It's great that you're feeling better, Ralph, and stopped drinking. Good for you! I hope you continue to heal, grow, and be well. I identify a lot with Buddhism. I'm glad it's helping.

I'm doing well. I'm hoping to keep my momentum with sobriety going. If I think about drinking, it does tempt me, but then I remember how bad things got, and I don't want to go back there again. I never experienced any drastic consequences from my drinking but I had seen some mild ones that I knew would only grow after time if I didn't listen to the wake up calls I had been given. My depression is still an obstacle to deal with, but it's at least something I can work with instead of an overwhelming monster that I can't handle.

Do you mind sharing the web course name the is working for you? Don't feel pressured at all-- it's ok if you'd rather not.

Consequences increase as we age, eek! Good for you for paying attention to these lessons.

Finding, the web course is overcomingaddictions.net. I haven't been using it as much lately and I have noticed my urges coming back. Still not strong, but more than they were when I was using the course every day. I guess it would be good for me to get back into it.

I checked out the site and noticed you have to pay for the course. Do you think it's worthwhile to take to try to prevent relapse?

smallstar I would say that depends on how likely a relapse is at this time. If I was already stable in my sobriety and had made the lifestyle changes necessary to sustain it, then I would most likely not need it.

However, in my case I was relapsing repeatedly and needed something extra to get me out of that pattern. It worked for me and the cost is more than returned to me in alcohol purchases I haven't made due to taking this course. As always, YMMV

I've done more work on the course in the past week and my urges are now almost non-existent. I may have a thought about alcohol, but it isn't an attention grabbing craving that makes me want to think about the good times I had with drinking and ignore the consequences. I have been logging my urges and I'm noticing that I'm not even logging one urge every day, it's more like 2 urges every 3 days now, which is the most peace I've felt with sobriety in a long time.

What is YMMV?

Your mileage may vary.

Lol thank you ij. How the heck did you know that?

My daughter teaches me. :-)

Lol guess that's what kids are for