No hostility on my end at all coach. I find there’s a few basic archetype personalities in AA:

-den mother/den father
-pink cloud
-drill sergeant
-dutiful foot soldier
-philosopher type who tried to work within the confines of the program
-dry drunk
-complete disaster in crisis mode

Internally im a pure philosopher type, but if dealing with incoming members I’m somewhere between a lightweight drill sergeant and dutiful foot soldier.

What’s pink cloud?

"Pink Cloud Syndrome is a phrase that developed within the recovery community to describe someone who is new to recovery (often just out of withdrawal) and riding a wave of bliss. The person feels such confidence and excitement about their recovery that it borders on unrealistic"

fuck in a year of amazing, high fiber shits you go and cherry-pick the one recent night-after-red-wine-carby-dinner one that sucked and make it public outside of the sanctity of the poop thread

might have been the worst poop of the year

thanks obama

This is a catch-all thread for recovery. That includes your butt and all of its troubles, Numbers.

We're here for you.

All good, my friend.

How did you deal with people not accepting your apology for fucked up shit you did when drunk?

This time around, unlike last time, more people are ghosting me and not accepting my apology and I am having trouble moving on because I feel bad. I know I need to forgive myself and move on but it's tough when a decent chunk of people have tossed me from their lives.

Just deal with what you have control over Coach. You aren't responsible for others feelings about you.

Its hard if people are avoiding you when you are apologising but it's early days, words are cheap and time is long. And time really does heal all wounds (eventually). It also wounds all heals, but that's another story.

The ones that matter will come around, your job is just to stick at doing you though. Like I said earlier, keep on ritfw.

Best of luck to you. Stay strong, and remember you can only control your own actions and reactions. Don’t get hung up on other people’s reactions.

Two things:

1. You’re apologizing too early, IMO. Amends don’t come until step 9, and you really have to get the scaffolding right to attempt meaningful amends. FWIW, I didn’t get there until about nine months of sobriety (I spent four months on step 4, with a list of people over 200 long…YMMV).

2. Higgs is right that your job is to just keep doing you. As far as the negative reactions you’re getting from some that you’re apologizing too, I’ll first refer you to #1…And then I’ll add that my hunch is that some of these people would be better served by a living amends rather than a direct amends. My experience was a bit different in that all my direct amends went down really smooth, but my worst transgressions were against women I had dated or slept with, and for each of them I just made a living amends because there was too much opportunity for collateral damage — to their families as well as my own — if I started calling up every girl I’d slept with and apologizing for things I did 15 years ago.

I can see you want to make things right with those you’ve harmed, but just follow the roadmap and you’ll get there.

Yeah thanks guys.

I’m postponing the amends for now. I def reached out too early to some but I’ll just have to let those go and stay silent for now.

Keep your cloud grey and solid Coach. Time passes.

Oh yea my pink cloud didn’t last too long

I can speak for someone who has a dear friend dealing with major substance abuse (alcohol) and has been near death/in and out of rehab for a few years now.

I no longer accept him in my life because he has let me down too many times. I went out of my way to be there for him when he was ill and when he got out of rehab with a new set of eyes.

I had to uninvite him from my wedding and i will no longer spend time with him or respond to his messages (they come on rare occassions). Its not cause i dont love him, its because I love myself more.

He has let me down too many times and ive had to deal with him far too much over the years with his drinking and continued struggles.

I hope the best for him but i no longer care to watch him die and have to deal with that. I have detached in a healthy way.

Is there room in my life for him someday? Possibly. It would take quite a bit of time of sobriety and an acknowledgement of the shit he's put a lot of people through who care for him. How long of sobriety before i can trust him? Whos to say. 1 year? 2 years? dont know.

So, yea, an apology right out of rehab or even an acknowledgement that he needs to quit drinking, i dont even care to hear it anymore.

It takes time. Words can often times be hollow.

thank you

my poop this morning was good

i just had taco salad for lunch w lots of black beans and veggies, so I am optimistic about the future as well

thank you, for being there for me through this journey <braces for Trag lecture based on his personal walk with poop>

Step 2 is mostly about taco salad so you’re right on track

Wait, people in recovery will seek out sexual partners from years ago to make amends?

Well hopefully not...For the newly sober person, that need for absolution is really strong. There are right ways and wrong ways to come to terms with your past transgressions. Reaching out to former flames is generally not advisable if they now have families, or if you have your own family that may experience emotional turmoil from reconnecting with a former romantic partner.

that does NOT mean you're off the hook...

when I got to step 4, "fearless moral inventory," I thought it just meant "take a good hard look at yourself." Then my sponsor said "Do you know how to make a spreadsheet?" There's a very prescribed pathway for identifying your character defaults, and in my experience is the most impactful part of the program.

So there are some sensible guidelines. What sort of parameters need to be met to justify making amends with old sexual partners? Like, a drunken one night stand shouldn’t be a enough of a qualifier.