This is an audio clip from Sober Podcast #228 sent to sober podcast members.
This audio is a personalized response to someone who asked me “but what about these circumstances, my life is hard, these things and these things.”
And no matter what day you’re on today, there’s a message in here for you.
I received this from J: after she heard my personalized reply:
“It’s really interesting to me that you said (and of course this is true) that I would have ended up overdrinking whether I married my widower or not … I see that you are of course right – I’d be an overdrinker with an overdrinker’s brain whether I had this particular job or these particular kids as my responsibility or not. So. That’s the truth. Wolfie will tell my very receptive brain that drinking anaesthetic would be a good idea. NO MATTER WHAT”
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Question: How tempting is it to think that our situation is different? (this is a trick question; wolfie is an anus).
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hugs, me
below i’ve posted a 3 minute clip from the longer audio, all i ask is that you leave a message in the comments. If you’d like to listen to the whole thing, you can use the link to download at the bottom of the post.
Download the entire podcast episode #228 Sign up for the monthly podcast membership |
(ps, my blog allows for anonymous comments – so you don’t have to fill in a name or an email address to post your comment below).
One of my reasons for drinking was that my inner critic would be saying hateful things all day long and the only way I could get the voice to shut up would be to get drunk. Up till today I still thought that I couldn’t have coped then without drinking based on what was happening in the inside of my head. But I have (literally) just accepted that the level of self hatred would have dropped considerably or stopped if I had stopped drinking. I realised a long time ago that my head will always come up with an excuse for drinking but up till now I have never fully accepted I could have tried to stop then. To be fair there was no Wolfie at that point, I wasn’t using this site, it was all me in my head, or do I thought then.
You’re right- the hardest part to hear is that no matter what my circumstances were/are, I would have drank/keep drinking anyway. Kinda like money doesn’t buy happiness. Good life, mediocre life, bad life, shitpit house, mansion..doesn’t matter. It is what it is at the end of the day…my head has a drink now voice that some other heads don’t have. Drinking doesn’t give anything- it just takes and takes and takes some more until there’s nothing left. That just pisses me off and makes me want to say fuck you wolfie even more.
It’s so easy to think the situation is different for me. But I need to realize and remember there are always going to be situations that makes me want to numb out and not feel anything. This is especially worse since my son died. Now it’s almost like I cannot take any negative or stressful situation at all. Wolfie is a liar.
I’m afraid, thinking that our situation is different and especially difficult is just easier. Bad circumstances are specific and real, an irrational wolfie voice isn’t. They give us a measurement to compare ourselves and to conclude that we’re the biggest loser on the planet. That must be exactly what wolfie wants to hear … *sigh*
I needed this. Wolfie comes up with so many excuses.
SoberInLondon
Couldn’t agree more. I drank because I had to get through a never-ending (and horrendous) series of crises, I thought I needed to drink to cope. I can only imagine how much easier the last few years would have been if I had been sober.
100% on point. I’ve been sober for almost two years now and I remember, back in the days, feeling like being entitled to drinking. Like I deserved it. ” I went through hell… You can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to walk in my shoes!”. As if. As if it mattered. As if that settled it. I have a brain that asks for alcohol, and even if I could make gold come out of my arse, I’d still find reasons to drink. My brain is not influenced by the Wolfie voice anymore, and what a relief it is!
Yep. Yep. Yep. All true. But hard to hear for those of us with “that voice”. I’m not going to say Wolfie, because I adore dogs. My inner drinking voice is more like a bird called the Curlew. The wailing sound they make in the middle of the night represents my wasted drinking years.
Belle, your genius is that you have separated our wolfie voice from our own particular life circumstances. The TRUTH is that the wolfie voice tells us what we want to hear so that we can use that as an excuse to drink. Our pull to alcohol, or attraction to it, may be different for each of us (mine is I like chasing the buzz, and checking out, plain and simple) but the bottom line is that I am an overdrinker whatever the reason. Dehydrating the wolfie voice has helped me to see that and to not drink, even if I still want to “chase the buzz” or “check out”. I can do those things without alcohol or other substances.
I absolutely agree. I had never realized it before but yes, if we have that voice in our heads, we will drink regardless of our circumstances. Circumstances are a great excuss but they are only that: excusses we choose to believe to continue drinking.