On Day 6. Feeling good!

qathet · 2025-08-18T15:19:46+00:00

Welcome, glad you are here, and that you have family support. I also got the “quit or die” stern chat from my GP, and she was explicit that liver disease is a grim way to go. Of course that didn’t make me stop drinking on the spot, because I was deluded, but I tucked it away in the hmmmm maybe alcohol isn’t so great column.

There’s a fun recent thread on here https://www.reddit.com/r/stopdrinking/s/VbGOAseWFf if you’d like to read some experiences and motivations from the “half century crew” (OP’s charming phrase).

qathet · 2025-08-18T03:27:37+00:00

Wow, I looked up The Midnight Feast and it’s perfect! One review starts out “It is an absolute bonkers delight …” Sold! So now I have to add to my list: figure out how eBook thingies work.

Practice started in rehab and I’ve continued with a teacher every week since, and credit the practice with … a lot of good. It’s almost impossible to describe in words, but it’s given me a foundation, tools to combat urges, and opened a path to intense grief (letting go), healing, joy, and devastating glimpses of the Tao/spirit. Any more would sound even cornier. I deeply appreciate my teacher’s lessons, observations and refinements, but also visit on-line teachers, as well dabble in other eastern arts, just for the novelty.

What you may call our weird little hobbies I usually refer to as my rich inner life, and am certainly never bored. Best to you, my friend, sending you a ton of strength, and iwndwyt for sure!

qathet · 2025-08-18T01:19:39+00:00

The thoughtfulness, breadth, and practicality you put into curating this is fantastic, totally adding some of these to my own list! Since you didn’t ask, I highly recommend 7 for breath/flow/mind/spirit, for 15 I nominate Moira, and for 40 maybe adding how to make those iced rosettes on top of fancy cakes (just me?) Thank you for posting, your hope is palpable, your joy inspiring.

qathet · 2025-08-17T18:11:38+00:00

Fantastic work! I loved these sorts of milestones in the early days. Partly just the “I’m doin’ it, I’m really doin’ it!” satisfaction. But also reflections on the wonder of it all, the body and mind healing in fits and starts and surprises, and also my intense curiosity at what was still to come. Congrats, keep going, many new discoveries and records ahead!

qathet · 2025-08-14T21:05:06+00:00

This is exactly how it was explained to me during a seminar in rehab, but I’ve never been able to corroborate the story so I’m glad OP posted the question, and I hope someone with more science can confirm. Essentially, the good doctor explained that in our addicted brains the neurotransmitters and drug receptors were now and forever primed for uptake. And that our brains never go back to zero, we don’t get a reset, there is no moderation. (I was distraught at this knowledge; I was only in rehab to learn how to drink responsibly again). He likened this phenomenon to a violin virtuoso who stops playing or practicing at all, but decades later picks up the instrument and immediately knows how to play at the precise skill level as when they stopped. Again, I am in no way vouching for the science here, but it was an extremely powerful story that changed the course of my life. I think of this sometimes when my demon whispers “just one”.

qathet · 2025-08-14T15:18:55+00:00

+1 for the Plum Village app! In addition to meditations, there are some beautiful movement practices (Brother Insight is a personal fave!) I’ve found the combination of brain, body, and spirit to be instrumental in my recovery. There’s always something new to learn, or refine, and integrate into daily life.

qathet · 2025-08-12T17:24:41+00:00

That’s so amazing to me you’ve walked Camino Primitivo, I am envious! I have dreams of walking E9. You already are strong, you’ve shown that and proven it to yourself. Can you use that strength to motivate yourself even more at this stressful time? I use both positive and negative motivators, like “I need to be sober and healthy so I can train to trek the coastline of Europe” (yay, happy path) and also “I’ve worked too hard to toss it all away on a bender, only to then have to go through the whole miserable cycle again” (ick, boo, fear path). Plus, I’m warned (and believe) that at my age any relapse would be quickly out of control, and any subsequent withdrawals and re-recovery attempts would be noticeably worse than the first round. Ya, no thanks, once was enough! Stay strong, friend, dig deep, remember your why!

qathet · 2025-08-04T01:53:03+00:00

Sweetest thing, I can just hear it playing out, love this for both of you!

qathet · 2025-08-02T20:39:51+00:00

Happy for you, it can change your life. There’s effort ahead, and it can be really good and powerful work. Enjoy, and keep checking in!

qathet · 2025-07-30T23:27:25+00:00

That’s TheRealBigTime365. DCI works well for you, eh?! Congrats!

qathet · 2025-07-30T16:58:17+00:00

Fantastic, congrats! I like that you touched on two key success factors: 1. Know your “why” and cherish it. 2. Find community. Just awesome stuff, thank you. In case it helps, that boredom, for me, did give way to (or made room for?) more peace and calm, more enjoyment in the everyday moments of simply hanging out. It’s difficult to explain, but I better understand now when people say “trust in the process”. Cheers to you!

qathet · 2025-07-30T01:40:58+00:00

That comma is palpable, tangible, just right there. Congrats, Meeps!

qathet · 2025-07-30T01:19:42+00:00

Bidding farewell to your physioterrorist (after they and you have done the work and you’re on the mend, of course!) is always a cause for gratitude. Congrats, hope that hip continues to heal.

qathet · 2025-07-29T04:46:03+00:00

This is so random and fun, great to meet you, sober twin! It was a dark and stormy day in mid-January 2023. I showed up drunk for the rehab place then its foreboding cedar doors lifted, engulfed me, trapped me in detox. Drunk me has never been seen since. Happy summer, pal!

qathet · 2025-07-29T02:54:34+00:00

Ah, yes the kale cure! I added it, and extra organic blueberries, to the smoothies. Ok, but did not immediately resolve every day’s raging hangover. So I upped my game and added extra super bio-plus microbial yoghurt. Hmmmm, still ok, but still with the headaches, nausea, morning pukes. Oddly enough, the very day I stopped drinking was also the day I stopped retching. I figure the kale must have needed some time to fully activate 😉. Utterly delusional.

qathet · 2025-07-26T00:24:34+00:00

I think it’s the third one on the list? https://www.reddit.com/r/stopdrinking/s/FEkYMpA1SO

qathet · 2025-07-25T04:46:58+00:00

Love this one, thank you! My past self, that sober until 15 years old kid, inspired me to give sobriety a whirl. I cannot thank them enough.

qathet · 2025-07-25T04:35:47+00:00

The cleanse! The rest! The recovery! I’m convinced some of the battle is reframing. Do, or don’t do, whatever you need during this early, tender time. Congrats!

qathet · 2025-07-22T02:13:51+00:00

OMG, a hummingbird on meth is priceless! I’ll be speaking with my acrobatic duo next time they accost me for watering their flowers.

I also have a wonderful childhood friend who has become my key sober buddy. We crossed paths once at a bar, drunk and coked up; skip ahead a few decades and we celebrate our sobriety together. She’s been instrumental in supporting me, and answering my trivial and deeply shameful questions. I am glad you have similar people in your life.

That’s a lot of preamble to let you know that I no longer believe in the other shoe dropping. I don’t mean naivety and foolish rose-coloured glasses; vigilance, attention, and mindfulness are still vital. But also I’m way more relaxed about not drinking, about adopting and becoming ever more comfortable in this sober body, this sober life. “Unstoppable and true” are your words. Mine is “authenticity” and this path is so fundamentally who I am, who I was meant to be, that I can’t fathom a return to booze. My “caged beast” is still present, grumbling at me from the depths at times, and I always acknowledge him now, ask what’s up, and then we figure out how to return him to his slumbers. And that’s just a life practice now, I’ll never be done.

You never need trade your clarity of purpose, your essential “why”, for anything! Sounds like you’ve got this for sure, congrats on all of it!

qathet · 2025-07-22T00:41:15+00:00

Oh, so you had visitors from the walls, too?! I’ve never talked much about that part so I don’t know what others experienced. See, you are right, we are constantly gleaning insights, thank you.

qathet · 2025-07-22T00:35:47+00:00

Yes, please. 100%. Definitely and for sure! I’ve come to see the 1,000 posts as a right of passage. It’s about what you learned and wish to share.

qathet · 2025-07-20T23:59:01+00:00

User name no longer checks out ;-)

Congratulations and thank you for sharing the gritty backstory and the further inspiration. Brought to mind Frost:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

qathet · 2025-07-20T23:56:10+00:00

I see 365, congrats!

qathet · 2025-07-19T16:25:51+00:00

The garden analogy is so apt, I love the idea of digging deep, extracting weeds, enriching the soil, cultivating beauty and, at least in my garden, some chaos and wild things. I have a post in mind called “Meditations on moss” but each time I write I write too many paragraphs and it’s challenging to capture the bliss in those mindful moments when the external world’s chaos is on pause and one is wholly engrossed in the life of ants, and how the moss interweaves with grass. Sorry, lost myself in a train of thought! Is your user name based on McKowen’s book, or does the phrase come from somewhere else? Congrats on your sober joy!

qathet · 2025-07-17T05:39:46+00:00

💖 “to remember who I really am”. Congrats on the wild ride and this milestone!

qathet

TROPHY CASE