I'm also new and wanted to introduce myself. After stopping and starting and stopping and starting for years, I'm now just a week sober, but with a real commitment this time.
I guess I am still in the throes of my last humiliating mortifying boozy night out, and I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts on getting past the shame and into treating myself well?
AJ, I did the same thing but stopped and started only 3 times over about 3 years.
humiliating mortifying boozy night out – Mine were; I would get into a fight, pick up a girl even though all my friends and their girlfriends who were out with me knew I had a very nice girl at home, drink until I would black out and my favorite which got me to stop was when I drank so much zambuca one night at a bar in Boston at my buddy's bachelor party (while my wife was home pregnant with our 2nd child) I fell down about 20 stairs from one level of the bar to the next. I thought I broke every bone in my body. I didn't go to my buddy's wedding the next weekend because i was scared I did something wrong and my wife would find out. Imagine that, because of friggin booze I skipped out on one of my best friends weddings. I wrote him a long letter to which he never replied trying to make ammends . Oh Well I have to leave it in the past. Thank God it got me into AA.
I can’t tell you the peace I experience waking up not having to pace around the house all morning trying to remember what I did the previous night while in my blackout. That was my personal hell.
Please keep going to meetings. I think everytime I hear someone at a meeting say I am just coming back, 90% of them, there next sentence is "becuase I stopped going to meetings" or "I stopped reading the literture and working the steps.'
Yo AJ... Actually, I'm kind of glad I was still feeling those effects a week (and more) after my last drunken spree. It kept it real green for me and that was just what I needed to make a commitment to change. Initially that meant just going to meetings.. then that commitment eventually expanded to real change as my fogged thinking cleared up somewhat.
One of my big problems was the remorse of the last drunk was somehow always magically erased from my mind ... like amnesia .. then I'd find myself back in the same spot .. drunk again ... more remorse. So I guess I'm saying, it's no use beating yourself up and not treating yourself well . But consider this: if your're really on the road to change and you're really committed to it, then you really are treating yourself very well.
Thank you so much for the replies, and for sharing your story Mike. It means a lot to me. This: "I can’t tell you the peace I experience waking up not having to pace around the house all morning trying to remember what I did the previous night while in my blackout. That was my personal hell." rings so, so true.
I have never been to AA. Is it pig-headed or unrealistic of me to think I can do it on my own, and with the help of books and the internet? I live in a small town, and I just don't know if I'm ready to run into people I know at a meeting. That's silly, right?
There are meetings online, and I haven't been doing f2f meetings myself because of health problems, so it can be done. But I think you'd be cheating yourself out of a valuable tool if you didn't at least check out meetings to see what they're about.
As for the people you might see in meetings -- what are you afraid of?
I remember walking into a meeting once and seeing the mother of my ex-girlfriend there. I watched the expression on her face... first puzzlement, then recognition, and then she smiled. I was really nervous seeing her because I was a total wreck when I was dating her daughter and knew she really didn't approve of us being together. It wasn't news to her that I was a drunk. She was happy to see I was doing something about it.
I too think you'd be missing out on something if you didn't try F2F (face to face) meetings if you've got them available. You might make some good friends and get some phone numbers of people to call in case you get in a bind and feel like drinking. I came into AA via a rehab hospital (they told me if I wanted to not drink again I should go to meetings... this was the best advice those good psychiatrists could give me, and they were tops in the field of alcoholism). So I took their advice. In the rehab I had a good bit of exposure to the fact that alcoholics come from all walks of life - Yale to jail. You might be surprised who you run into at meetings if you go to enough of them. And the wonderful thing is .. we've all got this same problem. Alcoholism is a great equalizer. And it's a great relief when we find out we're not alone anymore.
. I wrote him a long letter to which he never replied trying to make ammends . Oh Well I have to leave it in the past. Thank God it got me into AA. 
