I just found this forum thru a google search. I'm an alcoholic. 2 months, 5 days since last drink. 27 of those were spent in jail so I guess only voluntarily a month and a week without walking into the ABC store.
I don't even know why I'm posting or what I'm going to say. I was addicted to the internet also. Thousands of postings on various hardware, software and gaming forums over the years. I tried replacing booze and drugs with computers. That didn't work. Computer parts everywhere gathering dust.
I'm separated now. My 16 yr old daughter has spent the last four years growing up watching me go in and out of hospitals and jail since I've fallen way off the wagon in 2005.
I've lost my job(s), my house is in foreclosure, I have a probation officer, soon to be ex-wife etc etc etc and I've known for about 20 years that I can't drink a drop without a fifth.
Been to rehab, in patient, out patient, meetings. I got drunk while taking antabuse and curled up on the bathroom floor for a dozen hours...not once, but twice. True idiot, eh? Woke up on life support more than once. Always drink alone since I left the military. Other drunks don't even like me.
Abilify, prozac, depakote and five or six other ones the last few years.
I've tried to surrender and accept AA. Hundreds of meetings. I've read the Big Book and identified myself many times over in the various stories at the back. The whiskey in the milk made perfect sense.
Had a little panic attack about an hour ago, typing this makes it a little better. Gonna go smoke a cig now.
AC I can somewhat identify and I was waiting to see if my ending was at the end of your story...."I quit" or "Uncle". I saw your "true idiot" statement but by the time I finally stopped I knew what was taking me out had nothing to do about thinking or not thinking. I knew I was owned by alcohol. I wasn't stupid I was in someother kind of situation where I knew my head wouldn't and couldn't get me out of. What ever I thought my body and spirit wanted booze and I couldn't think up a denial against drinking that would work.
Maybe you're at the "I've done every thing else except quit" stage and you'd like to just quit. I can read your powerlessness statement loud and clear and I can also hear you saying that you aren't powerful enough to save your own ass and need more or a higher power to help the craziness end so that you see and experience life in order. I can see it. Are you saying it out loud? I reached the point where the alternative to dying was asking, out loud, in a bunch of strangers, in a 12 step recovery program..."Can you help me please?" I had never thought of asking that before then and intuitively knew that if I didn't I would die in a way I couldn't imagine...crazy.
My first requirement for recovery was simply sitting down with and open mind in a meeting and listening without judgment or defense and without intention or false promise and to do that for 90 days in a row...just listen. I have two ways I listen. With my ears is in second place to with my eyes. When I heard the recovery by others in the program with my eyes. I couldn't name what it was that they had then...I just wanted it more than the losses I came with.
I won't inventory my losses...knowing your's is enough...no more than enough. You have lost it all except who ever or what ever directed you here. This is where you can stop trying to surrender and just do it. Stop, Quit, scream out Uncle and then "Please help me" and blindly trust those who lead you from there before you trust your own thinking. I can only say that this is how I did it and I have long since gotten over the fear of doing it so that I can enjoy the consequences of it. Booze no longer owns me and I can joyfully shout "Free at last, Free at last. Thank God I'm Free at last," with thousands of other drunks who have openly abandoned all reservations against AA. Try that "Free at last..." cheer and see how it sounds.
I'm glad you found MIP. There are family members here you have not met yet and who will show up with support for you. Hang around...don't drink in the mean time...hang around and read the posts and solutions.
AC...Welcome, I did identify with some of what you've said. I had been addicted to online gaming for 5 years at one time and actually lived life through that for a period of time. It just reinforces to me that, if I can get addicted to it, I will. Of course having been to AA, people might ask you "What's different this time?" Hopefully the only real answer is just that you've had enough and the option of changing is not as scary as the option of remaining the same. From my experience, I can say I drank myself out of every internal coping mechanism I had to deal with life. I needed AA so desperately to learn how to live functionally and it quickly became more than just about "not drinking." Both the powerlessnes and the unmanageability are in your words...the only thing needed now is a little bit of faith to grow on and the willingness to let it work. You could keep up this pattern and convince yourself you are managing it because it's gone on for so long, but you know that's not true. Something led you here and something is going to lead you on to much greater things if you allow it. That is what a higher power does. You know you have recovery in you. Just wash away old notions that it won't work for you because that is one of those "old ways of thinking that brought us nil" as they say in how it works. New thinking would be "I have recovery in me today." You had the strength to come and post here. You have the strength to go to meetings. You then have the strength to put several days together as you have already done. It is going to take some serious time to clean up the mess that you and your love affair with alcohol created. You will deal with it a little bit at a time and just try not to convince yourself that you created a bottom so low you can't crawl out of it. Each day you don't drink is building strength and greater coping skills...from that, you will find faith because good things will happen and you will be letting them happen to you (even if the good things are that you just were able to handle some difficult things without drinking that is still good). All I know is that when I stopped drinking, there was a gaping hole in me and I didn't know how to function. That hole is still there, but it is getting filled mainly with 2 things the program has given me and continues to: Coping skills and faith. Many people (even people here) have your story and one piece of faith you might choose to believe in is that if it worked for them, it will (or at least could) work for you too. Come back and let us know how it goes. Clearly, you can see from the number of my posts here how helpful this site can be in the 1st year of sobriety. Like the many other things I take part in AA-wise, this is just another hand reaching out to me and for me to reach out to others. It's recovery. Take it and utilize it a day at a time. Thoughts and prayers are with you.
Mark
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Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
Welcome to MIP, Robert. I hope you can make it something of a home group for you here as well as one you can find in meetings. If you're doing service at a meeting or two already more power to you. Enjoy staying sober & getting to know yourself all over again in sobriety. Take the suggested steps. The work's hard but the wages are good. I hope you like it here. I'm looking forward to hearing more about your recovery. Right now is never too late. Onwards & upwards :) With you in fellowship, Danielle x
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Progress not perfection.. & Practice makes Progress!
Wow, could almost copy about 80% of everything you wrote, my story before almost over my own dead body did I finally surrender.
And you have said that it has been a couple of months so hope this new passing the ABC Store will keep going for you.
You titled your Post, Broken record, if I had had the internet then, I would have titled mine, Empty shell of a woman, nothing was left, even the one thing that was still mine, was my own body, and that was going down hill pretty fast too.
So yes, you are in the company of others that have traveled down that Road, just like you, I also knew the BB like the back of my hand, had all the books that could have ever been written on Relapse Prevention, had been to hundreds and hundreds of meeting. The only difference between you and I was that part in the BB where that man that traveled out of town, and decided to just put "one shot of Whiskey in his milk" that one just did not go over too big with me, for the whiskey was a scotch whiskey, and I hated scotch with a passion.
I was never in Jail, never had a Probation officer. But I sure know exactly what you meant when you wrote that you could not phathom one drop, without it being a fifth, everyday.
So, so much for my drunkalogue, What happened for me was after being in a Hospital twice for drug overdosing, with those tubes all over, and on my thrid try at taking my own life, and could not manage to do that either, I simply caved in to all of it, and asked a God that I believed in my heart had abandoned me long ago, just to Please show me a different way. That was my miracle moment, my compulsion for getting at least 10 oz in my morning breakfast were gone. and somehow I found one Meeting a few miles away, and so I would go, this empty woman, never speaking but just listening for almost a year.
One think that always stikes me so much, is I have NEVER heard one person in AA ever say that when they asked God for help, they did not GET the help they needed and I am for sure including those that ASKED, but did not believe in God, those too found that same amazing result.
Have you thought about giving that a Try.
So Robert that was my experence, and that broken shell of a woman is now looking at, and only with the Grace of God, 19 years of continueous sobriety.
Just One day at a time. That is such a biggy to remember. We only have to do it just for today, and when you wake up tomorow, then all you have is that day.
Hope you find some meetings, and felt priveldged that you shared all those intimate details of your life with us today.
God Bless you dear, and hope we will see so much more of you here.
One of your new friends here, Toni, and again, a big welcome and a Big Hug
-- Edited by toni baloney on Monday 24th of August 2009 06:34:16 PM
