View Single Post
Old 09-08-2017, 01:46 PM   #22 (permalink)
Just a fan
Junior Member
54-hour Marathon 2013 Kickstarter Backer
 
Just a fan's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 25
Quote:
Originally Posted by ValC View Post
One of the most Al-Anon things I've ever heard was when Chemda told Libby that it's ok to not count her relapse. If your relapse matters to you, you count it. Otherwise you end up sniffing alcohol then shotgunning a can of coke and telling yourself it's all good and you can't even take a chip anywhere and you definitely don't have someone in recovery that you can be honest with. I've been sober for 6 years in AA with no slips and I do not have to do anything like that to not drink. I don't even think about drinking and I was a daily blackout hope to die suicidal drinker. You can recover. If there's anyone here that is trying AA or doing some sort of outpatient or talk therapy or anything like that and is taking suggestions, trying something new and participating in their recovery, even if you hate it, it works if you work at it and I wish you the best.
I rarely post on the forums but I wanted to clarify a couple of things about this.

Maybe it would have been more “Al-Anon” of her to try to convince me I should feel a certain way about it just because she does. Or perhaps Chemda knows more about my relapse than you do (person from the internet that I’ve never met) because we’ve had in-depth conversations about it that are not for public consumption.

“Otherwise you end up sniffing alcohol then shotgunning a can of coke and telling yourself it's all good and you can't even take a chip anywhere and you definitely don't have someone in recovery that you can be honest with.”

Truthfully the whole sniffing alcohol and sipping a non-alcoholic drink is mostly a joke/brilliant idea. I’ve done it before and since my relapse but it was never something I did to prevent myself from drinking, in fact when there were times that I wanted to drink I would certainly never do it. It triggered a desire to drink me one time and so I decided not to do it anymore.

I’m very comfortable with my sobriety and I choose to respect AA’s views about what they consider sober. So I don’t take a chip. I count my time sober from the first time that I quit drinking because that’s when I fully made the decision to quit, that’s when I decided to make a change in my life and that’s when I started to become a different person. Counting my time only from the relapse feels like I’m erasing all of the things I learned during those first 2+ years of not drinking.

If it makes you feel better to count my days from my relapse, go right ahead. I’m not pretending it didn’t happen.

As far as not having someone in recovery that I can be honest with, I never said that. I said that I don’t have a sponsor. Do you know that AA meetings are often all men and I’m the only woman? Do you know that that doesn’t necessarily make me feel safe?

Guess what? You don’t have all the information here.

If it sounds like I’m minimizing my relapse on the show it might be because I’m on a comedy podcast and not at an AA meeting, or it might be because self-flagellating about a mistake I made 2 years ago doesn’t actually help me stay sober. I learned some big lessons from it and I try to apply those to my life every day. I feel like I wouldn’t have that insight without the relapse.

The thought of my relapse, and being an alcoholic in general, has brought me a lot of shame. I talk about it publicly because it helps me when other people talk about their experiences. However there’s no way that you can fully know my experience from hearing me on a podcast a couple of times.

I’m glad you found a program that works for you, I have too. As we say at the end of my atheist AA meetings, live and let live.
(Offline)   Reply With Quote