Question? Playing the tape all the way through...

[clean42day]

I know that many of us are taught this saying when we are new. when we have thoughts of using or drinking to go ahead and run with the thought, but to make sure we take it all the way through to it's eventual ending. (negative consequences)

I learned a technique in treatment called "thought stopping" that helped me tremendously. They said once you play the tape all the way through....sum it up in one word or a short phrase that will trigger that memory and all the feelings, visuals, that go along with it.

well even though I have had much worse experiences than going to jail.....Jail seems to be where that first hit of cocaine takes me. No matter how long the runs or the relapses lasted, that is where I always end up. so instead of going through all my most incomprehensible demoralizing moments out there when I am trying to do battle with the disease.....I just say "click, click" to myself. because that is the sound of handcuffs going on me. I will never forget that sound, nor the feelings associated with them, the visual of sitting in the back of a police car = AGAIN, or looking out through the window at my last glance of freedom as they rode me off into the grey bar hotel.

so now when I have a thought of using which I occasionally do (insanity :eek: ) I just say "click click" and it stops it in mid thought.

so if you had to sum up your most imconprehensible demoralizing moment into one word or a short phrase...what would yours be?

inquireing minds want to know?

maybe yours could help someone else too.

[zoomie]

Mine was when I fell down hung over at a PTA event. I was up drinking the night before and this even was so important to me,but the next day I was so hungover and tired that I tripped and fell with dozens of donuts. I just have to remember the hung over feeling all day and the scard feeling I had that what if someone knew I had been drinking the night before. I did go home that day from the event and snuck in a nap,but I think that is one of my low points of my drinking this time around.
In one short phrase it would be "hungover and falling down."

[Doraine]

I had a lot of temper tantrums when I was still drinking. My word would be rage to describe those futile fits of temper. I could get into a rage over nothing.

[janbear]

My thoughts lead to my last relapse as they lock me up in a private room in a nearby institution. "I hear my screams". That was my reality in the past. But who is to say that would be my reality again should i choose to pick up? How do i know it would end there? I don't. So when i think it through, i think it through a step further than that. I see my ultimate reality. I see the ulitimate reality of all active alcoholic/addicts. I visualize. To sum up in one word what i do is i visualize GRAVEDIGGERS
That is my entire process.