Why is it so hard for alcoholics to remember the pain and suffering of the active disease once they are a few days/weeks/months sober? Why is it that we get those mental blank spots? Did the disease kill one too many brain cells?
The reason I'm asking, is after my slip-up on Sunday night, I've been thinking a lot about alcoholism and the powerlessness. When you are feeling "good" and tempted to drink b/c "this time will be different" or you just drink, because "i just don't give a damn," why do we forget the horror and agony drinking will bring us?
Does your HP bring to mind the suffering of the disease when you are in your weak, want-to-drink moments? How do you remember it over time, after years of sobriety? It might sound silly, but a lot of memories of my past are very foggy. I don't want to suddenly think I'm all right again. Remembering my last drunk is easy. Remembering the feelings associated with it are easier to forget. I don't want that to happen again!
I'm too scared to drink again. The thought terrifies me. I don't want another "mental blank spot." I want to remember everything, in vivid, living color.
What helps most to remember: praying, going to a meeting and hearing a lead, reading the Big Book, writing it down? I never want to forget again!
I really do try to remind myself, every morning, just how bad my drinking was; just how powerless I was; just how much I now have to be grateful for. I still get days when I think back to my drinking and my alkie brain starts to ask me if it really was so bad. Of course it was. It was a living nightmare.
I wrote pages and pages on my step 1. If I am ever tempted to take that first drink, I sit quietly and re-read my very own words of the chaos that I had brought into my life and of those around me. Believe me, for me, reading my own words really does help me and it brings back all of the mess that my existence had become. I didn't have a life, only an existence.
I could always remember my last drunk, but the feelings of guilt and all of the other emotions that I felt were too easy for me to turn my back on. I had done that for year after year.
If my brain hits 'Planet Prat' mode, I get to a meeting, read AA literature, pick up the 'phone and pray as hard as I can that I won't pick up again. Picking up a drink again is the biggest fear in my life. I'm glad that I have that fear. I hope that it will always be there. I hope, too, that my gratitude will always be there.
Take care and have a good and sober day,
Carol
__________________
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. ~Dr. Seuss
Each time I make myself pick up[ the phone, it gets easier and more 'automatic' for the next time. Recoevry is all about replacing old habits with new ones. Where we used to isolate and not share our whack-o ideas, we paractice sharing them one day at a time, until it becomes a habit instead of having the first thought, doing nothing about it, and ending up drunk.
Same thing goes for my thinking. Once I unload the garbage and start just simply praying, throughout the day, the Serenity Prayer or the 3rd Step prayer, it does become more of a habit. Instead of "think... then think some more... then drink", it becomes, "Think.... pray,... pray some more,... then stop thinking and go about my business."
Well for me, I can and do remember the "incomprehensible demoralization" of that Gutter, that my Higher Power pulled me up and out of.
Many of my fellow Alcoholics talked about that horrible place, in yesterday's meeting on the Message of Hope.
Hope that this turns around for you, and I hope you will not mind my putting in here the saying of: If we can not remember our Past Mistakes, we are DOOMED to repeat them.
Sitting quietly, and going back to a memory of a horrible hang-over, one where you had to just fake everything, until it lifted, try that. You talked a lot about the "incomprehensible demoralization" of that time. Try bringing the feelings you felt, when you were THERE, into focus, as in a mental Picture, and when the picture comes into focus, Push the button, and take the Picture. Then FRAME it. Try doing some finger painting, of that time, maybe using dark colors to bring up the feelings attached, and then Frame That. (old Jungian techniques) The memories are THERE, just try to access them.
Hope you don't mind my putting my 2 cents in here dear.
I like the idea of writing all my current feelings down now, while it's still fresh in my mind. And fingerpainting is awesome! I don't think I've done that since grade school. I totally want to take up painting--with fingers or brushes. I need to get to an art store when I get the money. A new hobby will be good for sure.
