Originally Posted by
fallinggrace 
For me, the hardest thing about being an alcoholic, for 12 years, the thing which ruined my life, was missed opportunities. I used to play violin and "could have and would have" played in orchestras professionally if I hadn't destroyed my life.
In your experience, whats the hardest, saddest most difficult thing about dealing with alcoholism?
Are the losses really different for any of us? I'm not sure what the hardest, saddest most difficult thing about dealing with alcoholism was/is.
I could say the relationship I lost was at the top, but that's really just looking at the surface. Truth is, she gave up on me. I earned it, but she quit. As a retired Marine, that word doesn't exist for me.
More important than that to me is, what if *I* had quit trying? I lost a job and a lot of my personal belongings. They can be replaced.
I think the most important thing I was losing were the pieces of me. One at a time. Especially towards the end (if there is such a thing) when I KNEW the second I touched a bottle what the outcome was going to be. I wasn't going to get better. "It" wasn't going to get better. I was trading off a week - 10 days of drying out for 1-3 days of being drunk I wouldn't remember a second of.
I fortunately did not have to steal/commit crimes to drink. I lied though. Even when the lie was stupid and I knew it.
I was losing my soul. Who I was. Everything I had been and was going to be. I was becoming or had become everything my entire being had been taught and trained to not be: weak. An addict. I was going to have to ask for help. I wasn't by God an indestructible piece of machinery trained to kill at the government's whim with no after affect.
Not trying to be long-winded. This is a "button" question for me though.
As mentioned in another thread, what was lost was me. Nothing and no one else could matter if there was no me. (of course you just have to go with the military sense of humor here).
So I'm starting to ask where the H- God is. Sitting on my couch and replies, you done jerking around with that puke bucket? I've always been right here. You just weren't looking.
So, to me, it isn't about what I have lost. Those things hurt, yes. What I FOUND was far more important.