Heya Hess,

I am not one of those that hates AA, so your posts are more than welcome as far as I am concerned... In many ways AA is a wonderful organization. It's free and It's a group of the only people who know what you've been through because they have been there.

I feel like I understand though why AA and other treatments don't play nice. In AA they teach you that your addiction will find ways to let you keep drinking and justify it. TSM sounds to AA like exactly that - a pill that might slow you down a bit but fundamentally only serves as an excuse to not quit. I'm not far enough in this journey to know yet if that's accurate. It's probably different for different people.

Anyway, I applaud your new direction. Please keep us updated.

Tiller-man/Generic - great to hear from you! I hope you're doing well and hanging in there.

This past weekend was our annual trip to Nantucket for fourth of July festivities. It was a huge challenge for me to get through it sober, since it was the first time I was around old friends who were used to me being a complete sh*tshow. But after gritting through the first day, I felt completely comfortable not drinking (although I must've gone through 12 Red Bulls and endless club sodas). I had an awesome time, met a bunch of cool people, stayed out late and partied my ass off...but I was completely in control and remembered everything. A few years ago, that trip would've been five days of alternating between blacking out and sleeping. No thanks.

Wow. What a difference. Very impressed with your self control, Hess. Keep on keeping on.

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to give a quick update from the wagon. I've finished 6 months without a drink, and it has been a pretty weird stretch of time. This summer and fall were particularly challenging because I had several weddings, vacations, a week long trip to Vegas* for work, and a Red Sox world championship.

* I had never been to Las Vegas before, and the entire trip was a gauntlet of temptation. We had 6 nights of bottle service, and partied until 6 am almost every time we were out clubbing. I still can't believe I survived this on nothing but club soda. I have imbibed more club soda over the past 6 months than you can imagine. I guarantee I would've ended up incarcerated, stranded in the desert, or married to an asian stripper had I attempted this trip while boozing. Complete sh*tshow.

Here's a handy list of how things have changed...

The Good

- My life has become completely devoid of the crazy, unmanageable sh*t I used to get myself into.
- I have almost forgotten what a hangover feels like. Almost.
- There has not been one morning where I've woken up with "the fear" - where I had no idea what I did or said the night before.
- My savings account has started to creep back up.
- Sleep has been amazing. I've been getting a solid 8 hours almost every night, and I'm fast asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. So good.
- People from all areas of my life have told me how proud they are of me.

The Bad

- I've been an on/off smoker since college, but smoking has started to become a very compulsive activity when I'm in situations where I would have previously been drinking. I'm up to 2-3 packs a week. Gross. This has kinda negated any health benefits I would be getting from quitting the sauce.
- While life is considerably easier, it also has tilted towards boring.
- Whenever I am out, I feel like I am operating with a bit of a social handicap. I am a pretty shy, laidback person by nature, and not having booze as a way to get out of my head makes me feel more awkward than usual. I takes considerable effort to try to loosen up.
- I really miss the bonding experience of communal drinking. This has made dating more difficult.

The Mixed

- While I'm no longer the focus of any crazy, entertaining stories, I am still able to provide some much needed value for my group of friends. I am always the designated driver, and I love being able to recap events the following morning. I make a conscious effort to mix it up, stay out late, and be a part of the party. I am not a moody downer.
- I alternate between periods of being super hungry and super sleepy.
- I used to use my drunken episodes as motivation to do things like exercise or productive work-related activities. Since staying sober has been challenging, I tend to give myself a pass for doing anything else that involves effort (as such, my fitness has kinda stabilized and I'm a bit more prone to laziness/distraction at work).
- I was hoping my short term memory would begin to come back. It has not.

On the AA front, I've kept up with my meetings, and I've worked with a sponsor through the first 9 steps. Admittedly, my heart isn't completely into this program, but I wanted to make a good faith effort for my family. One of this biggest things I struggle with when it comes to AA is the push/pull of whether I should just relax and let the "higher power" do its thing, or if I should be taking an active, hands-on approach towards changing my life. I also find it hard to get over AA's muddled view of the root of alcoholism. Is it truly a disease? In that case, why can't it be treated with medicine/science like any other disease. Or is alcoholism only a symptom of a greater, underlying behavioral problem? In that case, if this root issue is addressed and the person is truly changed, then ostensibly he/she should be able to drink like a normal person. I suspect that this is the type of skepticism that is going to get me in trouble. I'm wondering if it's just a result of hitting the wall a little bit, which tends to happen to me at around 6 months of any behavioral change (whether it's a fitness program, diet, hobby). It happened to me with TSM too.

Anyway, that's where I'm at right now. Feel free to ask me any questions.

Best,
H

Wow. That was intense.

If you generally hit a wall around six months, would it make sense to change the game at around the six-month point before you actually hit the wall? For instance, start practicing RR/AVRT or attend some SMART/LifeRing/SOS meetings?

I only just met you, but I'm worried about you as well.

FWIW, I don't believe that alcoholism is a disease in the sense that we can't help it. Nobody is born an alcoholic, and anybody can become an alcohol addict by putting in enough practice. It may well be true that some have a greater proclivity than others (need less practice), but we all bear responsibility for our own choices.

However, once the addiction has taken root in our brains, we no longer have as much freedom as we once did. Now we have a problem, a real medical problem, and we have to deal with that. I admire people who use pure willpower and common sense to leap the fence into a better life, but many of us can't leap that well.

I guess I might say it's a disease in the sense that Type II diabetes is a disease. We pretty much did this to ourselves, but we didn't control every aspect such as our DNA and our history of trauma, and we deserve to be treated with dignity and compassion even though we did contribute to our own disease.

Anyway, that's my current mental model. I don't know if that's of any help or not.

Hey Hess:

You've accomplished something big here and should feel good about it. Your old ways may have been colorful but they were nearly fatal.

I have been procrastinating about restarting TSM. The early side effects bug me but it's something I've got to get through. Tonight's the night.

Stay with your program!

I thought of you when the Sox won it all... As a fellow Sox fan, I was pretty banged up the next day. Not on death's doorstep like after the 3 week bender I went on spanning the '04 ALCS through WS fiasco. I remember being at the parade in '04, still completely drunk from the night before, barely able to even see. I had gotten into it so badly with my wife that it was unclear if we were going to stay together or not. Memories like these keep me on the nal, but every once in a while I wonder if life wouldn't be better if I followed you into abstinence. Anyway, keep up the good work my friend. Remember that you are still pretty early in this, and hopefully you will find ways to make your life less boring without the booze. That's something we ALL need to work on.

Finally, as a cancer scientist, I am contractually obligated to scream at you about the smoking. Chew nicotine gum. Smoke E-Cigs (I may rescind this when real studies come out, but it seems very likely that they are far better for you). Lung cancer causes more deaths than the next four leading types of cancer combined. Once they detect it, it's almost always too late. Though, after saying all of this, because of the danger you were putting yourself in with booze, if it's going to endanger your sobriety, maybe don't quit smoking.

I agree with you, Melissa. I think there is some genetic predisposition to alcoholism, but it needs to be combined with the "practice" of abusing alcohol to really take hold. I feel like this is the addiction model for almost any substance. For me personally, that race to the bottom also included elements of boredom and social anxiety, which I've been trying to address over the past 6 months Thanks for your thoughts. I've been meaning to catch up on your thread.


Tiller, how have you been, my dude? Concerning the side effects, I think the persistent blue feeling definitely discouraged me from keeping on with the method. And if I'm honest with myself, even while I was practicing TSM I was still drinking way too much during the second half of my year on Nal. Quitting the sauce has given me a lot of perspective on that particular time period. Anyway, best of luck to you in rebooting your program, and I hope you can stick with it. It would be nice to hear from some of our other running buddies.


Hey Generic - this was the first year of my Sox fandom that I didn't spend in New England. I read every single Pete Abraham blog entry during the season and watched as many games as I could on MLB TV, but not having the Sox being the primary water cooler talk at work, and not having my friends around every night to b*tch about players...it was just really hard to not feel detached from the team. I watched game 6 at the only Boston bar in Chicago, and even though it was a celebratory sh*tshow, it just didn't feel the same. I do not blame this on being sober at all...just a matter of geography.

The '04 post season was one of the craziest stretches of time in my life. Good god.

I'm tempering the cigarettes with e-cigs and hookah sessions for now. I'm not really looking to quit, but I do need to cut back. Thanks for your thoughts, and I entirely agree that finding ways to make my life less boring will go a long way towards staying on the wagon.