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Hi all, sorry for the long intro. Just my story (with some hideous details left out) and where I'm at now....

Well, as the title indicates, I feel that after roughly 5 years of out-of-control drinking (ok, alcoholism), I’ve finally discovered my bottom. Strange that I always knew it was coming , and have known I’ve had a problem for a few years but ..it had to come to this in order for me to get some self-realization about my problem.

A little history: There is a history of alcoholism and depression in my family. I can recall my grandfather calling our house when I was really young when he was on one of his binges. He’d always want to talk to me , and would continue calling until my mother would relent, usually crying, and hand me the phone. He’d slur a bunch of words about how much he loved me etc, and that’d be that. I knew he was drunk, but was too young to really realize the severity of his alcoholism.

My parents are also drinkers, my Dad is worse than my Mom. He starts with a few beers in the afternoon and continues drinking till around 11 PM. By this point he’s usually slurring his words and pretty much impossible to understand. About 2 months ago he almost drank himself into a diabetic coma. He’s Type 1 diabetic.

Mom is more of a binge drinker, maybe gets out of it once or twice a week. This has been them for about as long as I can remember.

Now about me. I grew up in small town Ontario , Canada. Not much to do here BUT drink, and me and my friends began drinking fairly young, around 13 years old. In a town like this, teen drinking is so commonplace that people just pretty much expect it. So my high school and college years, drinking to excess was just sort of what we did. What everyone did.

Fast forward through a few years….drinking was there, but I could always avoid it. I didn’t really have the compulsion, the nagging urge to get drunk that I now feel every single day. In fact, I even thought my close group of friends were more apt to have alcohol problems than me. Of course, we’d still party and drink to excess when we were together or partying , but back then I could just as easily stay home and watch movies with nary a drop of booze in sight. Back then it wasn’t such a priority for me.

Then come my 30’s. I’d moved to Toronto , Canada for a job, and I was excited. Big thriving new city , new job, and more money than I’d previously made. No real friends or connections there other than work colleagues, and every now and then we’d go out after work for drinks. I was always careful to limit myself initially…didn’t want to be the subject of gossip or derision amongst new co-workers by being a lush.

But when I was alone in my apartment, well, that’s when the REAL fun would start. I feel it began out of loneliness, boredom. Nothing much to do with myself, liquor store one block away. It started innocently enough. I’d put in a long day at work, grab a mickey bottle of whiskey on the way home, and treat myself to a few drinks at night. Soon it escalated into pub-crawling on the way home from work, having a few beers , THEN stopping at the liquor store on my way back to my apartment so I could have drinks that night.
In terms of occupying myself at home, I’d rent movies. It became habitual. I ‘d rent a movie to watch, get some booze, drink it, and watch the movie. I began waking up on the couch, TV still on, getting showered , and heading out to work.

I couldn’t tell you just how many movies I never even saw the end of. I was escalating, I knew, but at that point…I recognized that I was lonely, and had nothing else to do, thus the excessive boozing. I figured I’d “grow out of it” or get tired of it eventually , and it’d stop.

It got progressively worse. I was buying more booze at night, and blacking out. I would disconnect my phone so that family or friends wouldn’t call and find me messed up and drunk on the other end of the line. It had happened before. Still thinking I’d be able to stop.

At the time, I had a girlfriend in the US that I’d met through work. Soon we were talking marriage. A year goes by, drinking had increased if anything. Money was getting tighter. I was traveling a lot to the US to see my now-fiance once a month , and of course, spending irrational amounts of money on booze.

Eventually I left Toronto and moved to the US to get married. At this point thinking that married life would cease the excessive drinking. That we’d snuggle and watch tv every night and cook each other nice dinners and be a happily married young couple. My wife was a bartender at a business hotel. My vision of married life, very unrealistic.

The thing about the bar life is that it entails a lot of partying. Our life became my wife going off to work till midnight, then me meeting her out and us going to some bar or another where she knew the staff, and we’d stay and drink after hours , at times till around 6 in the morning. She had her own troubles with alcohol.

We’d fight over who drank more, who spent more money on booze, who was more irresponsible. Obviously things fell apart. She left me. For a bar manager. I left the US .
This was 1 and a half years ago.

Since my return to Canada, things have worsened. The divorce has been tough, and I have been diagnosed with Depression. I have also engaged in irresponsible, selfish , and destructive behaviors that shock even me. I have lied, stolen from friends, manipulated and used family members, all in order to self-medicate with booze. I was prescribed anti-depressants but went off of them. I lied to my Mother, telling her I felt 100 times better and didn’t need them. The truth is, I can’t even afford them.

I have leaned on my parents for financial support, and squandered what they’ve provided on booze. There have been parties with old friends that I’ve gone to and commited some seriously humiliating and foolish things due to drinking too much. All my friends have confronted me over my drinking, as have my family. I can always seem to weasel out of it by saying I’m going to “take it easy on the booze” from now on. Lying even to myself. My parents, aware of their own alcohol issues, tend to tread lightly. My father has said he doesn’t feel that I am at an age anymore where he needs to be a role model for me in regards to drinking. My mom is an enabler. My life is pretty much unmanageable at this point.

I don’t know if it’s the depression, the booze , or just my luck. But life merely gets worse. I am currently under-employed, making barely enough to cover rent for my apartment. I returned to Canada with 2 suitcases. I have barely any possessions of any value. My ex wife will not speak to me or return thousands of dollars of personal items I still have in the US.

What terrifies me is that I know I’ll require a tremendous amount of positivity in order to finally tackle this…yet I’ve seen nothing positive in my life for years. Things simply get worse.

I need to do this. I really fear what will happen the next time I can’t control myself.