Sobriety - a choice or not? - Al-Anon Family Group

Flossy · Member

Sobriety - a choice or not?

cloudyskies · ~*Service Worker*~

Hi Flossy. I love your name. This is what I used to call my grandmother, and I loved her dearly. smile

I think that would be an excellent question to ask a recovering A. The only thing I can understand is that alcoholism is a powerful disease, and its chains are extremely hard to break. I see it as a disease with long fingers constantly trying to pull the alcoholic back into its grip. I went to an AA speaker meeting a few weeks ago, and the man speaking said he almost killed his brother over two cans of beer. He said he was so sick the only thing his brain could process at the time was where his next drink was coming from. Why would anyone who had maintained sobriety for a period of time want to fall back into that pit?? I just don't get it.

SunshineGirl · Senior Member

Very interesting question, I am a recovering A with four years under my belt as well as ACOA and married to an active A.

I drank to black out every day for a number of years. I hated it, yet I kept doing it. It controlled me. It is hard to explain the hold it had over me. I gradually adjusted my whole lifestyle to fit in with my drinking. A ritual that started every day at noon. AH and I would get everything we needed to do done by noon so we could sink into a bottle for the rest of the day. I felt full of shame and it destroyed my soul. Yet I could not stop.

As an active A I was very short tempered, had a very nasty tongue on me, no patience, and the list goes on and on. I was a deeply unpleasant person. I didn't know at the time, but I was utterly mentally ill. Nuts. My thinking was so distorted and off. I look back now and cannot understand how I did the things I did back then. I not only did them but thought they were perfectly reasonable at the time. I couldn't see reality. The alcohol made me insane.

I tried over and over to quit. I would get to day 4 and be overwhelmed by the cravings and hate myself as I returned to it. I was stuck on this cycle for quite a while, then by a miracle i stopped completely. I have stayed stopped, I know I must work my program to stay sober. I do so with joy. I love my life now.

I believe the biggest part to quitting is WANTING to. You have to really really want it, then fight for your life to quit. If you don't really want to stop, maybe you feel you ought too or someone else is telling you too, I don't believe you can. My active AH had a whole different attitude to his drinking. He enjoyed it, still does. I hated it, yet I did it. I don't feel AH will ever quit. I accept this and use my program tools to deal with it. He didn't want me to quit as we were drinking buddies. So he lost his drinking partner when I stopped.

I think the reason for relapse is that our brains start to whisper to us that we are 'cured', that after a period of time sober, that we will be able to drink like a normal person again. We cannot. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. I am only healthy as long as I don't pick up a drink.

There is so much I could write about this.

cloudyskies · ~*Service Worker*~

Oh My Goodness, thank you for your share SG! Your testimony helps me to understand my husband.

Debilyn · ~*Service Worker*~

Because he is an Addict. This is just symptoms of the disease. nothing he chooses.

NO they cannot just choose one day to quit! You think someone who kills people when they drunk drive, would want to keep drinking??

They can only quit when every part of them comes together wanting it. Then it is still horribly hard. They crave it and the routine to get it allll the time. wake up thinking about it, worrying how to get it.

Then when they have it, they may be making sure they have enough and when will they go get more.

Then they have all life stuff to deal with,plus the guilt.

The disease is NOT simply drinking or using other drugs. Its a whole syndrome.

hugs,debilyn

SunshineGirl · Senior Member

You are welcome, Cloudy Skies. smile

SunshineGirl · Senior Member

I agree drinking is but the symptom.

My quit was in two stages.

Stage one was to physically stop drinking. Very difficult.

Stage two was to work my program to correct the issues laying beneath the drinking. As sober time built, these issues appeared and I became aware of them. I then had to work very hard to understand them and change them. I had to do this or I would have returned to drinking to cover them again. Which is another common reason for relapse, that the issues exposed when sober are just too painful for someone to cope with. Also to change my behaviour to get a good quality life.

Stage two is ongoing, imo.

-- Edited by SunshineGirl on Tuesday 19th of August 2014 04:55:30 PM

hotrod · ~*Service Worker*~

Sunshine thank you for shedding some important light on the subject.

Alcoholism is indeed a cunning ,baffling , powerful disease . I often asked myself why I went back to all my negative responses such as anger resentment self pity and fear when I knew that Al-Anon existed and I still wouldn't accept the principles. When I discovered that I had no place else to go and the pain of doing the same thing over and over again was unbearable, that's when I found Al-Anon. It may be the same for the troubled alcoholic

Aloha · ~*Service Worker*~

Thank you for your share, Sunshine.

Flossy - my own understanding of alcoholism is it is a disease and not a choice.

The choosing comes when it comes to seek recovery or not, but as Sunshine described so clearly, even when the A wants recovery, they still have a beast to battle.

I've had one A explain to me that when he was in his early stages of recovery that his body would scream at him for a drink. I can only imagine what that must feel like in the terms of maybe being absolutely famished - my body is crying out for what it needs and pretty much everything else has to go by the wayside until I get it what it wants.

Are you getting to face-to-face Al-Anon meetings?

Speaking for me, I could sit down and try to figure out the reasons why alcoholics do what they do and all I'd really manage to do is drive myself crazy. I really have to drop the questions about that other human being and put the focus back on me. That's where my recovery can take place and flourish. When I'm in recovery, the impulse to try to figure out why the A is behaving the way he or she is goes away. They're no longer the center of my universe, and that is a GOOD thing not only for me, but for the A as well.

pinkchip · ~*Service Worker*~

Agree with everything sunshinegirl wrote. That has been my experience as well...except I could not be with my ex-a after sobering up. I left him in order to sober up. I can't be around active drunks. Social drinkers...ok...not drunks. I hate that.

Jerry F · ~*Service Worker*~

Sunshine's description of 2 staging is good and that is how it happened for me...First I stopped drinking...everything that was altering and then I screamed "uncle" just before finding the hotline number to Al-Anon. That is how HP worked it with me. I went 9 years alcohol free before getting into AA. We all have our guided paths and that was mine. The Uncle scream was my surrender chant...I was done and HP held the lantern up so I could see the path to Al-Anon and away from "all things alcohol" including the alcoholic/addict I was married to an attempted to try to teach her how to drink. I work the program and did back then also and the day came when my HP reminded me that I had never taken the alcoholism assessment for myself. I was trying to sober up everyone else and not myself...I wasn't one until I took the assessment and the next Friday I was in my first voluntary AA meeting sitting in the corner in the dark just like I use to drink...not so strange at all. Today serenity and sobriety are choices. Both programs are a part of my daily life. I was offered 5 bottle of beer yesterday morning and just repeated what I have been taught over this journey, "No thanks...I've had enough" by choice. (((hugs))) smile

-- Edited by Jerry F on Tuesday 19th of August 2014 09:49:47 PM

Mattie · ~*Service Worker*~

Here's the way I understand it. In the beginning alcohol made them feel wonderful. Now usually it makes them feel terrible, but every once in a while it has a moment of being wonderful, or the hope of being wonderful. And while they're still drinking they don't have to think about their lives or what happens next or how to get out of the messes that they've made, and how to face all the feelings that have built up.

Those are exactly the reasons we stay with someone when they're drinking.

So when we ask "Why do they still drink?", we can also ask, "Why am I with someone who's drinking like that?" The reasons we're still with them are the same reasons they're still drinking.

We both have addictions, the drinkers and the people in relationships with the drinkers. We're both in denial. We both think the good outweighs the bad and can't imagine a different life. We both hope it's going to turn out okay. But is it?

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