Went to the gym again this morning in an attempt to keep myself busy and not fixated on having any alcohol. The thing is that I need to swap my addiction from something destructive to something more constructive.
I've been down this road before and had a dream to compete professionally as a bodybuilder. I gave up drinking (and nicotine) and focused my efforts entirely on bulking up, cycle training, building lean muscle mass and became obsessed with my body to the point of taking illicit steroids and giving myself IM injections.
At the time, I was working as a registered nurse and could justify "forgetting" to take the 3cc, 1" syringes and alcohol wipes out of my pockets at the end of the shift. I would order veterinary grade anabolic steroids from the back of muscle magazines, crush the pills up, dissolve them in cotton seed oil or flax seed oil (the pills were not water soluble) and give myself injections of so many cc's daily. And it worked - for awhile. Along with my diet and the steroids, I was able to beef my 140 lb physique into 185 lbs of lean muscle over a year's time. But there was a downside, the steroids I ordered were only 90% testosterone, while the other 20% were estrogens. Without an estrogen blocker on board to counter the effects of the female hormones, I realized that my pecs were becoming very sensitive and growing larger! Okay! Time to stop the steroids!
Now, this is just an effort to show that, no matter what addiction is "replaced", even a seemingly constructive addiction has a dark side when carried to extremes. My goal now is a completely natural approach to bodybuilding with proper diet and the correct training regimen. I am also giving up alcohol at this time, but still continuing with the smokeless tobacco at least for now (everyone needs at least one vice, right)?
Right now, I am right at 140-145 lbs and I want to get back into the shape I was over ten years ago. It can be done, but I need to do it without getting too obsessed with taking shortcuts to get there.
Read about Addiction at
My Addicted Mind.Com