Hi all! It's me, Allison. I know it has beeen a long time since I have posted. I have been using pot to calm my cravings for alchol and it works when I have it, but here is the problem, from time to tiime(more often than I care for) we cant find any pot or cant afford it. When these times hit what do I do?? I run to the bottle. Bottom line folks is i can not stand life on lifes terms and the pain I am always in. This past year I have had sooooo many major losses and I dont deal with death very well. anyway just all excuses. Bottom line is I am an alcoholic wheather I like it or not. I will try to be more positive in my next post, just needed to get honest with you all. Allison
RARELY HAVE we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it--then you are ready to take certain steps. At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely. Remember that we deal with alcohol--cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power--that One is God. May you find Him now! Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. we asked His protection and care with complete abandon. Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than our-selves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Many of us exclaimed, What an order! I cant go through with it. Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventure before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:
(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.
(b) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
(c) That God could and would if He were sought.
Being convinced, we were at step three, which is that we decided to turn our will and our life over to God as we understood Him. Just what do we mean by that, and just what do we do? The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success................
-- Edited by Doll at 20:22, 2008-12-16
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Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass... It's about learning to dance in the rain.
I had to stop drinking and using in order to learn how to live without drinking and using. Life on lifes terms wasn't the problem for me... It was untreated alcoholism and addiction.
Have you considered going to some AA or NA meetings in your community? I know they helped me alot, and today I have 8 years clean and sober....
First off, who's "we". If you're lliving with someone that's also using drugs, it's going to make it hard to get sober. ditto for unhealthy relationships. Those relationships typically keep us from forming new ones with other recovering people in the fellowship. When I was drinking and using (and married to another addict), the loses just kept coming. I had all kinds of problems from financial to traffic violations (keeping a license), to keeping a job... All of those problems went away went away in my first couple years of sobriety and haven't returned. unique, you can only hide from your problems for so long, and the pit just gets deeper. Like the saying "if you're in a hole, the first thing that you need to do is quit digging".
Hi Nique Merry xmas! Someone else posted about using pot and not alcohol and I didnt comment at the time, but...since I didnt have a problem with anything but alcohol, maybe I could start using a little crack to lift my spirits and some valium to calm me down. What the heck, its not alcohol!!! Other comments I heard at a meeting the other day was...Why can all these other people relapse for a day and just take a well deserved break? I'll be back and everyone will welcome me with open arms.. Another, "watched a documentary the other day and Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendricks partied all the time and were successful" I said...Hello, they are both dead now!!!
I dont know, for me a drug is a drug is a drug...You need to get honest with yourself and figure out if you want this lovely thing they call sobriety. Life is so good and I hardly have a compliant or the chaos I used to have. I love who I am today. I have great friends who care about me. You are so worth it and life isnt so bad sober!
I remember all the things I couldnt afford because I spent my money on drinking...Couldnt afford my bills or tampons for that matter but always had enough for cigs and the drink...what was that about!! Glad my bills are being paid today and I can afford to have a nice xmas for my family!
Good luck, get honest and pray for that darned obsession to leave you!!!
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"We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. "
I'm sorry, but I have yet met the person who was on the mairjuana maintenance plan stay clean...well they would'nt be clean now would they, or sober.
I work both programs and in NA, Alcohol is a drug. Maybe you should try NA. Maybe you're just not ready to be clean and sober. In my opinion, if your smoking pot, then your just kidding yourself by saying your sober, because really, whats the difference, your still using something to get loaded!!
Hi Nique. Sorry if I sound as harsh as the rest of your AA buddies here, but would have to agree that the reason you may be able to use pot to "calm your cravings" for alcohol, is because you are just substituting one mood altering substance for another. Kinda like quitting your desire to hit your left hand with a hammer by starting in on your right hand with a monkeywrench. However I do see that you have admitted that, "Bottom line folks is i can not stand life on lifes terms and the pain I am always in.", and I commend your honesty.
Although my maryjane days were way back in college, when I did smoke the stuff, it tended (in my case) to make me want a couple of beers, because they seemed to taste even better when I was toked up.
-- Edited by Sick of being sick at 16:12, 2008-12-17
-- Edited by Sick of being sick at 16:15, 2008-12-17
Been there done that. I did the MM plan for almost 4 years. Then one day I was at an Air Show and it was blazing hot, there was a long line for soft drinks but the beer line was very short. Don't have to tell you what line I got in, with in a month I was as bad as I'd ever been. The problem is when you use any mind altering substance you never get any RECOVERY and it's RECOVERY that gives us the tools you need to deal with LIFE on LIFES terms. Other wise your just sober and still all screwed up.
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Work like you don't need the money
Love like you've never been hurt, and
dance like no one is watching.
All the same crap, different packaging! If mood altering drugs solved my problems for me, I'd be wasted all the time. I'm finding new, better and realistic ways of dealing with life, on life's terms. Just like the way all the non addicted people do it. Who am I to argue with that?
Scott
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Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. ~Buddha
You had posted something awhile back about being thankful that a church had donated some items to you. It hurts my heart to read that you are still buying pot, while accepting donations from the church for other necessities. Don't get me wrong though, I love reading all of your posts....just try and keep that in mind.
nique- I went to rehab for alcoholism, got out this past July....i had been a huge pot smoker/drug user, and i smoked pot about 3 weeks out of treatment..3 weeks later i was drunker than a skunk...bottom line is pot seems benign, but it isnt. All I can speak for is my experience: pot led to escaping, which is what I was always doing with alcohol..Im still not there yet, but i DO know that using pot/drugs led me back to drinking in only a months time. Good luck.
I am an alcoholic - and while I have a drug history almost as long as my alcohol history, alcohol is where I started and it is where I stopped. If I were to use any other mind altering substance, including pot or hash, then eventually I would end up drinking. I could say that is because I would drop my guard, or that I would be drawn back to the substance I prefer. But that doesn't really matter.
Really it is the disease wanting me dead. The disease doesn't care how that happens. Doesn't care what my bottom looks like or what substance takes me out.
So I don't buy into the maintenance plan - the only thing I've seen maintained that way is the disease progression and that leads only three places. Jails, Institutions and Death.
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Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.
I smoked pot in the years between 18 and 22... because the people I drank with (who were old enough to buy the beer) also smoked pot. It made me paranoid and my throat sore, and I drank more to deal with both. After I turned 21 and could by my own alcohol all the time, I didn't have much use for pot and only smoked occasionally.
Ironically I had some small amount of weed that I had stashed for like 8 years. One time in the summer of my last year of drinking, I put some of it in a pipe and smoked it. Probably about 6 months before I got sober. I found it later after I had quit drinking and got rid of it.
Occasionally the topic has come up and the thought entered my head that I wasn't ever really a pot "addict". But I know that virtually every time I smoked pot, I also drank. That's more than enough to keep me away from the stuff.
I hate to even take cough medicine (non-alcoholic, non-narcotic) because it messes me up for a day. I have to be desperately coughing my brains out before I'll take a spoon of the stuff.
Was reading last evening about Holistic approaches to recovery and read this....
Aromatherapy uses essential oils extracted from plants and herbs that can be inhaled or applied through the skin. Aromas derived from these natural plant sources have been shown in clinical studies to have positive effects on the mind and the body. These essential oils, which are composed of naturally occurring chemicals, can help to support emotional balance, a sense of calm, stress relief, and feelings of well-being.
Next thing ya know, AA will be saying that Aromatherapy is a drug too :)
I detest drugs,street drugs of any kind. They F-up peoples lives while the pushers live it up with all their money and do not do them.laughing at all the poor sods that are unable to gain control..Sad,so very very sad. :{
Total abstinent it the only way :{ Yes I feel for many who not only have drink control them but drugs too.
Thank you for you honesty.
Its One day at a time the AA way. Never pick up and you LIVE.
~~The Twelve Rewards~~
Hope instead of desperation.
Faith instead of despair.
Courage instead of fear.
Peace of mind instead of confusion.
Self-respect instead of self-contempt.
Self-confidence instead of helplessness.
The respect of others instead of their pity and contempt.
A clean conscience instead of a sense of guilt.
Real friendships instead of loneliness.
A clean pattern of life instead of a purposeless existence.
The love and understanding of our families instead of their doubts and fears.
The freedom of a happy life instead of the bondage of an alcoholic obsession.
You need some friends to help you,so please get to some meetings AA, NA. Tonight,today.Tomorrow. ASP.
I have a live beyond my wildest dreams. Happy,content,sober and serean. You to can have this is you are willing to work at it.
Hope to see you posting on here and about attending meetings. Good Luck. :} Be BRAVE,Be very Brave.
Yes Anom... I agree. I don't like pot, however I am interested in it for health reasons - I have recently read about 'juicing' it so you don't have to get high to get all the nutritional value. I suppose AA will have to conveniently forget about all their hammering on pot now that it's legal and a proven healthy substance for millions of suffering people. OH well. AA evolves and grows up too.
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Thanks for everything. Peace and Love on your journey.
Cannabis is also massively abused and there are clear delineations between using it medicinally, recreationally, and addictively. Doctors prescribe opiates too but that doesn't mean everyone should run out and take them. Most of what I work with now are pot addicts (who all of course claim pot is not addictive yet none could stop even to stay out of jail). Smoking a ton of pot will zap your short term memory and your overall motivation. Seen it...see it daily. Plus, if used all the time as an intoxicant, a person simply will remain emotionally retarded from not dealing with reality. I know some people need it medicinally and the don't really even get high off it. But trust me, weed is a vice and it sure as hell is not vitamins and is not medicinal to 99 percent of people. It can be recreational but as this original post indicates, it's a risky gamble for most of us with addictive tendencies.
Yes, marijuana and lots of other drugs can be benign or even very helpful for some people.
But certainly not for people who have the destructive and life-threatening condition of alcoholism. It is extremely risky and hazardous for an alcoholic to use marijuana.
It is far more advisable for an alcoholic to take the necessary steps to actually recover from alcoholism.
My biggest concern would be that using pot would lower your strength to say no to alcohol or lead into the temptation to try other drugs. The Addictive Personality type user could find themselves with a new set of problems if not careful.
I've met dozens of patients at the VA clinic who use pot regularly to control pain and they swear it works. Years ago I tried it and it did work... Greatly reduced pain for hours. In fact I was so pain free I was able to do things I struggle to do. I also know myself well enough to know that I have an Addictive Personality. That means I could be prone to doing the same crazy behavior as I did when drinking. I could see it as replacing one problem with another in the future and I value my sobriety so much I can't afford to screw it up. I've worked too hard on my program to lose it.
While I do see the positive outcomes for marijuana medicinally, it isn't for everyone. I have the personality type that should leave it alone. I also deal with more pain than I can stand every day. I've been prescribed painkillers but I don't take them ever. Partly because they drop my blood sugar to the point I pass out but my Addictive Personality could run wild with it. On the two hours before I faint from them, I accomplish a lot and have energy like crazy but after I getting sugar regulated again, I feel like HELL the rest of the day and accomplish zero.
My best drug free solution to pain control is a sweat lodge. It cleanses the body and gets the toxins out and miraculously removed pain. It leaves me feeling energetic and pain free for hours. Another thing that works very well is a cream called White Monkey Holdinf Peach balm. All natural, just rub it on the sore spots for amazing results. And the best part is- its legal!
Beat wishes, I know pain can really screw up a good day.
Jerricka
-- Edited by Coogi on Friday 24th of April 2015 12:24:47 AM
Amonimity, what happens between a Dr. and patient is an outside issue. However, I find it curious that many Doctors, in States that Medical Cannabis is legal, are pretty much rubber stamping the "patients's" medical cannabis prescription. Only in a few cases, like children with seizures, have I seen specific type and dose requirements. Otherwise it's unlimited or basically a free pass. Imagine if that kind of "prescription" was written for opiates or benzos.
-- Edited by StPeteDean on Friday 24th of April 2015 11:58:14 AM
