I dont know anymore

Hey. Have you been able to tell when you relapse? As in, what's the pattern, on which moments do you start craving?

 

Hey dude, hang in there it gets better!

There isn’t much you can do to stay sober, in my experience. Sheer willpower won’t work. Wishing it away wont work. This is the nature of being an addict, we can’t use our brain to overpower our brain.

So we need to do something to start re-wiring our brain. This concept is used in many various brain diseases, including addiction. For example depressed people can rewire their brain with CBT techniques, and recently confirmed, 12 step programs (stemming from Alcoholics Anonymous since 1930s) does this for addicts. It’s been proven that creating new pathways in our brain will change how the brain works and it will start to rely on the new pathways (daily maintenance listed below) instead of the old ones (PMO).

I had a huge...catostrophic...event happen to me 80 days ago; my wife left me. This shook me out of my craziness and allowed me a small moment of clarity to start doing the work to get sober. I tried my willpower for the last 10 years ago with no success.

If you can find some willingness to do some daily maintenance work, you can stay sober. Here’s what I do.

I meditate, pray (I’m not religious) and journal (with pen and paper) every morning to start my day. I also exercise both calisthenics and cardio every morning as well. This routine takes me about 1.5 hours max.

Along with the above, I also NEVER let anything stay in my head for too long without gettin it out and talking to someone about it. As addicts our thoughts are crazy, and can lead us to feeling hopeless and also lead to isolation. So I must, on a daily basis, NEVER hold onto my sick thoughts without talking about it. I do that at my SAA meetings and with other SAA memebers, with family, and on this website.

Lastly, is to understand that for lots of us, PMO is a medication for our real problems. We use PMO to run from our feelings because life is hard and painful. If this sounds like you, then seein about therapy to help deal with the emotional rollacoaster might be a good idea. Some on here can kick the habit without it, but for me personally, this is the first time in 22 years that I’ve actually felt all my feelings without using PMO to run from them. It’s very tough.

From what I’ve read and others have told me we have only a daily reprieve from our addiction. Meaning we can fight it one day at a time by doing the above maintenance. If we stop doing the maintenance, there’s a chance we will relapse. This is similar to a diabetic. If a diabetic doesn’t monitor food and take his insulin, it could be fatal. And the insulin from yesterday won’t save him today, it’s a daily maintenance.

As addicts we have to come to terms with our condition and accept our fate. We have to do this in order to gain willingness to do the work. Addiction is a brain disease. It’s not our fault. But we do need to take our treatment, otherwise we will relapse.

Hope this helps and if you have any more questions

 

Oh, I wanted to add that I do other stuff too, like extremely changed my diet.

I think it’s important to spend some time journaling about what an honest attempt at recovery looks like for you. Everyone is different and some (like me) have many issues going on, so their plans might need to be more extreme.

You might find your plan for recovery needs to be extreme as well. But it’s best to take a good look at it and through writing and journaling start to figure that out.

I think it’s more about your honest intentions rather than a set plan.