hello jane. nice to meet you =)
now, i've spent some time researching last night on withdrawl from alcohol because i remembered that it is one the most challenging addictions to quit; and it seems very much so. therefore i would like to express my respect that you chose to face that challenge - it must be very, very difficult. please take pride in fighting that tough fight, because tough fights take tough fighters. and aspies are the among best fighters of all.
as for my experience, i do not know if it is helpful to you. i may as well mention it, but i am of course speaking for myself only.
i do not have an addiction to alchohol now [i had to lesser degree in the past] but i have/have had addictions to other harmful substances and also such behaviours; i have and have had many bad and very bad times in my life; i'm glad i am alive, still - though i am very young. i have developed many kinds of compensation to keep me going, as for some years to keep going was the only priority; and it wasn't easy before that. i have brought from childhood a mechanism, for when i was ill, that has helped me much and still helps - as i faced many problems and little support. in short, i felt i was a total loser in life - it is single inferiority complex. i did not like that, but i was lacking the skill to participate as others did.
over time, i made myself be a hero in my own secret biography, i did not tell anybody. during those many times of crisis i imagined myself how i was looking back from the future to this present moment, and retold my heroic fight against these impossible odds, how well i managed and how it was distant memory by then. well.. i am rather imginative. it my sound childish, but it is not. it supported me and provided me with a little strength every day. i promised many times to myself that i was to proud to give up - and that one distant day i would win, i was sure of it. and i did [although i still have issues left].
the other thing that i have learnt much later - by therapy - is self-compassion and following that to forgive oneself, and that helped to take away the shame and guilt i felt for my existence. i noticed then very much, that i myself deprived myself from love and acceptance, since i felt a loser like me did not deserve it - which kept me on the floor. especially as i was stuck for years in a vicious circle of shaming myself for my shame, and feeling guilt for not being able to overcome my mental health issues and addictions. i experienced, that with many of my compensations of the harmful type it is self-shaming and self-blaming for compensating in such a way, that actually keeps one from stopping it. i know this is easily said...
last but not least i find sublimation very fulfilling - painting, drawing, writing, sculpture; or producing/making things; charity/helping others - whatever one enjoys and feels, that it is way to express ones feelings or needs. therefore i transformed many of my unfulfilled longings, much of my depression and fear into expressions of art, or text, or even furniture. in the case of art: one does not have to be artist - it is not a question of the quality in technique, but a question of the quality of expressing. i have found that keeping myself busy with such things in wich i see myself is a good way of 'keep going'.
