Hi everyone:
Another milestone in the AF journey has passed. 900 days or 29.5 months or almost 2 ? years since that last drink.
I wanted to write about a few more thoughts and observations.
On Being Tough:
No doubt about it. This has got to be the toughest thing I?ve ever managed. No more slips, no more sneaked drinks, no more believing I can just have one. That realization completely overwhelms most of us in those first few days, weeks, or months of absolute abstinence. Not one drop. You have to be tough. You either get tough, or you fall. Simple as that. No sugar coating, and coddling. You have to get tough with yourself, and mean it.
There is an expression my parents used to use, that I don?t hear so much these days. It was used in connection with things during World War 2. You have to develop ?intestinal fortitude?, which is a euphemism for ?guts?. In order to deal with adversity, and hard times, one had to develop a resolve and courage deep within. Not just a mental or emotional state, but a condition of the physical tissues. Guts.
For most of my life, I felt like I had no ?intestinal fortitude?. I always felt like I was a slacker somehow, and not born with the ?right stuff?. Booze was the best medicine, or so I thought, because it would give artificial courage, to a person like myself.
That was, is, and always will be a delusion.
Now after all this time, I am starting to realize that maybe I do have some guts. Maybe I can be tough. Thing is, you can to. If I found it, then something within tells me you can do it too.
Riding the Waves of Peace:
There was a post a while back, by another long-term abstainer, who seems to have gone on to other things. It was back when I first joined this forum in September 2006. I still remember them writing, ?The first three years are hell!?.
I didn?t really understand at that time, because I was at the 9-month mark, and was just emerging from another crisis period. Now I understand a little better, and I look forward to that 3-year mark this winter.
There have been times where I thought that that I was all better, and the worst was over, only to be challenged with another set of emotional, or psychological storms. The storms have taken many forms, and now I?m in the middle of another one. Not a craving for booze, in the physical or emotional sense at all. This storm is like a realization that I now recognize the long-term pattern of recovery, and I wonder if there is anything I?ve missed. I still exercise, take select supplements, do meditations, and read new material dealing with personal growth. I?ve been leveled off at this altitude for some months now, and been reticent to change my current routines, that have worked so well the last 900 days. It is a feeling that the immediate danger is over, and maybe I should climb to another level. Thing is, I don?t know just how to do that right now. That is the nature of this current storm. Being ignorant of just what I need to do next. Before it was clear, and I always seemed to find a way further from the addictions.
But for now, all is peaceful, and maybe that is what I need to learn. It is how to ride the waves of peaceful introspection, rather than force the issues.
Why do we drink in the first place?:
Many times over the last few months, something seems not quite right. I see it in the endless advertising and social machinery around drinking. Slick magazine ads for expensive liquors, which imply sophistication, and perhaps superiority over others if we imbibe that particular product. Television commercials for beer brews, which convey the message that this liquid is the key to good times.
Other advertisements showing beautiful thin people in nightclubs, dancing away perfectly in time, wearing the latest high dollar fashions. Only the most ?hip?, and ?with it? individuals drink this or that poison.
This is dope pushing, pure and simple. Multi-million dollar dope pushing systems.
Does any mind-altering substance ever really make our lives better I wonder? Does it ever really solve a problem? For over 30 years, I absolutely believed that it would. Now, after all this time away from the bottle, it is beginning to really smack of the deepest hypocrisy. I know why I drank, and every day the reasons get a little clearer to me. I?m dealing with it.
A lot of people in the world don?t drink, and many never have. I am now one of them. At first, it was as if I was in some sort of gray area between the booze head, and the non-drinker. Now, I feel firmly in the camp of the tee-totalers. There is no real good reason for me to drink in the first place.
Sorry I don?t have any you-tube videos to post, just writing things as I seem them at this stage of the game.
;">See y?all at the 1000 mark. I will get there, and the confidence that I will is solid.
Neil
Another milestone in the AF journey has passed. 900 days or 29.5 months or almost 2 ? years since that last drink.
I wanted to write about a few more thoughts and observations.
On Being Tough:
No doubt about it. This has got to be the toughest thing I?ve ever managed. No more slips, no more sneaked drinks, no more believing I can just have one. That realization completely overwhelms most of us in those first few days, weeks, or months of absolute abstinence. Not one drop. You have to be tough. You either get tough, or you fall. Simple as that. No sugar coating, and coddling. You have to get tough with yourself, and mean it.
There is an expression my parents used to use, that I don?t hear so much these days. It was used in connection with things during World War 2. You have to develop ?intestinal fortitude?, which is a euphemism for ?guts?. In order to deal with adversity, and hard times, one had to develop a resolve and courage deep within. Not just a mental or emotional state, but a condition of the physical tissues. Guts.
For most of my life, I felt like I had no ?intestinal fortitude?. I always felt like I was a slacker somehow, and not born with the ?right stuff?. Booze was the best medicine, or so I thought, because it would give artificial courage, to a person like myself.
That was, is, and always will be a delusion.
Now after all this time, I am starting to realize that maybe I do have some guts. Maybe I can be tough. Thing is, you can to. If I found it, then something within tells me you can do it too.
Riding the Waves of Peace:
There was a post a while back, by another long-term abstainer, who seems to have gone on to other things. It was back when I first joined this forum in September 2006. I still remember them writing, ?The first three years are hell!?.
I didn?t really understand at that time, because I was at the 9-month mark, and was just emerging from another crisis period. Now I understand a little better, and I look forward to that 3-year mark this winter.
There have been times where I thought that that I was all better, and the worst was over, only to be challenged with another set of emotional, or psychological storms. The storms have taken many forms, and now I?m in the middle of another one. Not a craving for booze, in the physical or emotional sense at all. This storm is like a realization that I now recognize the long-term pattern of recovery, and I wonder if there is anything I?ve missed. I still exercise, take select supplements, do meditations, and read new material dealing with personal growth. I?ve been leveled off at this altitude for some months now, and been reticent to change my current routines, that have worked so well the last 900 days. It is a feeling that the immediate danger is over, and maybe I should climb to another level. Thing is, I don?t know just how to do that right now. That is the nature of this current storm. Being ignorant of just what I need to do next. Before it was clear, and I always seemed to find a way further from the addictions.
But for now, all is peaceful, and maybe that is what I need to learn. It is how to ride the waves of peaceful introspection, rather than force the issues.
Why do we drink in the first place?:
Many times over the last few months, something seems not quite right. I see it in the endless advertising and social machinery around drinking. Slick magazine ads for expensive liquors, which imply sophistication, and perhaps superiority over others if we imbibe that particular product. Television commercials for beer brews, which convey the message that this liquid is the key to good times.
Other advertisements showing beautiful thin people in nightclubs, dancing away perfectly in time, wearing the latest high dollar fashions. Only the most ?hip?, and ?with it? individuals drink this or that poison.
This is dope pushing, pure and simple. Multi-million dollar dope pushing systems.
Does any mind-altering substance ever really make our lives better I wonder? Does it ever really solve a problem? For over 30 years, I absolutely believed that it would. Now, after all this time away from the bottle, it is beginning to really smack of the deepest hypocrisy. I know why I drank, and every day the reasons get a little clearer to me. I?m dealing with it.
A lot of people in the world don?t drink, and many never have. I am now one of them. At first, it was as if I was in some sort of gray area between the booze head, and the non-drinker. Now, I feel firmly in the camp of the tee-totalers. There is no real good reason for me to drink in the first place.
Sorry I don?t have any you-tube videos to post, just writing things as I seem them at this stage of the game.
;">See y?all at the 1000 mark. I will get there, and the confidence that I will is solid.
Neil
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