Morning to everyone, special shout out to SAF, Luci, Silver, Getting and Miss P - your recent posts struck a chord with me.
I was so terrified in the first few months of sobriety, I had 15 years of bottled up feelings that I didn't want to deal with and had no idea how to deal with. I was like a child learning to ride a bike.
I absolutely raged at the injustice of not having one little drink to take the edge off, I started smoking fags, caning mars bars (AA told me to eat a bit sugar, don't think they meant family slabs of chocolate
), anything to take the pain away. I came closer to losing my job in sobriety than when I drank - I went from functioning alcoholice to anxious, fearful, rabbit in the headlights crazy lady. My friends led me from meeting to meeting by the arm, that's how I became Dizzy, I really was walking wounded and I thought I was special and different to everyone else - I wasn't.
As stated, once the novelty and euphoria of not drinking wears off, its just you and all those feelings. It's tough to deal with but be kind - how could I possibly expect 15 years of physical and mental damage to heal in just a few weeks, I had to learn to feel my feelings, cry when I needed, rage when I needed but not pick up a drink or anything else, just go with the flow as 'this to shall pass'.
Also keep talking, come here and let it out, find people in RL to talk to (I used to deliberately sit at the front of the bus with little old ladies who were desperate for a chat I felt that alone
). Use those AA phone numbers, people want to try and help you and after a while, you will realise that you're phoning to see how they are too, not just to offload your own stuff - don't get me wrong, that needs to happen at first but the longer you stay away from a drink your outlook will start to change too.
That got long quick, look after yourselves and have a good day x