OOMPA-

    I read alot of your posts and laugh. You may not be familiar with me, so I decided to open up and talk about my drinking. 1st my mom is currently an alcoholic, she is a DF'd JW. Thats that. I did not realize for a long time that I was on that same road. Yet, I would always justify it by telling myself, well I don't drink everyday or I do not hide bottles of booz, or I do not drink everyday. But, I was a binge drinker.

    I got a DUI on 8/28/04, and I got another one 9/10/08. I still have my license, but part of my sentencing is I have to abstain from drinking for 1 year, I have to submit to random tests. I was very lucky to not have killed someone else or myself.

    In counseling, I learned you have to have all the symtoms in order to be a true alchoholic, its chronic and progressive. I had some of the systoms, like black outs, change in personality, and going overboard. I love to have to a good time, I still do. BUT, if alchohol has caused me problems (which it has and thank goodness I can just admit it and change period) its time to seriously think about living the rest of my life without liquor. I have come to the realization that I am just not a person that can drink and be able to have self control. After all the things I have gone through, alchohol is just a depressant for me and not does help. Don't get me wrong, I have had great times in my life having a buzz with friends, but I have also done things that I do not remember and that is the worst feeling in the world.

    Frankly, admitting it is less shameful. It feels good to just get it off my shoulders. I did not want to ruin myself, I am better than this. So are you. Oompa, you are very honest and this will help in your recovery. Just realize that you may not be a person (because of what you have gone through) that can drink, it seems drinking is only making the problems worse.

    I had to attend a Victom Impact Unit last week where I had to sit and listen to parents talk about how a drunk driver killed one of their kids! I sobbed my eyes out. I have three of my own, the thought of losing any of them makes my stomach turn.

    You need to be strong, drinking will not solve your problems, you know this. It is only going to get worse if you keep it up. Oopma, its only up to you to change it. You have your life to live...so live it and I hope you realize that life without alchohol is OK.

    At the end of my abstaining from drinking which ends 12/22/09, will I have a drink? I don't think so, I have come to realize that my chemical makeup and my life experience do not go hand and hand with alchohol. Not the end of the world. The end would be if I got in my car again drunk and killed someone else or myself. Do I think about the time when I retire and I can lay on the beach with my hubby when we are 60 years old and have a Corona? Yes! Who knows, you need to take it one day at a time.

    Nikki

  • jeeprube
    jeeprube

    Nikki, thank you for your story! One of the scariest experiences of my life were the blackouts. Waking up and not remembering how you got where you are is not pleasant. I'm lucky that I never got a DWI or DUI, but I did drink and drive.

    I should have mentioned that I went through an addiction counseling program. That was a major help also. It was six weeks of individual and group counseling; and it was a real eye opener.

    Oompa, have you considered an addiction counseling program? Most regional health systems offer one on an out-patient basis. They can cost some money, but can REALLY help you!

    One more thing I'd like to say to you Oompa.......I really admire the fact that you started this thread! I know how hard it can be to even admit you might have a drinking problem. If you can make that admission you've taken the hardest step. You should be VERY proud of yourself for that!

  • Quirky1
    Quirky1

    Same problem.

    Just shoot me.

  • purplesofa
    purplesofa

    http://www.rational.org/

    AA admits that over 60% of successful
    recoveries are achieved independently, without
    groups, shrinks, and rehabs.

    ©2005, Jack Trimpey, all rights reserved.

    • There is enough information at this website for you to totally recover from any addiction, e.g., alcohol, crank, crack, heroin, opiates, sex and porn addiction, overeating, computer addiction, gambling, or other personal behavior that goes against your own better judgment.

    • Bookmark this website, now. Make this page your home base for a few months, until you’re totally recovered from your addiction — a normal, healthy, securely abstinent person.


    AVRT: The Class By reservation only.

    This is two days of intensive, face-to-face instruction on AVRT-based recovery conducted by Jack Trimpey at the RR national office in Northern California. Pick the earliest two consecutive days you can appear for this life-changing event, and call 530-621-2667. (More)


    The Zero-Tolerance Ultimatum for theAddicted Spouse or Significant Other (ASS) in Your Family

    © 2005, Jack Trimpey

    In Rational Recovery®, the family has an entirely different role than in the traditional disease/treatment way of thinking. One popular idea is that families should gather together with other troubled families, seeking outside guidance and advice. One good example of this approach is Al-Anon, which views addiction/alcoholism as a family disease, and views family members as “enablers” and “codependents.” Like all addiction recovery groups, Al-Anon uses a doctrine that fosters endless dependence upon the groups, with the primary aim of simply recruiting the entire family into AA/NA.

    Along the same lines, you may have heard of “interventions,” in which the family has a little surprise party for their substance abuser, with the aim of shaming him/her into immediate enrollment in an addiction treatment center. That kind of “tough-love”action, often with the treatment center van idling outside, is rarely helpful or constructive, always expensive, and very often harmful to hopes for eventual reconciliation.

    Professional “interventionists” may charge thousands of dollars for their marginally legal service, which is essentially forceful recruitment into the recovery group movement via a health care setting.

    All of this “therapeutic” activity is part of a convincing illusion that addicted people are somehow defective, or are afflicted with a disease that requires skilled, professional services and lifelong management and prevention. In Rational Recovery®, we take a rather old-fashioned view of the addiction as willful misconduct, voluntary and for the purpose of physical pleasure. As for “tough love, we know it’s tough to love a drunk, so there’s no use pretending.

    We suggest that the addicted spouse orsignificant other be thought of in the shortened tag, ASS, an ass who is betraying others for the sheer pleasure produced by alcohol and other drugs.Accordingly, we tend to view the family of addicted people as suckers, because the family’s ASS takes advantage of everyone’s better nature in order to build tolerance for more self-intoxication, especially those little planned, personal parties called, “relapses.”

    We do not support the idea of “intervention,” where the family surrenders to outside influences that go strongly against the family’s own native values and beliefs. We believe that most families, even families with many great problems, have a foundation in wisdom and common sense that is more meaningful and helpful than all of the medical, spiritual, and psychological help in the world. This is a far cry from the disease concept of addiction, which begs us all to have patience with “alcoholics” who continue their nightly absences from the home, working year after year on the problem, but staying “sober” just one-day-at-a-time.

    Addictive Voice Recognition Technique® (AVRT®), described throughout the RR website and in Rational Recovery: The New Cure for Substance Addiction, is the wakeup call for all involved to get a grip on the problem, and take action right now, or else.

    Addiction is insatiable, and will consume all of any family’s emotional and financial resources, and still demand more. Very often, families require the addicted member to choose between contining to drink/use and family membership. Accordingly, we heartily endorse the zero-tolerance ultimatum, in which the family forces the addicted member to choose between addiction and some action the family will take to protect itself.

    Setting the stage for action:
    To follow in this article is a clear, 10-point outline to guide your family through the actions and decision-making process that leads to prompt, total recovery from even the most serious, long-standing substance addiction. Our direct approach to recovery, AVRT®, relys entirely upon your family’s strengths, traditional values, and native beliefs. Rational Recovery® is your key resource in making a plan that will protect the family, while secondarily giving your addicted family member the greatest opportunity to defeat the addiction and live in freedom and dignity. We know that AVRT-based recovery brings out the best in every family — their own family beliefs, values and traditions. For example, families are the basic unit of survival for human beings, and cannot include for long those who will betray it or harm its members.

    We are confident that no mysterious disease causes or compels addicted people to drink/use, and that they are not victims of genetic circumstances, nor victims of past traumas or disappointments, nor are they afflicted with psychological problems that compel them to drink, drink, drink. Indeed, addicted people are victims of nothing else than their own hidebound, animal stupidity as they relentlessly pursue the unspeakable pleasures of alcohol and other drugs. Nonetheless, addicted people are just like everyone else, in that we all… [More inside]

    • If you’re drinking/using today, you won’t learn much of anything. Come back in the morning or when you aren’t under the influence.

    • To quit your addiction you must first stopdrinking/using long enough to learn AVRT®.

    • Addiction recovery is not a group project; it is an individual responsibility. You are ultimately on your own.

    • There are no Rational Recovery groups anywhere in the world! Your desire for “support” is nothing more, and nothing less, than a plan to get loaded in the absence of support.

    • There is nothing in your past, in your genes, in your brain, or in your personality that compels you to drink or use. Using is voluntary, purposeful behavior.

    • The sole cause of your addiction is a voice in your head that tells you to “Do it!” in a thousand different ways. That is your Addictive Voice.

    • Personal problems don’t cause addiction; addiction causes your personal problems.

    • Self-improvement does not result in addiction recovery. Recovery leads to self-improvement.

    • You drink or use because you love to get high.Admit it!

    • The worst possible way to quit something you love is one-day-at-a-time.

    • Stay away from recovery groups of all kinds; you can’t possibly recover there. They’ll never let you go, and you’ll be “in recovery” forever.

    • Stay away from shrinks; most substance abuse counselors are members of recovery groups, unable to trust themselves without evening supervision. The rest have never been addicted, and can only guess at what addiction is and what to do about it.

    • Your physician can’t help you with your addiction; he may even be supporting it. Most refer to recovery groups, to which many of them belong. However, they do have good treatments for withdrawal, if you are in danger of seizures.

    • Consider that the real truth about addiction and recovery lies in the exact opposite of most popular beliefs.

    • Recall your original family values, the ideas about right and wrong you knew by the age of 5 or 6. Those are your foundation for addiction recovery.

    • Your beliefs about God are fine, whether you believe or not. Sound, spritual growth may only follow AVRT-based recovery, when your thoughts are not biased by the mandate of addiction.

    • AVRT-based recovery is as difficult as you make it, and takes as long as you choose.

    • If you won’t trust yourself, why should anyone else?

    • Get authentic Rational Recovery® learning materials.

    • Click “Recover Now,” in the left sidebar, to get started in AVRT-based recovery.

    • Make a plan to devote some time at the RR bookstore to get authentic Rational Recovery® literature and multimedia productions on AVRT-based recovery.

    • To take the strongest action, call 530-621-2667 to register for the next session of AVRT: The Course

  • PEC
    PEC

    When I stopped hanging out with drug addicts and alcoholics, I stopped being both. Also, being in a happy mutually fulfilling relationship, helped a bunch.

    Philip

  • OUTLAW
    OUTLAW

    In the USA if you drink too much,you go to AA..........In Canada if you drink too much,you take a nap!..LOL!!

    Laughing Mutley...OUTLAW

  • jws
    jws

    I wouldn't say I was an alcoholic, but I loved to drink socially. And when I did, especially in my youth, if it was a party, I was out to get drunk. I liked me drunk. The drunk me wasn't shy (liquid courage to meet girls) and I don't think I was an a-hole drunk either. I was the smiling, happy drunk. I didn't need to drink every day. I didn't feel the urge to. And if the occasion was less social, I could stop after 1 or two.

    I had my blackouts too. The odd thing is you start to get drunk again and then you remember some of what you did again. Like there's sober memory and drunk memory and a door between them. One night I went drinking at the bar where I was a bouncer. Knowing all of the bartenders, I'm getting triple shots for the price of a single, free fill-ups when I'm not looking if I set my drink down. I blacked-out at about 8pm after about 45-minutes of drinking. Next thing I knew, I'm regaining my senses about 1am and find myself up in one of the dance cages dancing, not remembering what I was doing for the past 5 hours. It was like a switch had been thrown to make me black out, then thrown again. Coming out of it was that sudden. And probably the only time it happened while I was awake.

    One of the things that has slowed me down is growing up, getting married, and having kids. That means I'm not looking for somebody to hang out with and a bar to hang out in. I'm not hanging out with my old friends all of the time. I've got my wife and kids that I love to be with. The things we do are more with couples. So the people and activities have changed to not require a drink. And the settings where I do drink aren't appropriate to get drunk at. I'm also married, so I'm not looking for liquid courage to go meet women anymore either.

    Also, after all of those years, you get tired of fighting off the urge to puke or dealing with the hangover in the morning. I pace myself a lot better and nowadays rarely even get to that "buzzed" feeling.

    Back in my early 20's, there was always beer in the fridge. We had an extra fridge that was strictly a beer fridge. I went several months drinking every day. Not because I needed it, but just to say I did. More often than not, it was one beer and that was it. Nowadays a 6-pack at home will last me a couple of months at least.

    You have to determine why you drink. I drank for rebellion, for courage, for status among my peers, and probably to deal with my mother's early death when I was a late teenager. I can say nothing as to a physical "need" for alcohol like I've heard of some alcoholics.

    At your age with grown kids, you have to ask yourself why. Do you have a physical addiction? Is it your seperation from JW friends? Is it the divide between you and your wife? Is it that the kids became more independent starting in their teens and eventually moved out? Is it the "empty nest"?

    I don't know that I can recommend a cure. But sometimes knowing why you do something helps you stop the chain of events before it leads to the thing you're avoiding (drinking).

  • BurnTheShips
    BurnTheShips

    Pitifully drunk rightnow. Sadly so. I am drinking my disillusion. Part of me wishes right now that I had never "woken up." I'm home alone. I've had 375ml of Vodka straight in a very short time. This world is such a deception. I hold on for my son. I want him to have somethg to liook up tp.

    Where are you Snowbird? You are an angel. I need someone like you today. I wish that I lived in Alabama, or you in Florida.

    Ray

  • rebel8
    rebel8

    No, but I am an alcoholism counselor.

    I do not believe AA or Rational Recovery are the best approaches for many people who were hurt by religion. They do work for some people and that's great. I wrote about this issue here.

    I believe Secular Organizations for Sobriety (aka Save Our Selves) has a great approach. Check that out.

    "Disease" is a syndrome with a set of describable symptoms that generally respond to a similar treatment (abstinence). It does not mean the cells in your body caused you to become a problem drinker. The word disease just explains the result, not the cause.

  • cawshun
    cawshun

    ompaa, I was addicted to cigerettes, I used Chantx to help me quit. It was the easiest time I ever had quiting smoking.

    The other day, on fox news, they said they are having good results with Chantx with people that have drinking problems.

    Its by prescription and its costly, about $112.00 for a month. You take one pill for the first week then 2 a day after that. You can take it for as long as necessary to help you quit.

    You can google it and read about it. I have seen it spelled Chantx and Chantix

    Good Luck

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