Failure

Struggling Help
#21

It takes what it takes for all of us to get to the place that we need to be. You keep on relapsing because you keep on believing the lie; That this time, everything will be OK. But it never is is it? We have to learn to play the scene forward.

You might feel some relief for a while but sooner or later you will be right back where you started, carrying around more shame realizing that you accomplished absolutely nothing.

Do you have a sponsor who is taking you through the steps? Traditionally everybody seems to get into steps 1, 2 and 3 but they take their good old time with step 4 and most of the time they end up relapsing. I always tell people to put as much effort into getting through the steps as you would into getting drunk every day.

A life of sobriety pays off very well but you have to start out from the beginning just like everyone else and you have to actually stay sober.

#22

You have to get that psychic change that is talked about in the doctor's opinion.

Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are

restless, irritable and discontented

unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the

phenomenon of craving develops,

they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an

entire psychic change

there is very little hope of his or her recovery.”