...and the battle continues as battles tend to do.

Sorry you slipped, man. Take care of that hangover in the morning.

Sorry things are so difficult Ralph

Hope yer hangover isnt too rough on you.

Take care

Toilet: Hey buddy...we gotta quit meeting face to face like this!

I haven't slipped. This has been about every night for the past couple weeks. Interestingly I'm not hungover right now but I haven't taken meds yet. Wondering if meds have more to do with this than the drinking.

Tried AA. Don't feel like I belong. 4/5 people there are beyond rock bottom - legal problems, lost their family, liver the size of a basketball, etc. I can't relate and I don't have any sob stories like that.

Working on SMART recovery though. It's an alternative to AA and is based on a more rational approach. I hope it works out.

I would think that any harm-reduction method would help you, Ralph.

Especially if goats are coming into the conversation ... ;-)

Sed, I went to AA tonight. Sorry to report it was sob story central. I know it's not about that, but the obstacle I feel is that I cannot relate to people who have been through way worse than I've been through, and I'm the suicidal one.

I dunno, it was kind of okay though. A lot like church. They did the Lord's prayer there and I'm struggling to remember the words and is this the Catholic word order or the Protestant version, luckily it was the Protestant one which I memorized back in high school. Strangely comforting.

You could always make up the mother of all sob stories, deliver it deadpan, never showing any hint of emotion. This in turn will make everyone not feel as bad about their situations and the whole group will be saved....or not....

So what are the main differences between AA and this SMART program you talked about? Is it religion? (Are you religious?). Is it quality and quantity of sob story? Something else?

Pseudo, that's a good idea but I'm a terrible liar. I'm good at being invisible or unreadable, but no fabrications work because I find them hilarious and cannot help grinning.

I'm going to paste in some info in answer to your question because I don't really grok the whole SMART deal quite yet:

SMART Recovery® has a scientific foundation, not a spiritual one. SMART Recovery® teaches increasing self-reliance, rather than powerlessness. SMART Recovery® meetings are discussion meetings in which individuals talk with one another, rather than to one another. SMART Recovery® encourages attendance for months to years, but probably not a lifetime. There are no sponsors in SMART Recovery®. SMART Recovery® discourages use of labels such as "alcoholic" or "addict".

I'm currently struggling with whether I am religious or not. I find the random distribution of suffering evidence that there is no personal God. On the other hand, I am a Christian in the same sense that I'm an American. I was born into it, raised in it, taught to respect. It's my mythology if nothing else. I understand the world through the lens of Christianity whether I really believe in a white bearded chap in sandals with a longhair hippie son or not. I do not attend church but when I wander into a church (usually Catholic churches you can just visit for grins when no service is going on), I feel better. Hope the novel here is okay. You asked a deep question.

Sed, I talked about that a bit in the meeting. Not the depression bit, but about no I have not gotten a DUI or anything and one of the guys was like, yeah you haven't done that yet. Funny thing is my pdoc said pretty much something similar - get into a mtg or you will have stories about waking up in the hospital. Personally I think a hospital would be AWESOME (they have morphine there!) but that's probably not what my pdoc had in mind.