2 months--no drugs or alcohol

I guess I am just talking to myself wherever I recognize it. That’s the reason recovering addicts are encouraged to help other addicts that are either recovering or want to recover.

I too thought I was unique and my path my own. Only banging my head against recovering addicts did I realize how inadvertantly common my attittudes and ideas about using were. It’s not a dig at you. It’s a reminder to me. And a line extended to you.

We all feel very creative when we seek answers to problems that affect our very survival. But what happens when other people also got creative and somehow came up with the exact same solutions?

It’s annoying, I know. Believe me. But the trick is that if we all tried the same solutions and met the same results, what happens when one comes to you with a result that worked? That’s all AA is. We come off as arrogant and fakely humble, but then few people can imagine the hells we dragged ourselves through.

For the record, I went to rehab TWICE!

The first time I thought wtf do these fools know. As soon as I had a little money and my own place I started using again.

It is only when my very sanity slipped as a consequence of my actions, which all revolved around getting high, and as Fixed Cross will attest, that I started listening honestly to what rehab had to say. Maybe I did go insane, buy I live in a nice house now with a nice life that I feel good, even enthusiastic about, in which I have honor and dignity and the appreciation and love of those I care about. Things I thought were downright impossible, lost forever, a part of me that had died. But it hadn’t died. It had just grown too much of a taste for getting high, whether it be weed, booze, benzos, fantasies, inner mind trips of different kinds, fake affection from bartenders and the like, whatever. I had contracted a chronic and lethal disease. For which there is effective treatment.

I love my life. That’s why I dare to talk to you about recovery. Otherwise fuck it, I would use, if life sucks anyway you might as well be high, no? That’s what I think. Lol it’s probably what makes me an addict.

But life in sobriety doesn’t suck at all. To my surprise it’s unmeasurbly better. That’s all I’m saying.

“contrary to what a therapist said to me: you’ve accomplished the hardest step”

I am sure that person is a very fine therapist. But I got $100 here that says that person isn’t an addict.

What’s hard about it? Just don’t pick up the bottle and put it to your mouth and drink.

Easy peasy.

The hard thing is, when that voice comes up one day and says “ok you’re all better now, time for a drink!” And if you are an addict it will, what to say back to it. It’s a clever fucking voice.

“Drinking is bad, voice”

“Duh! If you do it in excess! But you’re a stable person now!”

“I have Astral Projection now.”

“So? Why can’t you have both?”

“Stfu voice, I don’t need a drink for the lady at the bar to smile at me.”

“Yeah, but wouldn’t the smile taste better with a beer on you? Just one beer, obviously! You’re a stable man with AP and workung with his therapist in his self esteem and life goals. You only drank too much before because you were not stable like now.”

Not easy. People think it’s a problem with will power. The real problem is that the only thing the will wants to do with power is get high. That’s why the recovery process hurts. It requires a brutal amount of honesty.

To an addict, getting high is about 10x more important, on an instinctual level, than food or water, let alone sex or meditative techniques.

Do you not think the intellect is clever enough to protect said instinct against ones for, say, care and stability?

That’s why recovery is not an intellectual process. It’s about depriving the body from the drugs and reminding it of things that are actually fullfilling. How can a therapist who has never felt craving ever get to the bottom of why you drink? Even an arrogant ass like Jung gave up.

The problem with Jakob’s cold baths solution is that an addict is clever and thinks of him or herseld only as a victim, so such treatment would only be percieved as torture. Same reason you spit on Arc who seems to be the only one that actually cares about you (vis a vis the therapist, how much is Arc charging you?). Of course you spit on yourself more so you don’t think of it as strange or insulting.

The treatment with addicts that works is: truth, choice, and kindness. The weirdest concept for an addict is being kind to one’s self.

That’s where the famous hitting bottom comes from. Only when the pain of being unkind to one’s self becomes unbearable does an addict consider it. Of course there are always lower bottoms, and some you simply cannot come back from.

To allow yourself weakness. Then you can actually get stronger. Nobody’s fucking perfect.

Are non addicts also pathologically unkind to themselves? Maybe. But an addict is a kind of extremist. They don’t give quarter to kindness. Brave souls, says I. Consequent.

Worth saving.

Pedro,

Just a couple things:

  1. Compare this…

…to this:

I liked the first quote, not so much the second. You know why? Because in the first quote, you’re talking about your experiences. You have a right to do that. It’s believable. It’s appreciated. Everyone appreciates when a person relates their own life experiences. You know why I didn’t like the second? Because you switched gears and started talking about me… your presumptuous opinions about me, cloaked in the guise of insight and wisdom.

Here’s my advice: you wanna win people over, stick to the first approach; avoid the second like the plague.

  1. About this…

^ Here, you’re talking about something that may happen in the future. There’s not much I can say about that. It’s in the future. I don’t have a crystal ball. So how can I say whether it will happen or it won’t?

In that case, I’m more open to its possibility, but then I would ask: what’s with all the talk about “not being ready?” Give me a break. It’s only been two months. If this is something that will happen in the future, it will come when it will come… right? Does being ready imply that it would come sooner? Does ready mean ready to experience the temptation and exercise my will to resist? To fall back on others for support? If that’s the case, maybe I’m better off not being ready ever. I mean, if I’m doing so well not being ready, not even having the temptation to drink at the pub, then maybe not being ready is the perfect place to be.

But if this is an inevitable part of recovery that I have yet to experience, let’s cross that bridge when we get there, huh? If it starts to become difficult, maybe that will be the time to join AA. I promise, I’ll be open to it. But until then, I don’t see the point nor do I have the time (really, I don’t).

BTW, to both you and Arc:

I’m almost done volume III of my book. Chapter 16 covers the techniques I’ve been using for the past 5 years to reprogram my mind and condition myself to not want the drugs. It covers that and a whole slew of what I call “mental technologies.” If you’d like, I’ll give you a free copy. You might not understand everything I write in there as it’s built on stuff written in volumes I and II, but I think someone freshly diving into chapter 16 would get the general gist of it.

Arc, I remember once giving you volume I.

If you guys want it, let me know.

Who said I want to win people over?

Your life is your problem, not mine.

I was not being arrogant, gib. I was trying to be helpful in the hope that you might see something which you may not be seeing in relation to your sobriety or lack of it. Treating someone who ought not to be treated with kid gloves is just being an enabler. You are being your own enabler. Why waste time and energy when someone is simply not ready to be open to the change it takes to change.

We are just about done here. You are the second man in here within the week to use that word addressing me.

Real arrogance comes with you, gib, believing that you owe someone more respect than you owe another because you do not know the former as well as you know the latter ~~ ergo, F Y. I do not enjoy being addressed in that way.

It would seem to me that Pedro I. Rengel is more serious in helping you than you are in receiving help. I will be arrogant with you here again in saying that it is my intuition that you are MORE playing with your life in this regard ~~ not really being serious enough about it. Hopefully, at some point you will lose the flippancy…it is just a deterrent and a defense mechanism. You are still not ready to suffer for your sobriety and change from what I see.

You need to be very careful that there does NOT come a time when your attitude and behavior comes to roost on your children harming them. They are, after all, your most precious Beings…and if you do not believe that they can be vulnerable because of you, then you are quite blind.

Really? And I thought you cared.

Ok, thanks, come again (er, wait, don’t).

It is you that has to care about himself.

You guys gave me a dream last night.

I had a dream I was rolling joints. One looked like a burrito, it was so big. My sister was trying to come into my room. I closed the door. She popped it open with just a push. I closed the door again and locked it. Again, she pushed it open just by pushing it. I started to drop lit joints onto the carpet. The carpet was starting on fire. I tried to put it out.

^ Hmmm… don’t think it takes a Freudian psychiatrist to figure this one out. :laughing:

Arc,

I just got back from my first class in the Dale Carnegie course. You were asking what being “awesome” means. They stated a quote which I think sums it up:

“The Dale Carnegie course helps you become the you you want to be.”

Being awesome, to me, means being the me I want to be. ← Note that’s not the me you want me to be, or the me Pedro wants me to be, or anybody else. It’s the me I want to be.

You know guys, I feel great!

There’s been a lot of great things happening in my life recently. I’m really excited to start my new job at ATB Financial on Tuesday. I’ll be making more money than I ever dreamed possible, and maybe even have a spring board to start a small business. Also, everyone at ACM Facility Safety (where I currently work) is being really nice to me, making me feel I’ll be missed. On top of that, I just finished the first class of the Dale Carnegie course (as I stated in the last post) and I’m all excited about that. And to top it all off, I had a lot of fun digging into you guys.

Believe it or not, I get a rush out of just slamming arrogant pricks on ILP. I love the slaughter, seeing you bleed blue. ← I’m twisted that way.

In any case, it’s like the cherry on top of this high I’m currently on, this rush. I’m told by my therapist that this is dopamine. And I’m finding in the past few days that dopamine seems to act like a perfect substitute to caffeine. I’ve always wondered what the natural neurochemical was that caffeine mimics. I learned that I shouldn’t assume that there is just one… for any drug. For caffeine, there seems to be two. About a week after July 1, I regained my body energy and alertness, but I didn’t feel the same kind of buzz (excitement, euphoria, racing thoughts, ability to put my words together, urge to socialize) until I went through the occasional moments when something picked me up–some fortuitous event, some happy circumstance, something that made me smile–and then I started to feel a bit of a caffeine rush. I guess that’s dopamine. Dopamine’s the second chemical (still not sure what the first one is–what makes you alert/energized?). I only asked that I achieve maybe feeling like I’m on one cup of coffee, but this feels like two. I find it amazing that this is coming on the natch. It’s not like a switch I can flick whenever I want, or a pill I can pop, but it’s definitely happening without the caffeine (Arc, that’s item #5 on the list you linked me to).

I have you guys to thank for that. You stuck your necks out for me to figuratively chop off. You are the substitutes to the drugs. You make me feel alive.

Maybe better not feed the beast.

I’m also wondering if it’s the affirmations I’ve been practicing lately. My therapist has me doing these meditative and breathing exercises which involve reciting an affirmation I tell myself. In the past couple days, I told myself: “I will feel like I’m on one cup of coffee.” ← Even if this is just the placebo effect, it’s working.

Now, I’m starting to see maaaybe how this can become a struggle. I’m up late, losing sleep, and I have a bit of an urge to go to the strip club and drink. Caffeine has always been the “gateway” drug for me. I used to call myself a conditional alcoholic–conditional on the caffeine–cause I’d only want to drink if I was jacked. That changed after a while and I became a regular ol’ alcoholic.

But now I’m feeling a bit of an urge. Don’t worry, it’s still nothing serious… but I can see how thoughts might covertly sneak in there.

So what to do? I think it would be wise to learn how to turn it off as much as to turn it on–these dopamine chems–mind control remains the key priority. But I also see this as a golden opportunity. If I’m lucky enough to learn how to turn on and off the dopamine receptors like flicking a light switch, maybe it’ll be time to jump to the next step–learn to turn on or off the receptors for alcohol (or whatever the natural equivalent in the brain is for alcohol). I don’t want to give in to the urge to drink at the strip club. I want to go to the strip club, snap my fingers, and naturally get drunk with nothing but the sheer power of thought. I’ll get a kick out the fact that I won’t need a single drop of alcohol and my wallet stays full.

Hmmm… possibilities… aaalll the possibilities.

But first things first… learn to turn it off–get enough sleep–before plowing ahead. Learn to crawl before walking. Learn to walk before running. Learn to run before soaring… right?

Sadly there arent any good strip clubs in Amsterdam.

By the way Glibby, you’re approaching sobriety like a junkie.
Whatever works for ya!

I’ve always had unorthodox methods. :smiley:

Cool.

…one would have thought otherwise.

Is Soho Amsterdam no more? or was it ever was?