Originally Posted by freshstart57

Your parasitic alcoholic voice is powerless to make you do anything you have decided not to do. It doesn't sound to me as though you have decided to quit drinking yet. I say this because, well, drinking. You don't 'have to' drink because you get to choose not to.

Continuing to drink, is a bad thing for people like us - instead of giving us relief from anxiety and worry about things to come, it causes anxiety. Instead of giving us a break from depressing things in our lives and sadness over things that have already happened, it causes depression. The chemical that is alcohol physically causes these reactions in our bodies if we consume enough of it, and lordy there has been enough. Sitting and staring and weeping at the bottom of larger and larger bottles of cheaper and cheaper bottles of vodka has us stuck in the vortex, circling the drain.

The answer for me was to do the thing I needed to do in the now, in the present. The first thing next, in other words, and for me, that first thing was to never drink in this present moment. My other 'issues', and there were plenty, became easier to deal with once there was no more alcohol, ever. Many of them went away with the alcohol and haven't come back, like the depression and anxiety, the shame and guilt, and loss of self respect.

You can do this, Julie59, you can decide what you must do. You can decide and make your plan about continuing to use alcohol. Are you ready to make that plan?