Hi, I'm a compulsive overeater and an alcoholic.
I've been admitting that I am an overeater since 1999 when I went to Overeaters Anonymous and began working the 12 steps. I've always been a heavy binge drinker since starting at 18. I just suppose food got a head start - my earliest memories of using food were at age 9.
Despite great recovery, working the 12 Steps, living the programme, sponsoring...... this cunning, baffling, powerful disease got the better of me and found a way to get me back to using the food through the alcohol. For the last two and half years, food and alcohol have been dangerously interwined in my life to the point that I have no idea which is the greater problem any more......But still I couldn't admit I was an alcoholic....I don't even like whiskey, vodka or gin. Alcoholics don't just drink wine, do they?
Everytime I drink and binge I have been passing out for about an hour. When I come round the only knowledge I have of what I have done is the empty bottle, wrappers and packets that surround me. I have feared for some time not coming round when I pass out and ending up in some sort of diabetic coma. Instead of stopping, I have just coached my six year old to phone for an ambulance
Sunday morning, again no recollection of the last binge, seeing my child crying because of my behaviour as he retold it to me........I was so ashamed, full of guilt, absolutely paralysed and overwhelmed by despair. I literally could not move. I couldn't even cry. I thought of Bill's story...
"
No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Quicksand stretched around me in all directions. I had met my match. I had been overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master" Pg 8 Big Book.
I knew I was done with alcohol. I knew that I could never ever feel the way I was feeling right at that moment....I could not ever cope with that again. Thank God, out of my despair I was able to call a friend in OA and finally say the words "I'm an alcoholic" after years of just saying I have a bit of a problem with alcohol.
Today is day 4 sober and clean with my food. Every day I have told my friend I am an alcoholic and I mean it. I have taken my last drink. I cannot drink alcohol ever again. I know that. I accept that. I am now quite grateful for that, which suprises me.
I did have an initital thought about how I would cope on Christmas day but thankfully the insanity was replaced with relief. Relief that I never had to drink again, that I could finally get off the nightmare of the hamster's wheel going round and round and never getting off.
It is really important to me to say I am an alcoholic to people who understand. I was going to go to my first AA meeting this lunchtime but the snow has come and school has closed early..........so I am sharing here instead.
Thank you all for being here (I've been reading posts over the last few days - great forum) and letting me say that I AM AN ALCOHOLIC. You see, I can shout it out now
All BB quotes-1st Edition