I can't really define surrender, but I can share my story with you. I think for each of us, it is a personal thing- this surrender and being powerless- but I can sure tell you what happened with me. If it helps you or anyone else, it's worth telling.
I had my first drink when I was 14, but my obsession with alcohol started much earlier. I loved to smell beer or any type of alcoholic drink, I like to pretend I was drinking wine as a child. This is actually quite odd since neither of my parents ever drank anything. I would visit my friends house and stare at the beer in the fridge. My dad had a small decanter of scotch that someone had brought him from Scotland sitting on his dresser and I would sit and look at it for hours. When I finally had my first drink, I got drunk that night and I believe became an alcoholic that night. I didn't drink every day but every time I drank I got drunk. I spent the next few years looking for a way to be able to get drunk without my parents finding out. Everything about my life changed that night...I quit worrying about school and grades, I was a musician and I gave all that up that night...everything changed because I had a new obsession. As soon as I got out of school I got married and tried to live a "normal" life. Occasionally I would get drunk, but never enough times to make me sit up and take notice that maybe it was getting to be a problem. When my husband and I would drink together, we would take turns on who got drunk and who didn't so we could get home without getting in trouble. My husband is an alcoholic also. Many times I would not drink at all because I was worried about making sure that my husband was ok. In 1990, my husband went to treatment and got sober. I didn't think I was an alcoholic so I never really paid attention to what he was doing with this AA stuff. What I did was get real sneaky. I started drinking after work and making sure that he didn't know what I was doing. I always had a good excuse for why I was late from work, or why I had to go out at night. As my drinking progressed, I would just find a reason to not go home at all. It worked for awhile then he started getting angry. So I would lay low for awhile and not drink, but always would eventually start again. I was nothing but a liar and a sneak when i was in a drinking mode, but managed to pull myself out before I lost everything. When my husband was 10 yr sober he had finally had enough. He knew I had been lying and drinking and doing all the things that go along with that life and he finally said "no more". He left. He said he couldn't continue to live with me knowing that I was killing myself and me not even recognizing that it was out of control. I found my self alone and angry., but it wasn't my fault, it was his. He's the one who left. Any way, I sat alone in that house for about 6 months, leaving only to go to work and to buy booze. I would sit there all night drinking and crying. By this time I was probably drunk more than I was sober...I drank at work as much as I could get away with it, and started drinking as soon as I got home. One night my husband came by to check on me and I begged him to not leave. I told him I just couldn't be alone anymore. He left anyway, and I went into hysterics. I really contemplated just killing myself that night...I thought the world would be better off without me in it. I got up to pour me another drink and found out that I was out of bourbon. So I just sat staring at the walls and crying.
In the midst of all this, at some point I got on my knees and looked up at the ceiling, crying out to a god that I didn't even know was real, and said I need help. I can't do this alone anymore. At that moment a warm feeling came over me and I was calm, where 30 seconds before I had been hysterical. A voice inside my head said you've never been alone. I went to bed and slept, for the first time in months, peacefully. The next day I went to the dr and told him what was going on. He sent me to mental health and 2 weeks later I was seeing a therapist and found out that yeah,,,maybe I was an alcoholic and maybe AA would be the right place for me. But the surrender came that night when I knew that no matter what I tried, I wasn't ever going to be able to do it on my own. I had to ask for help, from a power that I didn't understand but was greater than any I had ever known before. And today I am a grateful, sober alcoholic. I place my reliance in a higher power that I have grown closer to and learned to know through the rooms of AA.
"What I did was get real sneaky. I started drinking after work and making sure that he didn't know what I was doing. I always had a good excuse for why I was late from work, or why I had to go out at night. As my drinking progressed, I would just find a reason to not go home at all. It worked for awhile then he started getting angry. So I would lay low for awhile and not drink, but always would eventually start again. I was nothing but a liar and a sneak when i was in a drinking mode, but managed to pull myself out before I lost everything. "
Have you been spying on me? Because holy shit does that sound like me! My friends have a nickname for me, they call me "The Truth" and it isn't in a complimentary way either. It's like when you call a big fat guy "tiny"...and they phone me when they need a good "lie" because they screwed up at work or their in some sort of jam. Not that I care much what those drunken louts think but I also lie to my girlfriend and I do things behind her back...I don't want to be a sneak and a liar anymore. It damages your soul to betray the people you love.
To be honest with you I wake up with such guilt, shame and remorse after a night of drinking that I have gotten on my knees with tears in my eyes and asked for help. I asked God, Allah, Buddha, Ganesha, George Burns...pretty much anyone and everyone godly who came to mind! And I sincerely meant it too. I guess it doesn't work for everybody
We're all pretty much the same. Used to shock me too to learn that I am not unique...... my story is very similar to cheri's. I used to play "bar" when I was kid!!
As for the lies and being sneaky, well, I know about that one too. Just now lost my guy over something I did while still drinking.......
Hang in there Tip, it's gets better, then it gets worse, then it gets better.
Doll
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* We eventually realize that just as the pains of alcoholism had to come before sobriety, emotional turmoil comes before serenity. *
Hmm...lying to people you love...putting them and yourself through Hell, just so you can have another drink??? Sneaking and scheming to get another drink...Boy, sure glad I never did any of that...funny how it all sure seems damned familiar somehow though????
