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Hey guys, I reckon it's time to see who's still an alcoholic. I most definitely am, so come and join me in honouring our boy B-Rock the Islamic Shock Superallah Hussein Obama. Normal challenge rules apply - one cheat day, but honestly if you can't make it a month without getting on it you might need this thread more than you thought. My phone reminded me that I'm 17 months sober this morning, and by the time the end date rolls around I'll be up to a year and a half. Join me in staying sober to honour Barack, Joe, and all those before us. The only penalty for failing is the shame that always hit me when I was hungover. I thought once the challenge is over we can convert to an ongoing sobriety thread - poo poo's hard, I've certainly needed a ton of support over the last 17 months. A few resources if you need them: http://www.aa.org/ if you want to try out AA - it's worked great for me. I can't recommend it strongly enough - if you want to quit, this is a good way of doing it. The main page has a handy locator - enter your zip/area and it'll tell you of local meetings. http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/my-name-is-roger-and-im-an-alcoholic This was actually one of my first introductions to AA by the late, great Roger Ebert. The man was a fantastic writer. That leads into a 12-part quiz - if you're wavering, answer this honestly. http://web.archive.org/web/20100618111124/http://www.aa.org/lang/en/subpage.cfm?page=71 Also I am available by PM. If you need to talk to someone, drop me a line. Once we get some interest, I'll post a list of brave sober battlers. Get in and get keen and clean. LIST OF SOBER PEOPLE: Two Finger EBB Syrian Lannister Nostalgia4murder ReverendMaynard SquirrellyPSU Terrible Robot Comrade Blyatlov fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Apr 25, 2017 |
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Apr 23, 2017 08:04
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Nostalgia4Murder posted:12 hours. I'm in. Still smoking copious amounts of weed though Get sprayed on camera and I'm giving you another cheat day
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Apr 23, 2017 21:45
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Kung Fu Fist gently caress posted:just wanna say im proud of all you guys One of us one of us
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Apr 23, 2017 22:27
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tastefully arranged labia posted:Some encouragement for newly sober people who may be questioning the decision to stop: Right now you're probably angry and everything seems more boring because you're not smashed off your rear end. That goes away, BUT IT TAKES TIME. Physically you'll be feeling great after a month but mentally you're not going to be so hot. The ability to enjoy things sober comes back but you really need to be patient. Exercise, eat well, and count to ten when you're frustrated. Jesus yes. My parents realised I'd quit drinking when they saw me eating an ice cream which I hadn't done in years. I found it was quite a while before my brain calmed enough for me to just be able to enjoy things properly again. The other thing I wish someone had warned me about was the dreams. The vivid, incredibly real dreams where you're drunk. Then you wake up in bed and have no idea if that dream was real or not, and if you were actually drunk and blacked out. It's so loving weird. Pesticide20 posted:It's not hard to fix any of those problems Hello, my friend. Stay a while, and listen.
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Apr 24, 2017 22:41
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Terrible Robot posted:It's been about 4-5 months since I had a hard drink, and about a month since I had a beer. It just doesn't appeal to me anymore like it used to, idk. Welcome friend LITERALLY SHAKING posted:This but weed instead of booze. Been about a year and a half now since I just stopped drinking again. I don't miss it. eh, life with the crutch wasn't living at all by the end there, all I did was drink and shitpost on SA and drink more. often only leaving the house to buy more booze it was pretty poo poo
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Apr 25, 2017 21:51
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Anyone fallen on their swords yet?
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Apr 27, 2017 02:26
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From memory it was all of 4 days before I failed the first challenge I tried so thought I better ask 
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Apr 27, 2017 03:07
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Reverendmaynard anything you'd like to tell us?
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May 1, 2017 02:56
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Mike-o posted:Never been an alcoholic but man I'm loving addicted to cigarettes. I love smoking, and I can't loving quit. I know it's horribly bad for my health and my girlfriend hates it. How the gently caress do I quit and not WANT to do it, because man I love smoking. in my experience the best way to quit smoking is to hate everything and everyone and look longingly at a pack every time someone pulls one out if someone knows a better way please tell me, i'd really like to know
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May 4, 2017 20:46
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Three weeks to go. Don't gently caress it up.
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May 9, 2017 08:11
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i'm assuming you don't mean the fizzy sprite-wannabe
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May 11, 2017 04:33
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Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. You may take a free pass during Comey's testimony
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May 17, 2017 23:07
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Right guys. It's the 29th here. I'm still sober and as of last week I'm at 18 months. How's everyone else doing?
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May 29, 2017 00:55
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You should. Cigars own. Would it trigger your cigarette urges?
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May 29, 2017 01:16
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We've heard from three on the list. How are the other four doing
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May 30, 2017 06:34
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Can always pick it up again man. I think this is gonna be an ongoing sobriety thread from now on so post itt if you are having trouble with drinking and want to stop.
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Jun 1, 2017 22:48
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19 months sober now. 
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Jun 23, 2017 04:45
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Suicide Watch posted:I've been drinking lots of seltzer lately which is not great for you (carbonated water is acidic which harms teeth) but it's probably better especially as a replacement to the beer I used to drink gently caress the haters, I drink that poo poo all the time. It's the closest thing I've found to drinking a beer in terms of the sensation.
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Jul 8, 2017 22:45
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tastefully arranged labia posted:Sparkling cider man. Absolutely has the same consistency of beer in your mouth. Oh yeah? I'll have to look into it.
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Jul 8, 2017 23:12
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tastefully arranged labia posted:Bundaberg Ginger Beer is poo poo. Can't speak to the states but that's the bottom of the barrel scrub tier poo poo here
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Jul 9, 2017 03:05
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tastefully arranged labia posted:This is truth, I'm not slamming two cans of Coke in the men's room at work at 10 AM to stay functional. Haha nice. It took me six months to get up the courage to clean out underneath my bed where I used to stuff bottles to hide them. It was.... a lot. I think I counted 5 empty bottles of spirits and about 7 bottles of hard cider amongst the many beer bottles. Gross.
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Jul 11, 2017 04:54
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maffew buildings posted:Personally I found it upsetting there were that many Green Day fans not just in existence but in one place Where's that moab when you need it
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Jul 12, 2017 01:12
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Hi Bert Have a balloon they all float down here
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Jul 24, 2017 19:44
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Had a crew bbq on friday night. Felt like having a beer but didn't. Got to see misery personified the next morning as three guys smashed 48 beers, 4 bottles of wine, a bottle of tequila and more that actually got put in the bins.
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Aug 7, 2017 01:55
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tastefully arranged labia posted:It's fun to be unbearably cheerful around hungover people early in the morning
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Aug 7, 2017 02:21
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Zeris posted:*finishes the fifth, goes back to bed* Just lol if you even got out of bed. I used to just reach under my bed for a top up. Took me six months to get the courage up to clean out underneath. It wasn't pretty.
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Aug 7, 2017 04:44
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Proud of you dude a year is huge. I'll hit my second on the 23rd. ~Life owns~
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Nov 6, 2017 22:13
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First, despite probably having gone longer between drinks in the past, your brain has 'I'm quitting' in it right now. So you're reacting differently to not having any alcohol. Second, yes it loving sucks. I went to a lot of AA meetings in early sobriety. It worked for me - up to you if you want to try it. Hearing other people's struggles with the same thing was helpful to me. Third, does your wife know you are quitting? It would be a really good idea to have a chat with her about what you are doing and why. Far better to have her onside with you. Fourth, I'm happy to chat via pm or whatever - it loving sucks and getting through it is easier with support
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Nov 11, 2017 19:44
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Syrian Lannister posted:It's not preachy at all, it's good solid advice. Me too brother. It's also the most worthwhile thing I've ever done. Two years tomorrow.
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Nov 22, 2017 04:31
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I made it. Two years 
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Nov 22, 2017 12:07
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How's everyone getting on?
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Feb 12, 2018 18:07
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One of our newspapers was asking for pieces on addiction/recovery so I've written about my experiences. Reprinted for your pleasure and amusement below: I took my first drink when I was about 15. It was gin I stole from my mother's partner's bottle, and once it hit my stomach and that warmth began to spread through me, I just wanted more. The night ended with me being carried home by a friend and spewing my dinner into the garden outside the house. I loved it. I loved the way it made me feel. I loved that it made me forget my shyness and make me feel powerful. I kept drinking to obscene excess every chance I got. I remember people saying to me that it was an absolute shocker that I would get so drunk I'd lose control of my mind. Even back then, at 17 or 18, I couldn't understand why it was that other people didn't seem to get into the same trouble I did when drinking, or even more so I couldn't understand how people could not want to drink. A work colleague said to me 'it might be time to call the AA.' I thought he was joking. I carried on drinking. I'd noticed I tended to act the fool, so I drank alone. Beer was expensive, so I drank cheap wine. If you ever find yourself in a supermarket aisle making a quick calculation of what to buy so that you get the most alcohol by volume for your dollar, I have some bad news for you. You might just be an alcoholic, like me. Things carried on in this vein for a few years. I felt I struggled to control my drinking. A girlfriend told me that I had a problem, so I stopped on her behalf. Once we broke up, it was back to the races. What I notice in hindsight, is that anytime I stopped for any length of time, when I picked up again my drinking was worse than it had been when I stopped. I met another girl, and found I wanted to be sober for her sake. When that went wrong, I felt like I had done the best I could, and that this was how it turned out, so what's the point in even trying? And that's when I really started to lose my battle with it altogether. I drank alone in increasing quantities, pissing into the bottles and emptying them in the toilet in the morning (I'm not sure why I didn't just go to the toilet). My landlady found me passed out in the middle of the day and thought I was on drugs. She wasn't impressed, and although she never said in so many words, I got the impression I needed to get help or get a new place to live. I phoned AA that night. I went to a meeting the next day and saw a roomful of people I had nothing in common with. They'd all joined some kind of cult and I got out of there, fast. I think it took about two weeks before I started drinking again. I spent the next two years drinking as much as I could, as often as I could. I gained weight, fast, going from a reasonably healthy 85kg to 116kg in that space of time. I stayed at a friend's, and we were going to do some target shooting, but he noticed I'd had a drink with breakfast and refused to hand me a gun. I thought I was depressed and tried therapy. I found I got worse and worse at my job. Eventually, the end came, when I was working a job far below my qualifications, and could still only manage to do enough hours a week to pay rent and buy alcohol. I couldn't face the thought of doing the work I studied for. I could barely face people. I certainly couldn't face myself every morning. I clearly remember my last drinks. I woke up in bed, with the worst hangover I can remember, and saw two half empty beers on my bedside table. I drank them both. That was on the 22nd of November 2015, and though it has been the hardest thing I have ever done, I have been sober since the 23rd. I went to an AA meeting, for the first time of my own choice. I said I was in trouble. I could barely get the words out from fighting back tears. Someone - I still don't know who - put their hand on my shoulder. It was such a human gesture. I had thought people might laugh at me, at this poor fool who couldn't even handle his drink. I've since come to learn that everyone in that room had been where I was that day. Sobriety has not been easy. There have been days, even in the last month, when I have wished I could have a drink. But I can't go back to where I came from. I was scared my friends would judge me for giving up. I'm incredibly grateful that without exception, every single one of them has been supportive of my choice. I've met some amazing people through the rooms and very sadly had to farewell one this month who was taken from us too soon. Addiction is such a lonely disease. It took away from me everything and everyone I care about, and worse, made me unable to care. I never wanted to feel anything, I just wanted to drink myself to oblivion so I wouldn't have to feel. By the end, I wished I had never existed, because all I did was hurt the people around me. Now, two and a half years later, I see how wrong I was. Sobriety is a new experience for me, and not an easy one, but one worth having. If you are struggling, you don't have to struggle alone.
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Apr 23, 2018 10:30
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I wrote part two I had woken up and drank the last two beers and laid in bed with the room spinning most of the day. I managed to get some water down and sleep some. There had been a party at my flat the night before. I'd had no money, no alcohol, and still managed to get blackout drunk. My flatmates had laughed at me when I emerged to fill a water bottle. It wasn't funny to me anymore. I fled the house the next day and went to work. I was ashamed. I didn't know how I was going to face my flatmates. As the work day went on, that sense of shame grew and grew as it got closer to hometime. I'd driven off so many of my friends already. Relationships with family were beginning to deteriorate. My credit cards were maxed as was my overdraft. I was about $15000 in credit card debt alone, not counting my student loan. I had about $150 in my bank account which was just barely enough to cover that week's rent. And I still craved alcohol. More than anything, despite where it had brought me, I just wanted to be drunk. I left work. I made it about 200m down the road before I pulled over and phoned the one friend I thought I had left and broke down crying. My life had become completely unmanageable. I needed help. I couldn't do it on my own anymore. I had tried to control alcohol, and it had wound up controlling me. I walked into my first AA meeting with my stomach still twisting from the hangover. It was the same one I had been to and ran out of two years before. I had thought people would recognise me and judge me. The chairperson asked if there were any newcomers and I raised my hand, full of fear and shame. He asked if I wanted to share. The words came tumbling out and for the first time, I felt less ashamed. I had admitted that I was beaten. People I didn't know offered me their phone numbers and told me to call anytime. I didn't believe them. But I saved their numbers all the same. Someone else talked about the times they used to book themselves into a motel room, far away from anyone they knew, and drink nonstop for days on end. I stared in disbelief. That was what I had done on many occasions. Something I heard in that meeting that hit me like a lightning bolt, was "if I don't drink today, I can't be drunk today." It was so simple. I didn't get drunk that day, because I didn't drink that day. I went to another meeting the next day. I didn't drink that day, either. I went to more. People said to me just make sure you don't have alcohol in the house. I said I couldn't afford to buy any, and they smiled kindly and said 'well, that's called pocketbook sobriety.' I took a job, working long hours in Australia. I went to a meeting in Melbourne, and said that I was terrified because I had a large sum of money in my pocket. A guy came up to me after the meeting and struck up a conversation. It turned out he ran a skydiving business, so I went skydiving. It cost some money, but less than getting drunk did. I flew home not long after, and in the six weeks I had before I went back to work, I didn't drink. I went on a road trip with a friend, relocating a car he'd bought in Auckland to Christchurch. Before I flew back to Auckland, he said to me 'there's a million and one things you can be doing, just don't drink.' I didn't. It took me six months to get the courage to clean underneath my bed. It wasn't pretty. There were at least 4 empty spirits bottles, plus assorted cider and wine bottles. I told my mother I was sober when I had hit six months. She had known, because for the first time in years she had seen me eating ice cream. No one had told me that I would get a sweet tooth once I wasn't pouring sugar in the form of alcohol into my body. I began to lose weight. I stopped obsessing over alcohol as I had done in the first weeks of sobriety. I began to be able to be around other people having a drink and not want to snatch it out of their hands. I started having bizarre dreams. I would dream I was drinking. I felt drunk. I would wake up in bed, just as I had so many times, not knowing how I had gotten there. It would take me a minute or two to realise that I was not actually hungover because I had dreamt I was drinking, without actually drinking. I reached a year's sobriety. I couldn't wipe the grin from my face when the chairperson asked if there were any milestones. A workmate asked me why it was I didn't drink. After a few seconds consideration, I told her that I was an alcoholic. I wasn't ashamed. I was proud of it. I was proud of the fact that I'd recognised I had a problem and was taking action to fix it. I began to make new friends. I began to have female friends for the first time in my life. I picked up old hobbies and developed new ones. I began reading books again and actually finishing them, and being able to remember what they were about. I took a long break from AA, as I had begun to disagree with some of what I heard there. I still didn't drink. I began seeing a therapist. I started going to the gym again. I went overseas for work in an extremely stressful environment. I didn't drink. I returned and walked into a meeting one Friday night. The first person I saw was a friend I hadn't seen since I'd taken my break from AA. He said he had known the moment he'd seen me that I hadn't been drinking, because I was looking so well. I claimed my two year coin and proudly displayed it on my wall. I set goals and reached them. I began to go on dates and enjoyed them simply for what they were. A friend I'd written off in my drinking days reached out to me, and we met for lunch. I had thought he disowned me because of my drinking. It turned out that he'd gone through his own hell, a different one to mine, and had taken a long time to get his head straight. It wasn't at all about what I'd done. I'm two years, five months, and two days sober today. I have some kind of life these days, and I have it without needing to drink. I don't need to drink to celebrate the good times, and I don't need to drink to get over the bad times. I hope sharing my experience may help someone. Comrade Blyatlov fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Apr 26, 2018 |
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Apr 26, 2018 03:42
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Yeah, I had one moment in Tahiti where I thought a cold beer would be lovely. I drank a ton of San Pel instead and I'm doing well. Hitting three years in November.
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Jul 18, 2018 19:29
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I wrote about my experiences with AA Mcnally kindly reformatted it for me. Comrade Blyatlov fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Sep 3, 2018 |
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Sep 2, 2018 19:19
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Thanks dude. I didn't realise phone posting would gently caress it up like that.
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Sep 2, 2018 20:55
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shame on an IGA posted:have any of you been following this thread in GBS because Pennywise the Frown's posts should be forced reading for middle schoolers that dude is worse than the guy i was helping in the latter parts of my writings gently caress he's in a bad way addiction takes no loving prisoners, kids
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Sep 3, 2018 06:47
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Good poo poo man. What day in November? I'm three years on the 23rd nov
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Oct 11, 2018 01:46
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I believe you will do what God wants you to do Namaste
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Oct 11, 2018 06:14
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Three years sober
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Nov 22, 2018 12:03
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