Jun 12 2008
Silencing The Alcoholic Mind
The alcoholic brain is an active brain. Your mind is always racing with thought, not all of which is pertinent in any way, some significant and some of it plainly bordering on insanity. Even after you quit drinking alcohol, this active mind is a real problem for the recovering alcoholic. It is literally why many may have start drinking in the first place.
We take a drink and the alcoholic mind decides that this is just what it needed to relieve the pressure, the stress of the moment. The warmth of that drink and the way it makes you feel is exactly what you were looking for. The alcohol numbs your mind. You love the way it makes you feel. It effectively shuts off the worry and stress tap that is pushing information vigorously through your head.
Alcohol is a way to escape from the reality of the moment - that time when you are being overloaded with thoughts and stressors, invading your mind and causing you to think about those things that you believe may be significant, but are in fact heightened in their true importance. You may believe alcohol makes things easier to handle because they just don’t matter as much when you drink. The magnitude of your thoughts, concerns, feelings and beliefs diminishes with each sip of your drink.Herein lays the problem of silencing the alcoholic mind. When you no longer have alcohol to anesthetize yourself, you are healing your physical body at the expense of your mind. As strong as that sounds, it’s true in the sense you still have all of your external day to day stressors that make you want to raise a glass and drink them away - but now you are trying to live sober.
You can’t depend on alcohol any longer to calm your thoughts and relieve your mind of the constant stream of commands, suggestions, ideas and conjecture that overwhelm your thinking. Sleep may become a challenge and when it finally arrives, it’s at best intermittent. Where you once would sleep in an alcohol induced unconsciousness, you may now suffer insomnia and a racing mind.
While you consider and may even take an OTC sleep medication to mute the traffic in your brain, it is simply replacing the old demon with something new.
What you really need is a way to turn down the volume of your left brain hemisphere. In narrow terms, that part of your brain that makes sure you remember where you put the car keys, reminds you to get your car serviced and runs your to do list through your mind for the fiftieth time. Silencing your mind is learning to control your left brain hemisphere.
A recovering alcoholic must learn to nullify the unimportant thoughts and shelve those thoughts that are important for another time. These things that infringe on your positive conscious and even unconscious thinking need to be tamed. One way to accomplish this is with meditation. Relaxation techniques prove to be quite beneficial at calming the mind, allowing the clarity to think positively rather than dramatically.
Understand the world won’t stop spinning if you fail to remember to get an oil change or you replay your anger at the kid who delivers your paper under the neighbor’s car rather than in your mailbox. These simple thoughts clutter your mind, and when you combine them with the more complex issues of day to day life like paying a mortgage, remaining employed and maintaining relationships, soon nothing gets resolved.
When confronted with those same issues that would previously make you reach for a drink, you can now replace the alcohol with relaxation techniques and tools to soothe your mind. Ego-driven concerns, an over inflated sense of self can mean a measure of self destructive selfishness controls your thinking that can exaggerate not only your own importance but the weight of the issues you are struggling with. The ones that make you drink.
Balance - like walking and chewing gum at the same time - quiets your ego and calling on these new skills to develop an equal stability between your left and right brain will stimulate more of what you require for personal well-being and is a big step in achieving deep inner peace.
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I am so glad I found this blog. I have a drinking problem that is causing me to self destruct and to make a fool of myself but if I do not drinking I cant sleep. It is exactly like you described it racing thought and a night of tossing , turning and frustration. How long does the insomnia stage last?
Hello Tryingtobesober:
If you are currently not drinking, your active mind will certainly keep you awake but there are some things you can do to alleviate the problem. One of the things that worked for me was deeeep Breathing and total relaxation. Tell yourself that nothing is so important that it should interfere with your rest. Try and shelve ALL your issues (they’ll still be there to work on when you wake up refreshed).
If you are spiritual you may want to try praying/ talking to your higher power and asking for help. Believe it or not, counting your blessings just like you would count sheep worked quite well for me. Mainly the relaxation and deep breathing will do the trick if you keep t it.
This active mind phase will pass. The longer you are in recovery the easy it will get.
If you are still drinking and sleep is difficult, you need to work on sobriety. My experience was the alcohol made quality sleep impossible and in fact added significantly to my erratic behavior. When you wake up you find yourself in the earliest stages of withdrawal from the alcohol that you consumed to get to sleep…a viscous cycle develops that you want to avoid at all costs. Keep coming back and Good Luck!
TryingtobeSober its great to have you here.
The insomnia stage is certainly a difficult time in every persons recovery process and it does go away with time in most cases.
Insomnia is one of the problems seen in stopping drinking abruptly and then there is also a more serious risk of a seizure due to alcohol withdrawal - which is something to be prevented.
If you suspect you are a heavy drinker you should ideally consult a physician before abruptly stopping alcohol consumption.
If you are simply looking for ways to quiet your mind and allow you to sleep you might try yoga, meditation, or over the counter medication.
Finally, the sleeplessness does usually go away with time. Please remember to be patient with yourself and don’t become alarmed. Your body is healing and the sleep pattern will be restored.