I woke up this morning and learned that I texted to my brother and posted some things online last night after I had blacked out that were not nice, so here I am!
I've known I have been an alcoholic for several years and have tried many times to stop unsuccessfully. I'm tearing up as I type this because it has gotten this far out of hand. I've apologized for those comments last night already, but I still feel like an asshole. When I drink I become this different angry person, a person I do not wish to be anymore. I want this time to finally work and I think by coming here it's a decent start. Thanks for reading!
Thanks for you posting today. Have you looked up all AA meeting in your area. I recall doing some horrendous things in my drinking days and constantly begged a God to somehow help me stop buying the drink.
For me its just a day at a time now but in the early days it was just a moment at a time. I also needed to get to a meeting every day.
For me it was the best thing for me talking and crying with a load of ex-drunks who were all trying hard not to pick up a drink that day.
There was also lot of laughter in the rooms and people to talk to, I asked for friends who could help,and they all gave me phone numbers. One chap who became a very good friend took me to a meeting every night,because he was going to one. We had no car,it had been took back,and we were about to loose our home.
Life just improved each day I was sober,I was also able to cope with bills and everyday things I had started to avoid doing.My family started to respect and love me again. They had lost all trust in me and just knew that I was drinking every day. They stopped visiting me,because they were unable to help me.
The only place that helped me were the rooms of AA. You will be amazed by everything. I know I was. Good luck and I so hope you get to your first meeting ASP.
Thanks for your reply. I have looked up the meetings, but I have a lot of trepidation about actually attending. The past few years I have in many ways shut myself off to the real world during the spiral downward. I'll work on building up the courage I need to go.
Thanks for your post. It reminded me of how I felt back when I used to drink. It's that demoralizing morning feeling when you realize what you have done/said and if there was a blackout involved, what I might have done and said. Sometimes I would call friends to try to figure out what had happened but as the years went on I didn't drink with friends.
I hope you can get to AA. It's great to be able to live without waking up in that situation. I do not miss it one bit. Wishing you the best.
Maybe call someone and they will take you to your first few meetings, they do this sort of thing back home where I lived. and they do this here too. Give them a call,talk with someone. Someone would come a see you if you wish too. If you would like a 12step call out. just ask.
Remember we have to make things happen and show a willingness people like to help the ones asking,so ask :} Tell them your fears.
Please get to a meeting we all need face to face contact. Forums and chats are good but this alone would not keep us sober.
Its a big step for everyone walking into the rooms but remember their might be a couple more new too.
Go on go to the next meeting.you will find it blows your mind away with gratitude. :} you do not neet to say anything just sit and listen each meeting you go to, one a night :} :} Now that's pushing you :} They are full of love.
Yet, in spite of our intentions, the outcome was almost inevitably the same. Eventually, the memory of the vows and of the suffering that led to them, faded. We drank again, and we wound up in more trouble. Our dry "forever" had not lasted very long.
Some of us who took such pledges had a private reservation: We told ourselves that the promise not to drink applied only to the "hard stuff," not to beer or wine. In that way we learned, if we did not already know it, that beer and wine could get us drunk, too--we just had to drink more of them to get the same effects we got on distilled spirits. We wound up as stoned on beer or wine as we had been before on the hard stuff.
Yes, others of us did give up alcohol completely and did keep our pledges exactly as promised, until the time was up. . . . Then we ended the drought by drinking again, and were soon right back in trouble, with an additional load of new guilt and remorse.
With such struggles behind us now, in A.A. we try to avoid the expressions "on the wagon" and "taking the pledge." They remind us of our failures. Although we realize that alcoholism is a permanent, irreversible condition, our experience has taught us to make no long-term promises about staying sober. We have found it more realistic--and more successful--to say, "I am not taking a drink JUST FOR TODAY." Even if we drank yesterday, we can plan not to drink today. We may drink tomorrow--who knows whether we'll even be alive then?--but for THIS 24 hours, we decide not to drink. No matter what the temptation or provocation, we determine to go to any extremes necessary to avoid a drink TODAY.
Our friends and families are understandably weary of hearing us vow, "This time I really mean it," only to see us lurch home loaded. So we do not promise them, or even each other, not to drink. Each of us promises only herself or himself. It is, after all, our own health and life at stake. We, not our family or friends, have to take the necessary steps to stay well. If the desire to drink is really strong, many of us chop the 24 hours down into smaller parts. We decide not to drink for, say, at least one hour. We can endure the temporary discomfort of not drinking for just one more hour; then one more, and so on. Many of us began our recovery in just this way.
In fact, EVERY RECOVERY FROM ALCOHOLISM BEGAN WITH ONE SOBER HOUR.
One version of this is simply postponing the (next) drink. (How about it? Still sipping soda? Have you really postponed that drink we mentioned back on page 1? If so, this can be the beginning of your recovery.) The next drink will be available later, but right now, we postpone taking it at least for the present day, or moment. (Say, for the rest of this page?) The 24-hour plan is very flexible. We can start it afresh at any time, wherever we are. At home, at work, in a bar or in a hospital room, at 4:00 p.m. or at 3:00 a.m., we can decide right then not to take a drink during the forthcoming 24 hours, or five minutes. Continually renewed, this plan avoids the weakness of such methods as going on the wagon or taking a pledge. A period on the wagon and a pledge both eventually came, as planned, to an end--so we felt free to drink again.
But today is always here. Life IS daily; today is all we have; and anybody can go one day without drinking. First, we try living in the now just in order to stay sober--and it works. Once the idea has become a part of our thinking, we find that living life in 24-hour segments is an effective and satisfying way to handle many other matters as well.
Welcome, there is nothing to fear in going to a meeting, though I remember that it took so much for me to put one foot in front of the other and get to that first meeting. After that it was easier.
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Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
Hello IWP and welcome to the board. Going to your first meeting is like riding a bike for the first time. A bit a stress about the unknown followed by a calm, no big deal feeling. We are the folks that you liked to drink with except we've found a way to enjoy life without alcohol. Stick around and help us to stay sober.
I woke up this morning and learned that I texted to my brother and posted some things online last night after I had blacked out that were not nice, so here I am!
I've known I have been an alcoholic for several years and have tried many times to stop unsuccessfully. I'm tearing up as I type this because it has gotten this far out of hand. I've apologized for those comments last night already, but I still feel like an asshole. When I drink I become this different angry person, a person I do not wish to be anymore. I want this time to finally work and I think by coming here it's a decent start. Thanks for reading!
Welcome!
Oh yes. Drinking and typing/texting. The "OMG did I really say that?" horrors.
Been there, done that. Thankfully since I started to work AA, that hasn't happened in a while now. :)
Thanks for sharing. I suffered through similar bouts of 'drunken slang' myself for many years, same as you. I either said something or did something that pissed off at least one of my family members -in the course of my 30+ years drinking. I guess it's a learning process; at least it was for me. I had to sober up 'first' before I fully understood what the word ***hole really means -as it pertains to me. Then I knew what needed to be done.
Once I got involved in "AA" and started to work the steps, I was finally able to see the light at the end of tunnel; which, for me, meant amends. That's when my life started to straighten out and so can yours. Sobriety does have its good moments and its not so good ones also, but it's much more manageable today, it truly is. So get involved and start recovering just like the rest of us. It's worth it, believe me it is. Welcome to "MIP"
-- Edited by Mr_David on Saturday 5th of May 2012 12:01:45 AM
Thanks for your reply. I have looked up the meetings, but I have a lot of trepidation about actually attending. The past few years I have in many ways shut myself off to the real world during the spiral downward. I'll work on building up the courage I need to go.
What's to fear? We know you already. You know us. We've all walked the same road and done the same stupid things. You can't shock us.
Give a meeting a shot. I think you'll find pretty quickly that it's the place you need and want to be.
Hey glad to see you open up. That's hard admitting you have a problem...the 1st step hope to hear from you just don't drink no matter what! Chin up...Benita corpus christi tx
I woke up this morning and learned that I texted to my brother and posted some things online last night after I had blacked out that were not nice, so here I am!
I've known I have been an alcoholic for several years and have tried many times to stop unsuccessfully. I'm tearing up as I type this because it has gotten this far out of hand. I've apologized for those comments last night already, but I still feel like an asshole. When I drink I become this different angry person, a person I do not wish to be anymore. I want this time to finally work and I think by coming here it's a decent start. Thanks for reading!
Blackouts are a bitch. I always wanted to be 100% there when I was being an asshole. With blackouts, I just had to take their word for it (which, BTW, I did without fail).
I hope this is your bottom. There is such great promise in these rooms and once we stop the daily intake of mind-numbing, soul-robbing liquid-which-eventually-converts-to-ether-in-the-brain (Oh, great...I'm a drug addict too?) we are literally free to explore that beautiful person anxiously waiting inside to be...re-discovered. How do I know this. Been there, doing that.
