"Relapse comes long before that first drink"

[Healed_IHS]

Hey again. I never was on a pink cloud this time around, but now am feeling like I am on the verge of drinking again.
I'm 30 years old and the first 30 years have been completely pointless. Homelessness, lack of job stability, ruined relationships, and the sins of my past are coming back to haunt me.
I'm scared. What if the rest of my life is just as pointless. I've met a lot of 50 + y/o's with nothing going on in their life. No family, no prospects. It's heartbreaking and a wake up call.
I swear Myspace is a tool of the devil. I looked up people I used to know; friends, girlfriends, ex-coworkers. The ones that I have found, actually have lives. I am unemployed... living at a halfway house, thousands of miles away from my family. The part that kills me is, it's all my fault. For a while I blamed God. But it was really me the entire time.
I remember reading in one of the minor prophets of the OT that "Israel will never again be shamed" after turning back to God, and it's "aggravated" blasphemy to say that God can't redeem me. But I am soooo hopeless, beaten down, my sobriety date is 12/21/06 and I give myself to 12/21/07... if after 1 year life is still this bad, I dont think I will have the strength to continue. I pray about this daily.
I know God can do it, but I don't know if have the fortitude to wait on his timing. Feels better to get that out there.

 

[LoG]

Hey again. I never was on a pink cloud this time around, but now am feeling like I am on the verge of drinking again.
I'm 30 years old and the first 30 years have been completely pointless. Homelessness, lack of job stability, ruined relationships, and the sins of my past are coming back to haunt me.
I'm scared. What if the rest of my life is just as pointless. I've met a lot of 50 + y/o's with nothing going on in their life. No family, no prospects. It's heartbreaking and a wake up call.
I swear Myspace is a tool of the devil. I looked up people I used to know; friends, girlfriends, ex-coworkers. The ones that I have found, actually have lives. I am unemployed... living at a halfway house, thousands of miles away from my family. The part that kills me is, it's all my fault. For a while I blamed God. But it was really me the entire time.
I remember reading in one of the minor prophets of the OT that "Israel will never again be shamed" after turning back to God, and it's "aggravated" blasphemy to say that God can't redeem me. But I am soooo hopeless, beaten down, my sobriety date is 12/21/06 and I give myself to 12/21/07... if after 1 year life is still this bad, I dont think I will have the strength to continue. I pray about this daily.
I know God can do it, but I don't know if have the fortitude to wait on his timing. Feels better to get that out there.

Best rememdy is to get to meetings and more meetings. Get working on those Steps like your life depended on it because if your alcoholism was like mine....it does.

 

[Healed_IHS]

Thank you for the encouragement. That's the thing I never understood about going to the meeting though. It's not going to change the damage I did in the past. Just something I am going to have to be penitent about and learn to be a better shephard of my God-given gifts in the future.

 

[LoG]

Thank you for the encouragement. That's the thing I never understood about going to the meeting though. It's not going to change the damage I did in the past. Just something I am going to have to be penitent about and learn to be a better shephard of my God-given gifts in the future.

The meetings to a certain degree are about finding strength through fellowship. That was very important for me in the first few years and still is relevant for me today. Alcoholics tend to isolate to their own detriment because as they say "an alcoholic alone is in bad company".
There are different types of meetings too. Speaker meetings are for an introduction to AA but topic discussion and Step meetings are where we learn how to live on a day to day basis. Learning to incorporate the Steps into my life is what has allowed me to find some peace and serenity over the years I have been clean and sober.

We cannot always fully right the damage from the past but we start to see where we can learn from it so as to change our future. Because of an honest desire to set things right we come to know forgiveness. Through that forgiveness we are able to let go of the past and not drag it around behind us and slowing us down from reaching towards a better future.

Working a 12 Step program like AA or even Celebrate recovery requires a degree of faith that older members are telling you the truth and then surrendering to the process. The intellect is more of a hindrance then a benefit in the beginning. I certainly tried to analyze and predict what doing those Steps would benefit me but the end result was nothing like what I imagined.

In the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous they have the "Promises" that come as a result of working the Steps and they are :

• If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.
• We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
• We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
• We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.
• No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
• That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
• We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
• Self-seeking will slip away.
• Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
• Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
• We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
• We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
• Are these extravagant promises? We think not.
• They are being fulfilled among us-sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
• They will always materialize if we work for them.

I will attest to the fact that these promises happen when I surrendered to God and the process of the 12 Steps.