Some Days are Diamonds and Some Days are Stone for the Recovering Alcoholic!
What I’m going to outline here is designed to increase the rate of success in dealing with problems encountered by alcoholics. However, no matter how calm they remain, how clearly they think about the problem and how assertive they are, they will sometimes not succeed.
No-one in this world succeeds all the time.
Success is based upon a healthy sense of self-esteem and confidence. Once this point is reached, it is relatively easy to tolerate incidents of failure. Alcoholics have to still think in a positive way, even when they don’t succeed and even after taking all the right steps. “Well, that did not work. I’ll go back and re-think the problem and try another solution. I will look upon this as another lesson in life.”
Everyone makes mistakes but if they learn from those mistakes then they become lessons. The way to achieving balance is never to regard a failure as a failure. If a person has thought the problem through carefully and done his or her best to solve the problem, then they haven’t really failed and certainly lack of success cannot rationally be translated into “I am a failure”, a common habit of alcoholics.
Emotional maturity only comes from working through problems and eventually finding a solution.
Some alcoholics have minor relapses where they become upset over some failure or criticism and have a few drinks to enable them to cope. This is crazy and dangerous because these actions contain the possibility of a major return to uncontrolled, full-scale alcoholic drinking. If it is a momentary, short-term relapse, it belongs in the mistake category.
The best advice is:
- Stop drinking
- Admit that you have made a serious mistake in dealing with the problem
- Analyse the situation carefully to see what caused the relapse
- Seek help if necessary
- Learn from the mistake so that you don’t make the same mistake again
- Carefully review your coping skills and get advice, if necessary.
- Don’t feel guilty about the bust and start again. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
- Breakdown in a close relationship
- Sacked from a job
- Death of a loved one
- Financial problems
- Anger
- Resentment
- Self-Pity
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