u/La_Luna_Lilith

What are your thoughts on needing to reset your sobriety/recovery date after a slip?

Something I’m thinking about now that I’m quitting AA (they are strict about it)

My recovery journey started July 22nd 2025 when I finally entered treatment. I went on a pass September 6th and had a slip where I drank 4 beers. I quickly realized it was not a good idea, all I could think of was going out to drink more and doing drugs, so instead I stopped and I went back to treatment and told on myself. It was a learning experience for me.

In treatment people who had a slip would often say their time like “30 days minus one” so they didn’t have to reset their time. When I went to IOP the facilitator had us say our recovery date and our date of last use. Most people would say their recovery date as after their date of last use, bc they didn’t count their time in detox or whatever. But I would say July 22nd for my recovery date because that is the day I did the courageous thing and chose recovery over everything else, and I would say September 6th as my date of last use.

It resonated with me and the facilitator supported my view but other group members seemed to be upset and in disagreement. They told me it would be disrespectful to claim a sobriety chip at AA after having a slip and that I should reset my time completely bc otherwise it would just encourage me to slip again.

Since I was heavily into AA I listened and I reset my date. It never felt right to me though, I still FEEL like I’ve been sober longer. I’m tired of explaining to people “yeah I went to treatment 10 months ago but I’m only sober 8, I just had a slip in the middle” or “I’ve been sober 8 months but it’s more like 10 months”. I could see resetting the date if I had a full relapse and drank for a couple days or weeks or months or even if I had not stopped that night and just gotten as drunk as possible and did drugs. But I stopped because I realized it was a bad idea, so I just view it as a slip rather than a relapse. I still want to celebrate when I get to a year of recovery on July 22 !

I’m just wondering other people’s thoughts on this outside of AA. Would you celebrate your original recovery date, your last use date, both or neither?

My main OCD theme is not wanting to put anything in my body because once I put something in my body I cannot control the effect it has on me. I am terrified of losing control of my mind or body such as having an allergic reaction which could cause death or having a psychedelic trip that makes me go crazy.

I avoid taking medicine even when I genuinely need it. When I do take any sort of medicine I try to get the liquid or chewable kind of the lowest dose so I can test a tiny amount first to make sure I am not allergic or don’t have side effects. I even do this with simple things like vitamins. Any time I swallow any sort of pill even a vitamin I have a panic attack thinking it could affect me in a weird way.

I developed an eating disorder as a teen because I was afraid someone was going to put drugs in my food accidentally, or on purpose for the fun of it. I needed to check to make sure all my food was sealed and airtight bags from the store, I could only eat certain things, I would eat the tiniest lick of something, wait an hour to see if I felt weird and then take a bite. I lost so much weight they considered me anorexic even thought I wasn’t even trying to lose weight at first. People didn’t really know how to classify me. They always seemed perplexed by this fear. No one told me that this could be OCD until way later.

I now have developed a fear of allergic reaction to foods. I won’t eat certain foods that are known allergens even tho I don’t have an allergy to them. I won’t eat new foods with ingredients I’ve never tried before. I sometimes even get scared of known foods I’ve tried a lot because what if my body randomly develops a reaction to it.

I was always afraid of alcohol and drugs. I did become an alcoholic eventually which is ironic. But when I first tried alcohol I had a panic attack because I didn’t like feeling different or out of control. When people would take shots I would take sips from the shot glass because the abrupt change was too much for me. I think I eventually became an alcoholic because it helped me to let go a little. When I got deeper into addiction and started trying other drugs like cocaine people would always be perplexed and annoyed by me because I would do the smallest tiniest bit at a time while other people did normal amounts less often. I was even OCD while doing my drugs 😂 thankfully I’m sober now for almost a year.

Ironically the most healing thing I’ve ever done for my OCD was mushrooms. Psychedelics was the biggest phobia of mine for the longest time , I said I would never do them because I was so afraid of losing control and going crazy but after I went through an intense period of grief I decided to eat one half of a mushroom gummy given to me by a lover.

It was interesting that my worst fear came true but it wasn’t actually scary at all: I was not in control of the images that popped up but for the first time in my life I LET GO of trying to control it and just existed and let it happen. It was the most freeing experience of my life tbh. I don’t think I’ve ever in my life before or after actually LET GO. I might do mushrooms again someday but right now I don’t feel like I am ready. I’m still am scared of it but I do think it can be healing!!

Anyway; does anyone else have this theme? I feel so weird when I take little nibbles of a gummy vitamin because I can’t bear to eat a normal amount of vitamin C 🤣 I always felt like a freak with these thoughts and actions. But now that I identify it as ocd I’m sure there are others out there like me.

I am a nurse practitioner. I also have OCD. One of the themes of my OCD is being afraid of being experiencing medication side effects. It doesn’t matter if it’s a super rare side effect I’m afraid I will have it. For this reason, I hardly take medicine even when it is recommended.

My prescribers and friends seem to not understand my fears at all, especially because I’m a nurse. My friends will say “But you’re a nurse!! You prescribe this stuff! Shouldn’t you know?” Well yes I do know! That doesn’t stop my obsession/compulsion tho!

My prescriber just reiterates that the side effects are rare (like I didn’t already know that because I prescribe them). People don’t seem to understand that a core feature of this disorder is that we understand how irrational it is , but we are compulsive to do it anyway!! No matter how much I remind myself the medicine is safe, I still will not take the medicine!

I told my prescriber I was thinking of starting ocd day treatment because it’s so bad I can’t even take medicine for my mental health. She says “you should really try medicine before you try day treatment, usually people at least try medicine before day treatment, I don’t think they will even accept you if you’re not trying meds first. It doesn’t make sense to go to day treatment unless you are taking meds” 🤦🏻‍♀️ like the whole reason I’m going to the treatment is BECAUSE I CANT TAKE MEDS!

But nobody seems to understand, they seem to think I can just not do the compulsion. If I was able to do that I wouldn’t meet criteria for this disorder!!! What do people think OCD is ?? I’m confused how my psychiatry prescriber can know I’m diagnosed with OCD yet still be confused why I can’t just take meds…

I was really into AA after I got out of treatment. I never really had many friends and so I think meetings felt really awesome, like everyone was friends and supportive to each other. I have since learned that this “support” is a lot of times hollow because most people “check in” because their sponsor is making them do it. It’s all just surface caring bc “caring for others” is a part of their recovery so they have to do it to be a part of the club.

Then when I was 4 months sober (or in AA terms I was less than 2 months sober because I had one slip where I drank a couple beers and stopped), my daughters dad (my best friend) died of an overdose. A week later I was also evicted from my apartment because I lost my job when I was in treatment.

I am a single mom to a special needs child. I moved into a shelter. I was physically ill because the apartment the shelter moved me into had mold. I had no childcare and no rides to meetings so I stopped going. No one called to offer me a ride no one really checked in with me. I was grieving. My daughter ended up in the psych hospital for a week. My sponsor kept telling me to reach out to her any time anything was wrong in my life, so I did. Her answer to everything was that I needed to go to a meeting. I kept telling her it’s not easy or feasible to go to meetings when I had so much going on. I needed sleep, a safe place to live, someone to help with my daughter, a friend to bring me a meal, so many other things rather than a meeting, but the answer is always go to a meeting even if it means sacrificing sleep or even if your kid is having a severe panic attack, you are to abandon them for meetings every night. It just stopped making sense to me. She dropped me as a sponsee because she said I wasn’t following advice. So supportive!

I got a new sponsor and it’s the same thing. It seems like any time you are going through any sort of anxiety or depression or ACTUAL LIFE STRESS like being HOMELESS AND SICK, people in AA will blame all your life woes on the fact you are not going to more meetings or not working the steps! It’s like NOTHING else can be causing it except the fact you are not working the program enough, if you were working your program you would be happy and not want to drink! It’s kind of ridiculous to me. My life actually sucked, and I finally stopped focusing on talking to my sponsor and focused on physically bettering my life instead and I actually feel better!

I don’t have any urge to drink anymore, I have a better place to live and my anxiety is lessened and that helped me more than a meeting could. I am almost a year sober. People in AA act like I will never be able to stay sober or even if I do then I MUST be a dry drunk because I haven’t worked the steps. I was thinking now that my life is more stable I might get back into AA but now I feel bitter because it’s like when I was at my lowest where was everyone in AA?? Telling me to go to a meeting and turn their backs on me…

It’s just so annoying to me these days. I think I am doing good not drinking despite everything I have been through with so little support. I think I might try out other groups, or I might still go to AA for the social aspect but not force myself to do the whole entire program if it subtracts from me focusing on the parts of my life that really matter. Did anyone else have a similar experience?

I feel as if my OCD has reached crisis levels. I cannot think of anything else except how I am possibly dying 24/7, I can hardly sleep or eat. Currently I think I have rabies or I have been exposed even tho I have been to the doctor and hospital multiple times and they refuse to give me the vaccine. I am convinced I need it because I saw bats outside my apartment I just moved into a couple months ago and have had weird marks over the last couple of months. Apparently that is not enough for a vaccine.

My daughter is 13 and autistic and extremely anxious (most likely also has OCD). She sleeps with me at night. I’ve never been able to leave her with anyone in my family or friends for more than a couple hours if that except for her grandma and with her it was for than a week even tho I was supposed to be in treatment for 2 months she couldn’t keep her longer because everyone gets extremely overwhelmed and don’t know how to calm her.

Her dad died in November. Afterwards she was hospitalized for a week because even I couldn’t calm her, eventually I had to pick her up from the hospital because they didn’t know how to handle her and were gonna sedate her. I picked her up and we figured it out.

She tells me all the time how she loves me and needs me and she doesn’t want anything to happen to me like it happened to her dad. I tell her I’m doing everything I can to make sure I am safe and healthy. I feel like if anything happens to me I failed her. She has low self esteem and I feel if anything happened to me she would blame herself because she yells at me and jumps on me and I try to set boundaries and she gets sad about stressing me out. I don’t want her to blame herself if something bad happens to me.

I worry she would break mentally and be put in a residential treatment or worse if I died. I used to have fears because I was afraid of death myself but now it’s not myself dying that scares me but what would happen to her and that I failed her even tho I tell her all the time I keep her safe.

I just don’t know how I can relax and convince myself it would be okay if I died. The treatment for ocd is to accept the unknown but I can’t do that. How can anyone deal with a 0.0001% chance even that their child will suffer immensely like that? I feel like if there was anyone else I trusted to take care of her to make sure she was safe, I would feel okay but there’s not. How in the world can I ever be okay with that?!

Ever since exposed to mold I have had a very difficult time thinking and expressing myself. I have word finding difficulties and often just give up writing or talking mid sentence because I cannot formulate. Forgetting things, can’t pay attention. This started during my first exposure in 2023, got a little better but never felt fully like myself again. Now I am exposed in an another building again and it’s getting way worse. I feel like I am hardly thinking. I am staring off into space most of the time. I forget the names of people I know well. I forget what I’m doing in the middle of doing it. I want to leave to a hotel but i have no money. My boyfriend works but he attributes all these “quirks” to me just being me. Constantly forgetting my keys and appointments etc. He doesn’t want to waste money on a hotel, he doesn’t want to move out of our place and leave our belongings again. I feel like I am losing myself and soon I will just be staring off into space all day long. I don’t know how to get people to believe me until it gets so bad that I’m in a nursing home or something. I’m 35. Will this ever get better? I never detoxed before. I thought leaving was enough. I tried ADHD medicines like maybe that was the problem. I have had MRIs which point to white matter lesions in my brain but they say it’s no big deal. I just want to have hope again. My daughter is 13 and autistic and her symptoms have gotten so bad constantly repeating herself and screaming. Again attributed to her just being autistic. But it’s gotten worse. I would leave to some sort of shelter or even camp outside but she’s so dysregulated she would scream and get violent if I did that. She doesn’t want to leave her home. I don’t know what to do. Is there hope? I used to work a good paying job but I can’t anymore because I feel my brain doesn’t work and I got so burnt out.