The 100+ challenge
By far the most likely time to relapse is in the first two weeks after stopping drinking. But relapse after 100 or so days is also extremely common. I want to talk about three aspects of relapse at this time […]
Finding hope
While I may have understood at an intellectual level why stopping drinking was essential, my heart wasn’t in it. In my mind I can evaluate all the information: drinking makes me miserable, causes all sorts of problems, and will if […]
The decision
There came a time that I realised my drinking had to end. It took far longer than I care to admit to come to one very simple realisation… that I could not control my drinking; I drank more than I […]
The gift of desperation
I carried on drinking excessively far, far longer than is rational. Normal drinkers around me looked on in despair; they couldn’t figure me out at all… and they couldn’t be expected to; their minds work completely differently to mine with […]
The buck stops here
Stopping drinking is simple… all that’s required is that we don’t drink! But simple is not the same as easy. Stopping drinking is extremely difficult, and the reason that it is so difficult to stop drinking is that our entrapment […]
The Serenity Prayer without God
I first got sober with AA, but I struggled with the whole God thing. As I looked down the 12 steps I could see that only ½ of them were available to me; the others needed a “higher power”, and […]
I drank because…
I don’t get rattled often these days, but here’s something that gets me frustrated. I often read in recovery blogs, notice-boards, chat-rooms and online communities … “I drank because…” and usually what follows this rattles me. It troubles me and […]
Understanding and learning from relapse
Relapse is a crushing and confusing experience. Stopping drinking is hard and I never understood quite how hard it was until I tried. It’s hard because sometimes the test can be ferocious, and sometimes it can be devious… my addiction kept finding new ways to challenge me. Until I realised just how hard it was, and how devious it could be, I didn’t bring enough to the attempt… that’s my experience. But relapse isn’t failure, it is education.
Self-sabotage and the big lie
When we try to stop drinking we are confronted by many challenges. We have to overcome incredibly powerful cravings of course, but there is far more. Our daily routines have to change, people we associate with have to change, and […]
How to accept things that we don’t want to
We all have persistent problems we are currently experiencing, or problems from the past that simply won’t go away; they haunt us. They disturb our sleep and come to us whenever our mind isn’t fully occupied. We dwell on them, […]
The importance of ‘acceptance’
We have problems; everybody has problems. But for we alcoholics issues that keep recurring present a double jeopardy. Yes, problems cause non-alcoholics the same distress and discomfort as we experience, but for us that distress also leads us back towards […]
Relapse is growth
This post continues from Relapse! Relapse comes in many shapes and sizes. The first relapses we endured were failures to limit our drinking when we wanted to… e.g. “I’ll only have a couple”. It was when we realised that we […]
